Here's all the pros and cons being found. But I BEG you to go to these links. According to a lot of research; A new study published in the journal Science concluded that burning of oil-based energy products combined with the planting of additional forests would be better for the environment than increasing the manufacture and use of biofuels such as ethanol.

http://www.ecotality.com/blog/2007/ethanol-is-bad-for-you/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/17/climatechange.energy

Why is ethanol so popular?
1. Talking about ethanol is good politics,
2, Ethanol can, to some extent, replace gasoline.
3. Talking ethanol means you're not talking about energy concepts people don't like to hear about, like nuclear power, rolling blackouts, or mandatory low-powered electric cars
4. It means talking about a fuel that comes from corn, so voters get that warm fuzzy feeling they don't get from petroleum products.
5, People like ethanol because it comes from the good ol' USA, so we can reduce our dependence on people who hate us.
6. It's natural
7. It doesn't kill property values like giant windmill farms or nuclear power stations.
8. Rural people like ethanol because it means more money, in sales or subsidies, for farmers
9. Urban people like it because ethanol burns cleaner than gasoline and nobody likes a smog alert.

Sounds like a lot of great things going for ethanol. Unfortuantely, they don't tell you the whole story. And this isn't one of those times where there's 10 positives and 5 negatives so it's a good deal. You have to look at the serverity.

1. Ethanol's not as efficient a fuel as gasoline. In fact, it takes a gallon and a half of ethanol to give you the same energy as a gallon of gas.
2. To magically convert from the country using 174 millions of gasoline a day; it would require 261 million gallons of ethanol a day.
3, It would require 320 million acres of land to grow compared to the 85 million acres of corn being grown currently.
4. Corn growers in the U.S. use about 137 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre, about a pound per acre of atrazine, the most popular herbicide. And let's not forget all the fresh water for irrigation.
5. Going to all ethanol or even 85% across the board; Americans would need to use almost 13 million tons more fertilizer, and dump more than 93.5 million tons of atrazine into the environment every year. (You DON'T want to know what atrazine can do to your health - look it up)l
6. While "Cleaner burning than gasoline", the EPA discovered that in the process of making ethanol that factories converting corn to ethanol were releasing carbon monoxide, methanol, and some carcinogens — formaldehyde and acetic acid, to name a couple — into the atmosphere in much greater amounts than anyone expected. (There's no proof that they've got this totally fixed. The companies paid their fines and promised to put filters in. Within a certain period of time). But what about other countries? Some countries like Mexico use DDT as a pesticide. The USA has banned it. Do you think they will also be so clean about making ethanol?
7. Finally; it takes more fossil fuel to produce ethanol than ethanol is supposedly saving.


So, believe what you want. Ethanol is no magical savior. And because it doesn't really help you save gasoline usage anyway, that is why you don't hear a lot of the oil companies complaining about it. It popular because it's political. It gives subsidies to the farmers; MEGA credits to ADM and other ethanol producers; and it makes people "FEEL GOOD". Believe what you want or learn the truth.

 

Christcorp, most of your points are bogus or at best very inaccurate. Many of them are oil company propaganda.

Go to FTE's alternative fuels forum and do some reading there.

 

well the time article made an interesting point. They said that the majority of the subsidys for farming went too the south not the midwest. How true this is I dont know but Time is a pretty respected magazine that seems too report facts not opinion. The govt doesnt take money out of my hands for anything unless they over pay me. The farmers that were interviewed agree'd that they like the ethanol because they made more money growing corn. Heck who wouldnt ride that gravy train. As a small business owner would you turn down customers with money in hand. farmers win from this in a couple of different ways. higher crop prices, reduced fuel cost's if they use it in there farm trucks and equipment, and reduced cost animal feed. These subsidies also pay for these farmers crop insurance as well I'm sure. If you open a small business and it fails its due to something that you had a chance on changing. A farmer has a bad yr due to floods, hail, tornadoes, drought or any other natrual disaster and they stand a good chance of loosing everything. I feel there should be a subsidy refore that would pay these out to smaller farms that are family owned instead of huge corporations. when this country was founded 9 out of 10 citizens where farmers. in the mid 1800's one in five. today one out of 150 are farmers. your talking about a small minority of this nation that has a huge responsiblity too feed not only our country but the majority of the world.

 

What exactly is inaccurate? Please list them, and tell us why.

ROFL.

 

That's what insurance is for.

It all comes down to efficiency. Do most of us want to go back to farming? I don't think so.

 

1. Talking about corn brings up pork barrel accusations, why would they want to encourage that? Is talking about diesel worse? It sounds like your saying that even using corn, even when it is cheap can cost more per mile than gasoline, is more politically beneficial than discussing the envrionmental benefits that switching to biodiesel would have on the trucking industry.
This phenomenon is probably more related to talking about gasoline price solutions. Theoretically corn ethanol is not nearly as subjective to Oil supply as Gasoline is. Plus it is patriotic. American Corn vs Arab Oil.
2. That is not the issue. But ethanol is a gasoline alternative, which is worth mentioning since it can be used in FFV.
3. This is actually good because they are(or look like they are) finding solutions instead of fighting over past problems over and over again.
4. I don't know if you get a warm fuzzy feeling over burning dead dinos vs burning corn because corn is a food source in many cases. This would appear to be a more moral and personal issue than what we are discussing. If a good feeling is the only benefit than the whole deal is a sham. Piece of mind is worth something though and ignorance about doing a good thing is still better than knowing the best/right choice and doing the opposite. This atleast shows some moral capability.
5, This comes down to a belief of us vs them American made corn vs Arab produced oil. This could either be racism, patriotism, OR simply national pride. Economics will likely eliminate most of those reasons but the most stubborn extremists before too long. Even if something as drastic as, ethanol is "percieved" as being the same price as gasoline per mile, is true without regard to vehicle's fuel requirements, wouldn't the average american buy american made ethanol?
6. It is alcohol after all is said and done.
7. Yeah farm land might become more expensive in the corn belt due to the demand of ethanol. But that is directly relative to vehicle fuel demand.
8. Farming is low profit yet somehow farmers have a profound impact on this country to this day. Increasing farmer's profits by increasing demand of their crops also costs rural people as their property tax can only rise as property value rise with demand of agricultural land. I posted a link about this, the effect of ethanol plants themselves has been measured and somewhere there is a study on the national effect of ethanol.
9. This is by no means wrong and studies support the C02 reduction by using ethanol vs gasoline.. I think 18%-28% decreases in C02 was the figure presented most frequently.

So far it appears that these facts normalize your "positive" scores. But as for "negatives" we see here.

1. True and False. Ethanols has 3/4 of the HEAT content as gasoline. Noone can doubt that gasoline burns out more total heat. Ethanol is better because it burns cooler and therefore engines can be designed to take in more air to fuel ratios. In the end it can produce similar distance per gallon for pure ethanol engines. But I have not seen a study quantifieing that number. Hints here and there suggest it is greater then 90% of gasoline's fuel mileage but less than 100%. It is also unknown if ethanol engines lose reliability because they are higher compression, some have compared ethanol's corrosive traits to gasoline's oiling traits. But fuel ethanol is always denautured with 2-5% gasoline and so has some oiling property.
2. False. Your numbers are wrong because of the simple fact that if we had ethanol powered cars for as long as we've had gasoline powered cars we would have vehicles as efficient as we have for gasoline. And we would still have a problem with supplying vehicle fuel in the near future with a growing population and rapidly decreasing farmland. At least based on assessments made by ethanol proponents that ethanol would not supply the nation's fuel.
3. False. My estimates show that it would take 10% more gallons of ethanol but corn only produces 367(est) gallons of ethanol per acre. That would mean closer to 544 million acres at 200 billion gallons of ethanol per year. (NoteL My numbers are worse than yours!? Did you calculate for less than 190 billion gallons of gasoline a year and only account for using E85!?)
4. That is indirectly related to ethanol as a fuel. If our demand for ethanol requires more farm land to be used, that would go back to the environment vs farming productivity debate. That is still ongoing unless I am mistaken. The effects were still controversial back when I watched the corn markets.
5. Yes, maybe. But 13 million tons is 0.065% of the gross weight of 200billion gallons of ethanol and 97 million tons is 0.97%. There needs to be more information available before this could be considered a problem. Based on the fact, I've never heard of either chemicals and I followed corn for years. But please provide some background sources for your information on directly produced waste chemicals and their effects in that quantity.
6. This was an earlier defect caused by the lower engine temps. I know what you're talking about but "everything is designed to the catlyctic converters" these days so this problem has been fixed by now.
7. Maybe so. Ethanol still decreases net gasoline consumption despite converting less efficiently.

The question still remains unasked and unanswered whether it would be economical to produce ethanol using biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel as the only fuel source.

Formaldehyde and acetic acid are the two main carcinogens produced by burning ethanol. The mostly famous study by a Mark Z. Jacobson, showing increasing national deathrates with E85 vs gasoline showed an increase of 120 deaths or a 4% increase. Statistically speaking, that's the only death related effect attibuted to ethanol or E85. It is inconsequential compared to the net decrease in carbon emissions. Or is reduction of carbon simply not enough? Corn is carbon neutral in most scenarios. It is the equivilent of planting many small trees! The problem comes in the actual farming and plant production, the latter can be greatly improved with time, experience, and research.

Ethanol does show a large decrease in net oil consumption and air pollution even used in the inefficient FFVs that lose 30% fuel mileage(requiring 30% more fuel to be burned to go the same distance). If ethanol fits into the corn industry instead of becoming the national fuel and therefore eating up farm land from other crops for fuel, it could be beneficial. But besides butanol, hydrogen, and drilling for more oil, this is pushed as the best alternative and rightly so.

(Worthy of note is my complete lack of sources because most of your argument was rheotoric. Also epa.gov lists the 2000 FFV Ford Taurus as taking 33% more E85 per mile compared to gasoline. Yet it reduces petrolium consumption by 69% and reduces C02 emissions by 19.5%. You should already know about Jacobson's "Effects of Ethanol" www.stanford.edu/group/<wbr>efmh/jacobson/E85PaperEST0207.pdf .Ethanol powered engines have only been rumored to get 90%-100% of the fuel mileage but there is a great lack in easy to find info on this. And that should clear up any sourced information. Please expose any errors in rheotoric so that they can be arrested and reeducated. Also worthy of note: I love this, good stuff.)

 

So.... do you have a vested economic interest in ethanol production?

 

I've had interest in it but I don't and I've never had any monetary or financial investement in any ethanol related industry. If that's what you mean.

I'm from California, and I recently used to live in Southern Indiana and now I live in Henderson Ky, and if I ended up living either in 4-6 years I might. There's never been a whole lot I could afford to invest in, being a full time student and high school before that. I do have a profound interest in corn growing, as a hobby, and have been dehybridizing a store bought packet of corn seeds since 2003(4 years). It was corn that got me really into more indepth farming related material. Between that and my need to cut my budget as much as possible, I only have a time and education investment. Most recently I've invested alot of time and energy into alternative fuels. I've looked at E85, compressed natural gas, electricity, hydrogen, and I did look at a few stories about liquid coal. Fuel is my largest adjustable expense right now, school is actually producing temporary income and I'm not paying for anything else. Most of my fuel is paid by our yarnshop to feed our sheep, llama, alpaca, and dog in So IN. But my commute to school is only 30 miles round trip and I'm driving 70 miles per day. Like I said fuel is the biggest expense I have a direct impact on as far as our family budget goes. I live at home and the budget was always negative before I started school. They can't afford anything above normal expenses so I have to cut any "discretionary" (I guess it would be called) spending I can. After graduation I hope to not only pay for any of my college expensives above my grant but to cover my parent's negative income balance since they've so graciously allowed me to stay home through college. (We made it through the first 19 years together, but the next 45 months are still undecided .)

I will add I spent one month, one summer 4 years ago working on seed corn for a Dupont Chemical company. If that is enough details I will say this. I'm here for the information to use the resource to make more money to take home or even join the industry at a later date because of the facts. Not because of the money it'll make me to propogate this product.

 

farmers insurance is high and efficency cost's money to obtain the equipment necessary to be efficent. Farmers are very efficent.

 

On the plus side list, #5 is accurate, the rest is conjucture.

On the negative side list, #1, 2, and 3 are inaccurate. #4, 5, and 6 all assume that corn is the only source for ethanol. And #1 through #7 are oil company propaganda.

And as for your scorn of FTE's alternative fuels, I didn't say that it has 100% accurate information, but there is more GOOD information than there is in this thread. So laugh if you like, but be careful you don't make a fool of yourself.

Corn is being used to make alcohol fuels NOW. Good for those who are doing it, at least they have gotten the ball rolling. I think that it is universally accepted that corn is far from the best crop for producing the quantity of fuels needed to replace gasoline. We need a lot more R&D in this area and we need to produce the various crops that work best. We can make deals with more tropical countries to produce sugar cane. We can grow sugar cane on our gulf coasts. We can grow massive amounts of switchgrass and sugar beets. But replacing gasoline with alcohol fuels is a goal we should dedicate ourselves to as a nation. This serves our economy in various ways and improves our national security. And the same goes for biodiesel.



Energy independence is a possible and worthwhile goal. We need to build the political will to pursue it.

 

Thats a pretty strong statement there isnt. I really kind off feel offended. I am farmer an feel like that gives farmers a black eye. Gives them a bad rep. Have you ever persoanlly known a farmer or had a realtive that was one. Probably not. To saysomething like that is pretty low in my book. Yes I am sure there are some farmers out there that have bilked the system an made off with tons off goverment money in some form or another. Which gives the rest off us farmers a black eye. But its no different then any other profession it has its share off bad apples. We as farmers pay huge amounts off taxes on real estate. Provide food for the country. Provide economic stimulus for our small towns an businesses. Most farmers are hard working an honest. Im gladly call it my career an my Dad before him an his dad. Yes I have recieved goverment subsidies. Lots off farmers do. Is it right no. Do I like it No. I rather to be self sufficient an not rely on any one for help. But as you no farmers are price takers. Take what the market offers. My theory is food in the grocery stores would be 3 or 4 times higher then it already is without them. I think the goverment likes cheap food for everybody. So thats the theory there. You no farmers are the best sourco off economic stimulus around. They have money an spend it. They go in small businesses an buy there products. Go down to the local Ford dealer an buy there pickups. So any money spent to help agricutlture benefits the local an american econmy in so many ways. Yes a few individuas an corporations have collected way to much goverment subsidies. This is not right. How to fix it I dont no.

Right now the infrastructure is in place to produce ethanol. Corn will be the energy source. Good or bad thats the way it is. We cant change whats going on at present. It would be nce if you guys could take a tour off an ethanol plant to see what actually goes on there on how they operate. They also produce a byproduct called gluton which is fed to cattle to supplement there diet.

All in all right now ethanol is a good thing. It creates less dependance on foreighn oil an has saved the goverment billion off dollars in subsidies normally paid to farmers. But as the result off higher crop prices no price supports are needed. Is it the right answer probabably not but what is. Right now thats all we got.

 

Some may be debatable, but posts here show that #8 is correct, and I'm really surprised that you don't agree with #2. People running (and loving) E85 (because of its cost) is the proof of that.

Those are more or less hard facts, and even the corn growers association says that there is not enough land to replace all gasoline. (I did post thagt link a while ago)

Which happens to be the case currently for most of the fuel ethanol made in the US.

Suggesting to read the forum to the very people who already read it is plain silly.

 

Here's what others have to say about biofuels: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5ggNVY7fTs9PEgUG6Ri7tyDcQQMcQ
when the political aspects (i.e. pork or corporate welfare ) is not present.

 

From the link: European Commission spokesman on energy Ferran Tarradellas Espuny stressed that the study was just a working paper and one of several opinions being taken into consideration as talks continued ahead of Wednesday's decision.

 

We are not getting closer to a meeting of the minds here. Because I am looking at the whole question of alcohol fuel in the US. I am not locked into corn, far from it. I do think that it's good that corn farmers took the initiative and got the ball rolling.

I'm not stuck on ethanol, if some other alcohol works out for the best.

All the ANTI ethanol arguments seem to be directed at corn, which makes them less than comprehensive.

And I don't think it is silly to suggest that someone do some reading in the forum when the evidence suggests that they have not.