biofuels

Johnny jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge … must … jump …

The most powerful force in nature isn't the nuclear force, or anything wimpy like that; it's the force of a bad idea whose moment has arrived.

Whenever I wanted to do something stupid and argued that my friends had done it, Mom would always say, "If Johnny jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do that too?"

From The Oregonian:

Arguments supporting government subsidies of agrofuels are getting polished

This is my formal rebuttal to David Morris's "case for corn-based fuel." I'm using my access to the bully pulpit to pull it out of the comments field.

How did the use of ethanol end up alongside tyranny and torture as an evil to be conquered?

That's easy. A whole lot of real smart people have been giving corn ethanol a lot of thought and have found that "an evil to be conquered" isn't a bad description. In smaller quantities, it does smaller amounts of damage, but as quantities increase, so does the damage. I mean, what's not to like about a fuel that milks billions from taxpayers, increases the cost of food all around the world, exacerbates the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, and returns no more energy than it produces?

With the right rules in place, it could work

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.

More than meets the eye

If you think that the current governmental and corporate interest in ethanol has something to do with global warming, think again. It is dawning on the U.S. government that (1) most of the remaining supplies of oil are in unfriendly hands, and (2) that there isn't enough oil remaining to feed a constantly growing global demand.

With oil production plateauing, governments can turn to three main strategies to maintain fuel supplies: (1) consume what's left of the planet by growing huge amounts of biofuels; (2) fry what's left of the atmosphere by converting coal to oil or exploiting dirty, expensive tars and oil sands; or (3) conquer the planet to forcably take whatever oil is left.

Michael T. Klare brings this problem right to the door of the U.S. military in his new article, "The Pentagon v. Peak Oil: How Wars of the Future May Be Fought Just to Run the Machines That Fight Them."

Say the developed countries to OPEC

Biofuels will provide only a small proportion of the world’s demand for fuel in the next decade, the developed countries’ energy watchdog has said in an attempt to reassure OPEC that the need for oil will continue to grow. Well I feel reassured.

A short, powerful video

Greenpeace UK passes along this short, powerful video drawing attention to the dangers of biofuels:

Great idea or load of crap?

In Minnesota, a state that produces more turkeys than any other (some 44.5 million birds per year), a new power plant that burns turkey litter just began operations. According to the article in today's NYT, operators of the plant, which is the first in the country to run on animal waste, is environmentally friendly. But critics say the manure is more valuable "just as it is, useful as a rich, organic fertilizer at a time when demand is growing for all things organic."

They also say the electricity is expensive -- that it requires a lot of energy for a relatively small output. It would take 10 turkey-powered plants, they say, to churn out the juice of one medium-sized coal fired operation.

Though it does mention particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrogen sulfide as some nasty fallout of biomass burning, the Times article offers no hard numbers on the energy balance that poultry-power yields. Since know too well by now that all biomass is not created equal, that would have been some helpful info.

Perhaps you Gristmillers know some stats?

Agrifuels creating insecurity of demand for their oil

According to an article by Javier Blas and Ed Crooks in the Financial Times (London), the Secretary-General of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Abdalla El-Badri, warned Western countries yesterday that their efforts to develop biofuels as an alternative energy source risked driving the price of oil "through the roof".

Oh, the irony of it all.

Depends on how it’s made

It depends on the fuel used to drive the conversion process -- according to a new study:

In particular, greenhouse gas emission impacts can vary significantly -- from a 3% increase if coal is the process fuel to a 52% reduction if wood chips are used.

These results come from the energy life-cycle wizards of Argonne Lab, who have published a new study, "Life-cycle energy and greenhouse gas emission impacts of different corn ethanol plant types," in the open-access Environmental Research Letters.

Here is a figure showing "well-to-wheels greenhouse gas emission changes by fuel ethanol relative to gasoline":