GoldEnergy's Comments (41)

“Sorry, but I believe you are misinformed. I followed your first link and it does not debunk anything I've said. In fact, most of that 3 page PDF has been debunked here:

http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2009/05/biofuel-myths.html

Your second link is from Ethanol across America and most of it is also debunked by the above link.”

“You can't call corn ethanol renewable when 70% of its energy is derived from fossil fuels, which are not renewable. Running the numbers I find that a Prius consumes about half as much fossil fuel on a lifecycle basis as the average for the E85 flex fuel car fleet.

You forget to add in the 45 cents per gallon blending subsidy. A 27% mileage drop was reported in the following article titled "The ethanol myth" by Consumer Reports:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/new-cars/news/2006/ethanol-10-06/overview/1006_ethanol_ov1_1.htm

The study by Wang was released almost five years ago. Science is always advancing. His study has been eclipsed by newer studies showing corn ethanol is worse gallon for gallon than gasoline for global warming, water eutrophication, food price disruption, smog formation biodiversity loss and ecosystem destruction. Here are just a few of those studies:

http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/biodiesel/page3.html

I'm a mechanical engineer. Note in the last link you provided that it says " Current flex-fuel engines pay a fuel economy penalty of about 30% compared to gasoline." You on the other hand are claiming only 7-10%. What gives? The engine is an experiment and had not even been fired at the time of the article and the article does not say it will get better gas mileage than a gasoline engine. Ethanol has 2/3 less energy per gallon.”

“Corn ethanol is not economically viable, competes with food, and is also environmentally destructive. The fastest, most ecologically benign, and least expensive way to reduce oil use is to use high efficiency car technology. Ethanol is also a crappy fuel. Better biofuels will eventually arrive. Here is what the real experts think:

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-point-exactly.html”

“Why? use land for food clothing and wood,

Then BioChar it into green energy, fuel and carbon Soil Enhancement.

Waste BioChar can take the ENTIRE output of the land and the sea, let us use it, then reuse it.

We can have our cake and eat it to.

add rooftop solar, and can supply the world energy needs

Forever.

read my profile for details.”

“You still keep evading my point, GoldEnergy: the distillers grain is only the protein in the corn (~30% of the grain by weight), and a bit of fibre. It is not easily digested by non-ruminents (hogs and poultry), which in Iowa, at least, account for almost 3/4 of the corn consumed by livestock. Those animals need the energy in the starch as well as the protein. So by diverting that starch to ethanol drives up the prices of ALL starch-containing grains. You are either living in a fantasy land or trying to deceive people if you think that diverting 2/3 of the corn to ethanol would have no adverse effect on livestock industry and the food it produces.”

“BioChar is far more efficient.

All the corn ethanol made today uses the corn itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_ethanol#Problems_associated_with_corn-derived_ethanol”

“Are you serious? you cannot have the cow eat the corn and still use it for ethanol.

With BioChar BioOil you can.”

“If we put every single square in of cropland in America into ethanol production it would cover only a small fraction of our liquid fuels budget.
Renewable? Only if you leave out all the petroleum it takes to grow it.
Clean burning? We have known for decades how to burn any fuel worth burning cleanly if we want to.
Sustainable? Only to the extent that massive scale petro based monoculture agribusiness is sustainable, which is to say UNSUSTAINABLE.”

“Regarding subsidies to the oil industry, you provide no source for your estimate of $140 billion per year, GoldEnergy, so we can presume you are making up that number as well. $1 per gallon in tax credits to the oil industry? Dream on: they (and all the other direct subsidies and tax benefits) amount to less than $0.10 per gallon. See "Big Oil, Bigger Giveaways", at www.foe.org/pdf/FoE_Oil_Giveaway_Analysis_2008.pdf

Like a lot of people who write on this subject, you are clearly obsessed with gasoline. You forget that the subsidies to oil are mainly upstream, and therefore the propper denominator is consumption of ALL petroleum products, which is around 300 billion gallons/year.

Even if one includes the cost of protecting oil supply lines (which most analysts have put in the neighbourhood of $35-$40 billion a year -- say $50 billion total in subsidies for the oil industry, to err on the high side), that $50 billion divided by 300 billion gallons comes to less than $0.17/gall­on.

I am not defending those subsidies, but the ethanol industry needs to get some perspective. At $1.01/gall­on for cellulosic ethanol, or $1.50 per gallon of gasoline equivalent for just the federal tax credit (not counting state-level subsidies and federal grants and loan guarantees), that is 10 times the rate of subsidization of petroleum. Expanding ethanol production at that subsidized rate is simply not sustainable.”

“So, you did make the figure up, GoldEnergy. And you are wrong: not all of the corn shipped overseas is for livestock. You are forgetting that the category "corn" in USDA statistics includes not just feed (yellow dent) corn, but also white corn, which is made into human foods such as tortillas, and corn meal (eaten in Africa). So, let's compromise and agree that 2/3 was being used for animal feed (we are already close now to 1/3 being used for ethanol). That is not, by any means, all used to feed ruminents. A large proportion is used to feed hogs and poultry, which are grown for ... food!”

“Got a source for that figure that "over 85% of the corn crop goes into the inefficient process of being fed directly to cattle", GoldEnergy? My guess is that you made up that figure. According to USDA data http://www.ers.usda.gov//Briefing/corn/2009baseline.htm#US), in crop year 2007/08, livestock feed accounted for less than 60% of total domestic consumption of corn. The share today, and projected for the future is less than 50%. Of that, a significant proportion goes to feed animals OTHER THAN cattle. In Iowa, for example, according to figures from Iowa State University http://www.ans.iastate.edu/report/air/2009pdf//R2462.pdf), cattle accounted for only 22% of the corn used for feed. By contrast, poultry accounted for 10%, and hogs a whopping 63% of corn use for feed. The important point about that almost 3/4 of the demand from non-ruminents is that they do not digest distillers grains in the same way as ruminents (cattle, goats and sheep). They can tollerate only a limited share of distillers grain in their diet, and for the most part need not only the protein but also the starch -- the food energy -- that the subsidized ethanol industry uses to produce its EtOH.”

“These claims are, again, not correct. Corn ethanol does not have a "1:1.7 or better return on energy invested", it has a positive return on FOSSIL FUELS invested (and 1:1.7 only in the most favorable cases). If one counted the (renewable) energy in the feedstock -- just as the life-cycle analyses count the energy in the feedstock" (crude oil) in making gasoline -- corn ethanol would have a worse return on energy than gasoline. That is an important distinction, because other studies have shown that, in terms of energy return, it would be much more efficient to burn the corn directly (not that I am necessarily advocating that) -- for direct heat or for electricity -- than to turn it into ethanol.”