Ethanol: "...about as useful as a flux capacitor"

[GliderGuider]

Here is a prime example of why I'm worried that the widespread adoption of ethanol will proceed without any thought to the consequences. Fuzzy environmentalism meets up with political advantage and corporate greed, and forms an unholy agreement to fly in the face of the public good.

Ethanol is a waste of energy

Despite mounting evidence that ethanol is about as useful as a flux capacitor, Gov. Bill Ritter is ensuring that Colorado will become dependent on this "alternative" energy.

No need for debate. No need to heed the market. No need to explore viability or consequences.

Executive orders will do the trick.

It seems elected officials need only insert dreamy words like "green" or "renewable" into a sentence and the electorate swoons.

A new study by Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University atmospheric scientist, will, hopefully, get us thinking, not only about the feasibility of ethanol but the health consequences.

"Ethanol is being promoted as a clean and renewable fuel that will reduce global warming and air pollution," wrote Jacobson, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. "But our results show that a high blend of ethanol poses an equal or greater risk to public health than gasoline, which already causes significant health damage."

...

"I'm interested in climate change and air pollution, and corn ethanol doesn't help us with those problems," he tells me. "We have some serious problems. If we start believing that we're solving problems and we're not, that's a dangerous road to be on. In 15 years we'll be sitting here looking back and wondering why we locked into ethanol when there are far better roads."

Ritter claims E85 - an 85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline blend - will help reduce imports, lower emissions, benefit corn growers and stimulate the economy. Only one of those contentions is provable: the corn-lobby benefits.

So who the heck is Mark Jacobson and what makes him an authority on the subject? Take a look at his bio. His papers on ethanol are http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/E85vWindSol">here, and the one on the health effects of E85 conversion is here (PDF). A heavy hitter indeed.

Here's part of the conclusion from that paper on health effects of E85:

In sum, due to its similar cancer risk but enhanced ozone health risk in the base emission case, a future fleet of E85 may cause a greater health risk than gasoline. However, because of the uncertainty in future emission regulations, E85 can only be concluded with confidence to cause at least as much damage as future gasoline vehicles.

Sounds like a slam-dunk to me...

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. I can see how ethanol can have a place in a post-petroleum

world, but it can't simply replace oil - to substitute the one for the other would casue an incredible environmental castastophe. What we have to do, in the not so very long run, is wean ourselves from the internal combusion engine.

[GliderGuider]

2. Yep, we need to wean ourselves off the internal combustion engine.

It sounds easy when you say it fast, doesn't it?

[hunter]

3. I often think ethanol promotion is part of a deliberate plan of political destabilization.

There's a politically powerful segment of our population that thrives on chaos, death, and destruction. If ethanol production destabilizes leftwards leaning political movements and transfers wealth to the right wing, that's good enough reason to support it. The actual energy equations don't matter to right wing death eaters.

:tinfoilhat:

[greenman3610]

4. corn ethanol is biofuel 1.0

and will quickly be supplanted by more efficient processes, using
more efficient feedstocks, from miscanthus, to natural prairie grasses, or
hybrid poplar.
And, no, ethanol is not the answer to replacing gasoline.
It will be a source of liquid fuel for applications that require it.
The internal combustion engine is on the way out.

[hunter]

5. In any situation where ethanol might be valuable as a fuel...

... it will be even more valuable as a chemical feedstock.

You gotta make your plastics out of something, and you can always use electric trains and such to move goods and people.

Ethanol --> Ethylene --> Polyethylene

Burning ethanol as a fuel doesn't make any sense, even more so when oil and natural gas are too expensive to use as general purpose fuels.

The economic limitations are such that in most scenarios the price of ethanol can't fall below the price of petroleum or natural gas.

So far as farm machinery goes, it seems much more likely that oil crops or DME will become the fuel of choice as oil prices rise.

Spark ignited internal combustion engines are pretty dependent upon cheap petroleum and natural gas. When the cheap oil and natural gas are gone they simply won't be economical.

[GliderGuider]

7. So long as the subsidies remain in place there will be no incentive to move away from corn.

Cellulosic processes (even gasification) are currently more expensive than fermentation, and there is no "switchgrass lobby" to secure subsidies for that form of production. Biofuel supporters imagine a brave new world of technology and innovation to overcome this, but the continued presence of corn subsidies substantially dims the prospects for that glorious transition.

One other elephant in the ethanol room is that the removal of significant amounts of cellulosic material from the growing land amounts to strip-mining it. Even low-impact crops such as switchgrass will exhibit declining yields over time unless fertilizers are applied. Others ave suggested that this problem can be avoided by partial mowing of the grass, but of course that reduces the yield, dropping the process back toward the niche status it was intended to get ethanol out of in the first place.

[GliderGuider]

8. Duplicate reply

*

[Dogmudgeon]

6. They'll be damning Mark Jacobson as a "bug scientist" soon

--p!

[GliderGuider]

9. Because he bugs them?

:+

[poopfuel]

10. from David Blume at permaculture.com, busting the myths

The Recent Stanford Ozone Study


Recent reports of a study out of Stanford University made big
national headlines damning alcohol fuel. The study claimed that if
high blends of alcohol, for instance E-85, were adopted by 100% of
U.S. cars by 2020, deaths related to ozone and formaldehyde emissions
from cars would increase by 200 people per year. The way the press
reported the article, you would think that this was a major
condemnation of alcohol.

NO TESTING OF ANY KIND WAS DONE TO DETERMINE THE AMOUNT
OF OZONE EMISSIONS FROM E-85. This was entirely a study based on
computer modeling done by one guy, and his methodology is not
standard, nor adopted by anyone else. Trying to model atmospheric
emissions of 100% of the auto fleet 13 years in the future is like
trying to tell you what the weather will be like in 13 years. It far
exceeds the state-of-the-art of atmospheric modeling.
Even so, the increase he models is very, very, very
small. He doesn’t state what the measurement error is—and so it is
probable that his result is so small as to be indistinguishable from
measurement error. The USEPA is looking into the study, and the
unconfirmed report at this time is that there are basic flaws in the
modeling (read: the math) that, if confirmed, would fully undermine
or even reverse the so-called conclusion. Fat chance of that making
headlines, though.
The big three emissions of carbon monoxide,
hydrocarbons, and nitrous oxides are all dramatically reduced in E-85
and pretty much fully disappear in E-100, which is just as likely a
2020 scenario as E-85.
Although E-85 aldehyde emissions may have a higher
percentage of automobile hydrocarbons in some cases, these are
considered far less dangerous than the benzene and butadiene
emissions from gasoline in both potency (health danger) and
reactivity (ozone formation and indirect health effects), as verified
by California Air Resources Board and the EPA. E-85 dramatically
reduces the emissions of these chemicals.
Even if the Stanford ozone calculation turns out to be a
correct conclusion, the massive reduction in the other toxic
emissions will save thousands of times the lives in both respiratory
and cancer deaths. E-85 is estimated by USEPA and CARB (in Winebrake,
et al., 2001) to reduce overall cancer risk over gasoline alone by
40%! These are truly big numbers. With E-100, the risks nearly
evaporate.
The American Lung Association fully supports E-85 as a
way to reduce the health problems of auto emissions, and I think that
says it all.

[jpak]

11. The assumption that E85 will replace all US gasoline by 2020 is seriously in error

If the *entire* US corn crop was devoted to ethanol production, it could replace only 19% of *current* US gasoline demand.

Replacing all US gasoline demand with E85 is biologically impossible.

But don't tell that to the biofuels haters...

[GliderGuider]

12. More people than that objected.

Jacobsen published a full response to three of the formal objections he received. You can read it here (PDF). It's a rather robust defense.

He gored a lot of oxen with that paper. It doesn't surprise me that there are screams of outrage.