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EV WORLD EXCLUSIVE ARTICLE |
While turning corn starch into ethanol is a well-understood process that the author sees as playing an important role in a sustainable transportation future, he writes that electricity, not biofuels, will be the primary energy source for an oil-free, green mobility system.
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David Morris makes the case for this increasingly contentious biofuel.
Open Access Article Originally Published: June 13, 2007
Working Assets is my long-distance phone company. I love it dearly for its combination of business efficiency, social responsibility and progressive politics.
Each month, my phone bill carries alerts that urge me to take action on a specific issue or two. Recent Citizen Actions suggest the gravity of the issues chosen: "Save Our Constitution," "Impeach Dick Cheney," "Close Guantanamo."
This month Working Assets urged me to "Say No to Ethanol."
How did the use of ethanol end up alongside tyranny and torture as an evil to be conquered?
A couple of years ago, I was waiting my turn to speak to a well-attended California conference on alternative fuels. For this gathering, alternative fuels included natural gas, clean diesel, fossil fueled derived hydrogen, coal-fired electricity, as well as wind energy and biofuels. The leadoff speaker, from the California Energy Commission, spoke warmly about all the alternative fuels under discussion. Except one. When it came to ethanol, he visualized his perspective with the metaphor of a giant hypodermic needle from Midwest corn farmers to California drivers. For him and, I suspect, most of California's state government, ethanol belongs in the same category as heroin.
In the late 1990s, the nation discovered that MTBE, a widely used gasoline additive made of natural gas and petroleum-derived isobutylene was polluting ground water. The environmental community largely defended its continued use and vigorously opposed substituting ethanol. One well-respected New England environmental coalition raised the possibility that ethanol blends could cause fetal alcohol syndrome. Fill up your gas tank with 10 percent ethanol and your baby could be alcoholic, their report warned.
In the last few years, the environmental position has shifted from an attack on ethanol from any source to an attack on corn and corn-derived ethanol. The assault on corn comes from so many directions that sometimes the arguments are wildly contradictory. In an article published in the New York Times Magazine earlier this year Michael Pollan, an excellent and insightful writer, argues that cheap corn is the key to the epidemic of obesity. The same month, Foreign Affairs published an article by two distinguished university professors who argued that the use of ethanol has led to a runup in corn prices that threatens to sentence millions more to starvation.
Ethanol is not a perfect fuel. Corn is far from a perfect fuel crop. We should debate their imperfections. But we should also keep in mind the first law of ecology. "There is no such thing as a free lunch." Tapping into any energy source involves tradeoffs.
Yet when it comes to ethanol, and corn, we accept no tradeoffs. In 30 years in the business of alternative energy, I've never encountered the level of animosity generated by ethanol, not even in the debate about nuclear power. When it comes to ethanol, we seem to apply a different standard than we do when we evaluate other fuels.
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Reader Comments
14 comments so far...
19-Jun-2007
56777
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Good article!
I see far too many environmentalists continuing to burn gasoline as though it is a solution to our transportation needs.
Most of the problems people assign to ethanol (soil loss, etc) are really problems with the way we grow corn. You may notice that we have been growing prodigous amounts of corn far before we started making all the ethanol we make today. If we stopped making >any< ethanol, we'd still be growing huge amounts of corn for meat and soft drink sweeteners.
We must put our attention on sustainable farming practices. All of the editorial energy directed against ethanol will do nothing to stop soil loss, over fertilizing, etc. Let's work on our real problems. Here are two:
Over dependence on foreign oil (we need to conserve and look for transporation substitutions).
Sustainable farming (85% of Iowa's farmland is "cash rented"). Do we think renters take as good a care of property as owners?
Posted by: Marc Franke
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20-Jun-2007
56793
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Sorry guys, but fuel is a fuel is a fuel. We already have a situation where we are at the mercy of Big Oil and it's supporters. A fuel, be it Bio-Diesel, Ethenol or Hydrogen will still require refineries, storage facilities, transportation and infrastructure (ie "gas stations") which you will be expected to pay for. This is one reason why it's so popular with the R&D boys at Shell & Texico. Not bad if my clean burning Bio-fuel is going to be plentifull and cheap. We know that this will not be the case. Oil is a commodity sold on the commodity markets at what ever price investors demand(a little more complicated then this, but you get the picture). This cost is passed on to us, the consumer. I understand it's "nothing personal, it's just business" but right now we only have two choices... you drive and pay or you walk. Electric vehicles will give me one more choice... get it off the grid and pay or off my wind generator and solar panels for a lot less money. My choice.
Posted by: Richard Bergeron
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15-Jun-2007
56683
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IMO the only way to prove this is to remove all subsidies and start a fossil CO2 tax and a payout for removal of atmospheric CO2 and see what arises. It seems to me that there are cheaper ways to achieve co2 balance but with all the subsidies it is impossible to tell.
Posted by: jw ogden
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15-Jun-2007
56683
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IMO the only way to prove this is to remove all subsidies and start a fossil CO2 tax and a payout for removal of atmospheric CO2 and see what arises. It seems to me that there are cheaper ways to achieve co2 balance but with all the subsidies it is impossible to tell.
Posted by: jw ogden
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15-Jun-2007
56684
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I agree with the author, however I think he should emphasize that Corn and Ethanol are two very different issues. Corn is but one of a dozen possible feedstocks for making Ethanol.
Posted by: dursun sakarya
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16-Jun-2007
56716
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Great article with an interesting group of facts, and I'd like to add a few more. Ethanol is an alcohol. Ask any beer drinker and they should tell you that alcohol can be produced by adding four ingredients together one of which is yeast (a bug), an animal to a vegetable with enough fermentable sugars to get the job done. Yeast has a primary life support mechanism which uses oxygen and a secondary life support mechanism which uses the fermentable sugar. Cut off the yeast oxygen supply and they go into secondary mode. Yeast consumes the sugar and produces alcohol and a by product called CO2. In the process of our scientific research, Biotechnology emerged to discover the hows and whys of fermentation and this occurs in a Bio reactor (laboratory speak). Inside the bio reactor scientist and researchers can change various conditions, elements and ingredients to prove or disprove theories. At this time we know that making beer produces a fine libation and CO2 as a byproduct during fermentation and bottling for carbonation. We are learning that by manipulationg the DNA of the yeast (or any other animal cell that consumes the media) we can force it to produce or express specific proteins. This means that we can create a bug that will produce higher levels of alcohol that will burn cleaner, travel well and have a shelf life longer than what we currently have. Good stuff if you are sitting around drinking and talking about technology. We still have the problem of carbon dioxide, a known greenhouse gas in the equation of producing a alternative bio fuel that when burned emits CO2 as a harmful emission to the environment. The law of conservation of matter never sleeps.
Posted by: Jim
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17-Jun-2007
56737
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I have several questions with your article.
1. For starters, did u account for the fact that ethanol has a lower energy density than gasoline or did u just use national oil consupmtion figures. If u just used just use national oil consupmtion figures u need to recheck figures.
2.Did Pimentel and his collaborator, Tad Patzek account for the energetics of biodiesel made from algae or just biodiesel made from soybeans. For biodiesel made from algae neeeds less land than most other biofuels and this land could be in deserts or marginal land using brackish water or sea water instead of fresh water used by most crops including corn which needs 2500 gallons of fresh water to make 1 gallon of ethanol(this is just for corn and is not considering the ethanol plant). On top of that biodiesel has an energy density near that of gasoline and could bee transported using current infrastructure. But i do like your idea of a biofuel phev.
Posted by: RJ Chint
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22-Jun-2007
56820
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In the 1930's the Ford Motor Company saw a future in biomass fuels. Ford operated a successful biomass conversion plant at their Iron Mountain facility in Michigan, which included 12 acres of industrial hemp fields cultivated for research and development. Ford engineers extracted methanol, charcoal fuel, tar, pitch, ethyl-acetate and creosote through a process called pyrolysis.
Industrial hemp does not contribute to the greenhouse effect and is a renewable living resource. The growing plants absorb as much CO2 as will later be released when oil or other plant matter is burnt. Unlike fossil fuels, (oil, coal, gas), or nuclear fuels, hemp has provided us with raw materials for thousands of years, without ever changing our climate and without producing waste that remains radioactive for millions of years.
It was the large multinationals who helped ban industrial hemp decades ago, and it's the large multinationals who are still ensuring that natural alternatives to their products are being sidelined even in this time of environmental chaos. Look at how many trees we could save by investing in a global hemp paper industry. Look at its potential to contribute to natural ethanol (ethyl alcohol), yet we're lagging behind countries such as Brazil that are making great strides in creating fuel from domestic products.
The true power of industrial hemp will only be unlocked when we're able to use it to challenge large-scale, environmentally-damaging industries, and this isn't happening yet. As hemp once posed a threat to certain investors, so it does again today - for which reason some would rather leave the issue of hemp alone. With such a valuable commodity, (probably the only biomass resource capable of making America energy independent), many positive changes could be put in place from which we could all benefit. The battle to get this recognized still needs to be fought.
See: Hemp 4 Fuel
Posted by: EV Rider
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23-Jun-2007
56831
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Ethanol is the natural fuel. Enzymatic conversion of agricultural waste is the natural way ahead.
However, we need to seek out a catalyst that will enable C-C bond scission <<100C so that it can be used directly in a fuel cell - a tall order, indeed. We are a very long way away from achieving that, especially as present DMFCs are hardly making sliced bread obsolete! 0.3V per cell is unacceptable. Even 1.1V/cell will hardly do. Burning or reforming the stuff is even less attractive. Cyclic furans, advocated this week, fills me with horror - haven't they read the toxicology?
On the other hand, every engineer knows that man-on-bicycle achieves peak efficiency of any machine at ~50%, so feeding men corn looks like the best option!
Posted by: Hr Sage
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13-Jun-2007
56641
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Lets get back to industrial hemp production .Corn is for animal feed stock and is a poor fiber for fuel stock . Look at your grocery bill and tell me we need more food fiber fuel ! ADM instrumented this corn fuel bill to line their pockets with dough and lots of biofuel is diverted to Europe after the subsidies are taken by corporations in the US . This is just one of the shell games by the corporations and their politicains .If the politicains continue to have it their way this planet will last about as long as Monica Lewensky's love life .
Posted by: John Hurt
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13-Jun-2007
56646
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Well, John, whatever the outcome of the great corn debate, we might correctly assume that in consideration of Monica's peculiar talent, she shall not want for that thing we coyly refer to as amorous attention, aka "love life".
Posted by: David Park
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05-Dec-2007
59478
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Arable land must be for human food. Bad enough we waste 25 acres to feed one cow. Now we grow food and burn it up?! Preposterous. Agreed, this is a corporate shell game.
Posted by: L. Slyfield
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31-Dec-2007
59771
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Progress can be made if all the following conditions are met:
1) Application of an ever-increasing import duty on foreign oil.
2) Adaptation of the duty on imported bioethanol to a level that bring equivalence of cost between local and foreign production.
3) Introduction of a special national security adjustment duty on imported bioethanol to allow the government to steer the ratio between local and imported bioethanol to the desired level (25-35 % imports).
4) Hybridization of the vehicles in flex-fuel bioethanol plug-in vehicles.
5) Bioethanol mandate enforcement and extension to ever-increasing concentrations in the gas.
6) Introduction of a CO2 tax to rule out coal electricity in favor of non-fossil sources.
7) Assistance to cellulosic bioethanol development.
Posted by: Patrick Leonard
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11-Sep-2007
58241
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Richard,
You can produce your own electricity, but not your own bio-diesel? Strange, I have friends who can do both. I understand you prefer electricity, but try to make a cogent argument, rather than just scare people about Big Oil. The fact is even if EVs take over the world, most of the electricity will be generated from Big Utility.
Posted by: Steve M
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