Posted on Friday, August 11, 2006 - 3:11 pm:

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Current research prepared by Argonne National Laboratory (a U.S. Department of Energy Laboratory), indicates a 38% gain in the overall energy input/output equation for the corn-to-ethanol process. That is, if 100 BTUs of energy is used to plant corn, harvest the crop, transport it, etc., 138 BTUs of energy is available in the fuel ethanol. Corn yields and processing technologies have improved significantly over the past 20 years and they continue to do so, making ethanol production less and less energy intensive.

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Posted on Friday, August 11, 2006 - 6:14 pm:

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E85 vehicles don't cost any more than regular vehicles. E85 is more expensive than Regular gasoline and your car will get fewer miles per gallon when it runs E85.

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Posted on Friday, August 11, 2006 - 6:25 pm:

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There Is No Ethanol Revolution in Brazil

by Andre Kenji de Sousa

Most ethanol apologists like to use the example of Brazil. Unfortunately, I live in Brazil and I see no ethanol revolution here. In fact, the heavily subsidized ethanol program (Pro-Alcool) used to be an ecological and social disaster. From 1975 to 1989, the Brazilian government spent nine billion dollars in subsidies for ethanol production (and that's not counting special loans, that were never paid, from state-owned banks): Nine billion dollars in a country like Brazil (where one can buy a can of soda for less than fifty cents of a dollar) is a pornographic amount of money.

Large areas of land were wasted for monoculture (some people complain one of the most fertile lands of the country, in the Ribeirão Preto region, is being degraded by sugar cane monoculture), semi-slave (and child) labor were heavily used. Nasty environmental problems were only surpassed in the 1990's, like the pollution of rivers by vinhoto (produced in ethanol refining) and crop burning (until the mechanization of the crops, that technique were used to cut sugarcane). C'mon, greens and progressives: that's not such a good thing to defend.

I don't remember anyone that owned an ethanol-fueled car besides my father. And he used to complain a lot about it. He complained that he had difficulties to ignite the car in cold days (and a cold day in Brazil is warmer than a summer day in most cities of the United States). Only when there were created flexible-fuel vehicles (allowing people to run cars both on gasoline and ethanol) that the Brazilian consumer began to see ethanol as a compelling alternative. In 1997, only 1,117 cars running on ethanol were produced in the whole country, in 2000 almost zero! No one wants to rely only on ethanol.

The so-called "Brazilian energy independence" should be explained. Brazilian hydrography allows the construction of heavy dams, so the country doesn't have to burn coal or fuel to produce most of its electricity (but, some years ago, the country faced a heavy electricity shortage. And no one guarantees that we are free from that). Brazil has also good reserves of oil. The oil and gasoline production in the country is monopolized by Petrobras, the local version of Pemex and PDVSA, the state-owned company that is hated by Brazilian conservatives and free-market proponents. It's because of a federal law that Brazilian gasoline has 20 to 25% of ethanol. And gasoline in Brazil is very expensive (neighboring Argentina has a more affordable gasoline price – some Brazilian car owners even drives twenty miles to fuel there!), especially considering that there are no heavy taxes to maintain highways (like most Europeans countries do). And natural gas also does a good job (especially because we don't need natural gas for home heating).

Even if ethanol were really successful in Brazil, that's not the best example. First, Brazilian consumption of energy is far smaller than in the US. Few Brazilians uses air conditioning (and most of them use that only in some rooms of their homes), even fewer use home heating (and that's among the middle and higher class). Some tourist guides even recommend Brazilians to take care to take blouses due to air conditioning in Florida. Brazilians also have a smaller dependence on cars: most poor people don't drive, and even rich people don't use it in the way that Americans are accustomed to (no one drives everyday fifty miles to work). Second, conditions are much more favorable for agriculture in Brazil than in the United States (as orange producers in Florida are tired to know). The minimum wage of Brazil is something like one hundred dollars (and most farmers do not pay that to their workers), there are not such cold winters like most of the US has, the soil is more fertile, there is more land available. And the American ethanol program is even worse than the Brazilian one, since corn ethanol is far more ineffective than the sugar cane one.

Earlier this year, Brazil faced a heavy problem: since there were rising sugar prices in the international market, most producers decided to produce sugar instead of ethanol. Without federal government intervention, we could have faced shortage of the product. Most of the ethanol apologists like Mark Steyn and Thomas Friedman like to point out the solution to simply import ethanol from Brazil, but if the Americans begin to do that, then ethanol would have unaffordable prices compared to gasoline. Or, sure, I would find no sugar to put in my coffee. Maybe that could be the perfect solution for all these people complaining about obesity, eh?

Some Brazilians tends to mix in national pride when they talk about ethanol. It's the same thing than trying to discuss the rationale of American military interventions with an American. It's easier to discuss soccer with Brazilians than to discuss ethanol. An interesting and cheap solution that I see in Brazil is natural gas, not ethanol, to fuel cars. But we don't have to spend natural gas in home heating.

Ethanol apologists shouldn't be talking about "Brazilian ethanol success" because there is no such success. And learn that these kinds of decisions should be made by the market, no by the government.

August 9, 2006

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ori g7/desousa1.html

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Posted on Friday, August 11, 2006 - 6:27 pm:

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Ethanol Eco-Disaster
by Bill Walker

(Fade in) The delicate, fainting environment is in distress; it can’t pay its fuel bill. Heroic Merry Men of the IRS carrying MP5s and wearing green tights hold up the sneering, selfish, unworthy middle class. They give the looted bank accounts to the noble corn-ethanol producers. The chairman of Archer Daniels Midland rides off into the beautiful sunset on his yacht, waving his stock options. (The Happy Ending)

The Math-based Version

Let’s take the very rosiest assumptions for corn ethanol, from the paid PR flacks who lobby for the subsidy. They claim that it takes 35,000 BTUs of energy to make 77,000 BTUs of ethanol from corn. No one else gets a ratio anywhere near that good; some calculations show that corn ethanol actually costs energy to make (and fuel ethanol only has 76,100 BTU per gallon according to the EPA). But even this most unrealistic case assumes that about half the energy in a gallon of subsidized ethanol has to come from somewhere else. For comparison, it takes around 22,000 BTU to make a gallon of gasoline. Gasoline contains about 114,000 BTU per gallon, so there’s a clear energy profit.

Looking at market price instead of BTUs, on June 6 wholesale cost for ethanol was around $2.67 per gallon, vs. 2.09 for gasoline. This isn’t counting the cost of the subsidies; even cheating, corn ethanol still isn’t as good as gasoline. And mixing the ethanol in to make gasohol adds further refining costs.

So, the ethanol programs force us to pay more per gallon for a diluting fuel additive that gives only 2/3 the miles per gallon. This means more gas station stops, more wasted time and gas. And the ecological effect of each fuel?

Oil-based gasoline comes from very small drill holes in deserts, tundra, and sea bottoms. US ethanol is made from corn, grown in large dusty monoculture fields that must be covered with pesticides and herbicides. Ethanol programs subsidize soil destruction, deforestation, habitat destruction, and bunny-killing.

All so-called "biofuels" are a step backward ecologically. The US has reforested; 59% of the northeastern US is now forest. The eastern US has more forested acres now than in the mid-1800s. This reforestation is due to our replacement of biofuels with higher-tech oil, gas, and nuclear power. If we allow the market to improve our technology, eventually we would only use "biofuel" for grilling our salmon.

Not too many people are in favor of cutting down forests, polluting streams, and exterminating wildlife for money-losing programs that make us all worse off. So why has welfare for corporate moonshiners lasted since 1980? Some say that it is because these programs transfer billions to a few powerful people, while inflicting only a few hundred or perhaps a thousand dollars in damage on each American. Thus the concentrated interest has incentive for rent-seeking campaign contributions, while the burden on the average worker is lost among all the other taxes and government-sponsored cartel and monopoly exactions.

But there is also another ecological factor here: infosphere pollution. Those who benefit from multi-billion-dollar subsidies will spend tens of millions to spew polluting memes into the media. Thus, false science and economic fallacies fill up our hard drives and our minds, outcompeting the unsubsidized species.

According to the Environmental Working Group (a generally pro-ethanol group), corn subsidies alone were at least 41.9 billion from 1995–2004. The EWG points out that US politicians (including Hillary) have only supported expensive subsidized ethanol; overseas ethanol from more-efficient sugar cane production is kept out by tariffs. (So don’t write me that someone in Brazil has a great ethanol production company. I’m sure they do, but you can’t buy from them!)

Of course corn isn’t the only thing subsidized. From the evil-stained pages of the Fedronomicon, here’s the 2007 Department of Agriculture budget. Note that under the rigid fiscal restraint of the Republican "Contract With America," the budgetary authority for this one agency in FY 2007 is $96.4 billion. Those interests trying to capture this money will spend a lot to misinform the public.

Can we overcome infosphere pollution? Or are we doomed to pay for the destruction of our own environment, because the majority of media is produced specifically to confuse us into supporting parasitic special interests? Find out in the next exciting episode!

July 24, 2006

http://www.lewrockwell.com/wal ker/walker23.html

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Posted on Friday, August 11, 2006 - 6:33 pm:

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Actually, E85 is cheaper (per gallon) than regular gasoline.

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Posted on Friday, August 11, 2006 - 8:14 pm:

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mikeg: if the subsidy is 51 cents per gallon of ethanol, and e85 is 15% ethanol - the ethanol subsidy of e85 is 7.65 cents per gallon...

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Posted on Friday, August 11, 2006 - 11:03 pm:

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Like I stated earlier the Sunoco on West 8 Mile in Detroit is selling E85 at 10 cents cheaper then 87 octaine unleaded.

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Posted on Saturday, August 12, 2006 - 6:06 am:

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There are only 4 or 5 E85 Gas stations in the entire Metro area. Your car will be extinct before a majority of Gas stations sell E85.

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