The Great Ethanol Scam

deciding how our energy needs will be provided. By deciding for us the ethanol is good and needs our support they have created a major economic distortion (again). Let the energy be supplied by the most economical means determined by the market free of government interference. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen.

duh. how could it not?

We all know that more energy goes into making ethanol than is exatracted when producing it from corn.

that's like taking 1 step forward and then 2 steps backward.

unless these studies included hemp you can mark these off the list....

"Second, truly independent studies on ethanol, such as those written by Tad Patzek of Berkeley and David Pimentel of Cornell, show that ethanol is a net energy loser. Other studies suggest there is a small net energy gain from it."

&

"Fourth, forget what biofuels have done to the price of foodstuffs worldwide over the past three years; the science seems to suggest that using ethanol increases global warming emissions over the use of straight gasoline."

interesting article, especially the engine problem stuff, thanks for posting.
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`Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life'- Aristophanes -

Oh Boy here we go.. Sigh! That article is complete crap it perpetuates all the myths about ethanol put out by big oil. Google David Blume "Alcohol Can Be a Gas" it debunks the myths and is very well researched and cited.

Here's is some of the main myths that get repeated over and over. Also think folks whose interest would it be in to demonize ethanol? Do your research. Every study done demonizing ethanol can be traced back to a certain professor on the payroll of big oil.

1) It takes more energy to make ethanol than the fuel itself produces.
Reality: Not so. Critics like to cite a 2005 study that shows a negative energy balance for ethanol, but that study was coauthored by a former oil company employee. It is contradicted by five others showing that corn ethanol delivers 20 to 50 percent more energy output than it takes to produce, and cellulosic up to 600 percent more. The National Resources Defense Council calls corn ethanol "energy well spent."

2) Ethanol is expensive to produce.
Reality: Ethanol costs about $1 a gallon to produce at typical facilities, which explains why E85 was selling for $1.95 at pumps in South Dakota this summer. In 2004, it was selling for $1.40 a gallon wholesale. Prices spiked higher recently because oil companies mismanaged the switch to ethanol as a replacement for the environmentally disastrous additive MBTE. Once demand and supply reach equilibrium, it can profitably sell for $1.40 a gallon without subsidies.

Also this is using the gasoline model there are ways to produce ethanol for as low as 45 cents a gallon if we decentralize it and it is prodeuced locally and regaionally.

3) There's not enough land to grow crops for ethanol.
Reality: Former secretary of state George Schultz and ex-CIA director R. James Woolsey estimate that 30 million acres can replace half our gasoline. I estimate that 40 million to 60 million acres can replace our gasoline needs. By taking land now used to grow export crops and instead planting energy crops, it's feasible to eliminate our need to import oil for gasoline.

Again this is using corn. Brazil uses about 1% of thier farm land tp produce ethanol and they do not import any oil. There are several high producers of ethanal that don't even need farmland such as cattails and Mesquite

4) Switching to ethanol is expensive.
Reality: It didn't cost much in Brazil. Automakers already produce 10 flex-fuel models. There are almost as many flex-fuel vehicles in California as there are diesel cars and light trucks. A new car can be made flex-fuel-capable for about $35. And the cost to adapt a retail gas pump for E85 is a bargain – as little as $10,000.

5) Ethanol is unfairly subsidized.
Reality: Yes, ethanol producers and blenders share in a 51-cent-a-gallon federal credit that costs taxpayers about $2 billion a year. The majority of that accrues to oil companies, not farmers. But not mentioned by critics is the 54-cent-a-gallon tariff on imported ethanol, which hampers global competition. Meanwhile, the US also directly subsidizes Big Oil. The General Accounting Office reports that the industry has netted $82 billion from just one line item alone, something called "excess of percentage over cost depletion," and there are many other such clauses.

6) Cars that run on ethanol get lower mileage.
Reality: Ethanol gets 25 percent lower mileage compared to gasoline. In engines tuned for gasoline. If you tune an engine for ethanol with some timing adjustment and jetting it will get equal or better. For about $300 you can optimize the engine and get up to 25 percent better. The ECE was designed originally to run on ethanol

Here is a link that goes into more detail and bust the myths:

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Review:Alcohol_can_be_a_Gas#Bus...

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Get Prepared!
Only dead fish go with the flow...

that corn would be better used to feed the hungry is foolish, as corn offers little nutritional value. The statement that the "entire corn crop to alcohol would not reduce consumption by more than 1%" is completely false, even though corn is the worst crop you could choose. The ethanol emission due not reduce that much over a car with a catylitic converter and gasoline, because the fuel that is wasted by not being burnt in the engine is burnt in the converter and wasted as unsused heat. The ethanol engine gets better emissions than gasoline without a cat. It burns way more efficiently (as anyone who has taken apart an alky engine can tell you) so this largely erases the btu deficiency. By removing the cat and burning more fuel in the chamber where the heat expands the nitrogen that drives the piston or rotor, the engine has reduced pumping losses and increased efficiency, which translates to less emissions. The increased engine life leads to less worn parts and recycling process (due to lack of carbon, you know hard like diamonds in your oil) which is less energy consumption per unit time. The main problem gas is CO2, and it is plant food. The lack of eaters is the problem, not the engine. In an ethanol engine from production to use, almost exactly the same amount of CO2 that is produced in consumption and processing is eaqual to the amount consumed in growing the plants that provided it. If Indiana and Illinois were turned to Sorghum(THE WHOLE STAES), the ENTIRE worlds fuel consumption could be met. So spread that out a bit. It is not the end solution, but a good transition, and if you cannot understand the permaculture process and ethanol production, you will never accept or understand solutions that are currently available that are more efficent. How is Brazil doing? All the people starving and country in economic dire straits? When did they start contending for world economic power? www.sorganol.com

of people who have individualist central planning approach to the economy and politics, there is a large collectivist and central planning to your fuel production. It needs to be done locally, so you are not transporting the fuel everywhere, this is rather obvious. Quit waiting for the industry to make the changes. The neg return is hog wash. You don't use any water for good, the water is combined and returned to the table without "poisoning" it. These return numbers that the gov conjurs up and people believe are for corn. As I stated earlier, Sweet Sorghum is 12 times the producer over that of corn. The emissions are massively different. A full permaculture cycle, grown locally to provide for the people in the area, can yield fuel at 50 cents a gallon, in intermediate production levels, provide pesticides and fertilizers for future cropping. A small still will have no trouble producing fuel at 1.50$/gallo, and still show profit. I used to "believe" all these stupid studies and rumors. Now that I have studied it and done it, I know otherwise. The problem with all this "over unity" and negative or positive energy consumptions is that know one can properly address what the "full loop" is. Until we understand the atom and wave energy a little better as a people, this will always be. Any bio material analyzed, the loop begins with the sun, which is "free energy input" Use cat tails that serve as city filtration units instead of chemical poisoning and yield 10,000g/acre, including cellulose. Put that into your "neg energy return" and see what the figures come out to be. Also would be wise to address some of the problems as conventional shortcomings that can be easily over come, rather than promoting the downfall of something you don't know jack about. Of course the mainstream corp and subsidized markets are duds, that is why they are subsidized. Find resources that don't need subsidized to make money. Oil (gasoline) is subsidized 10$ (mean) to the gallon, so if you can make alcohol for less than that, you are beating oil, but that is not saying much. Please educate yourselves, and that does not mean an article or two. As it turns out for our product using sweet sorghum, it is better to juice the crop and use the roughage for fuel for the still, or sell as feed, which ever is more economcally viable. It only yields ~750 gallons per acre, but greatly reduces the energy costs of breaking down the poly sacharides, and time. Most of you as a whole, are sadly mistaken, just like I was, when I thought I knew about alcohol, from using it as race fuel.

The problem with a reliable and economically-sound source of biofuels is that the congress wants something easy that they can throw money at so that they can look like heroes. Cellulosic fuels, which would allow us to create fuel from pine trees, switchgrass, etc., in my mind are the future of transportation fuels, not corn-based ethanol. The corn subsidies are absolutely a waste of money (and some would say immoral), but in the meantime, cellulosic fuel production is simply not well-developed enough to be economically viable.

In the past 40 years, there have been massive advances in the understanding of human and mammalian biology. In order to use cellulosic sources for fuel production, you have to be able to break down the plant cell wall in a cost-effective manner. Projects to understand the plant cell wall have been largely neglected, except by a handful of scientists, so our understanding of the subject is generally lagging behind endeavors related to human medicine. I think that a viable biofuel production method is still 5-10 years away based on the complexity of the project and the questions that scientists still have to answer.

I wish very strongly that scientists didn't have to go to agencies such as the department of energy to obtain grant money, because the money gets doled out in an arbitrary and wasteful manner. In a recent doling out of grants by the DoE, rather than investing heavily on biofuels projects, which have immediate goals and clear directions, the DoE decided to fund a bunch of projects related to solar panels and energy grids. A large number of these projects are based on theoretical grounds and probably will not produce any viable energy sources any time soon.

This is the price you pay when rather than private investors and philanthropists funding scientific research, you have a bunch of clowns and appointed bureaucrats making all of the important decisions. You get projects that some guy thinks are cool being funded instead of projects that would have immediate benefits for people.

for posting this article. It is awesome. As could be expected, even the some of the DP readers commenting below have been misled by the huge greenwash campaign promoting ethanol. Here is what I wrote a year ago.

As a 30-year career chemical/environmental engineer, I want to
comment on the corn ethanol fuel racket. Ethanol is chemically the same as
moonshine--corn liquor.

Ethanol production wastes energy, wastes water and causes more air pollution. As an auto fuel it is double the cost of gasoline although this cost is hidden from the consumer. . It also damages engines causing expensive engine repairs.
Its production wastes is used by the dairy and beef industry causing more e-coli contamination.
Ethanol may only cost $2.85 at the pump when gasoline is $3. But
ethanol fuel (85 parts ethanol/15 parts gasoline) has only 72% of the
energy content of gasoline, so its cost at the pump is actually $4
per gallon of gasoline equivalent; and you get a reduction in driving
range of 28%.

According to a study by the Cato Institute, for every dollar in
profit a producer makes off ethanol, the costs to taxpayers is $30
after summing the government subsidies on corn. At 15% profit margin,
a sixth grader can calculate the actual cost is about $9 per gallon.
Other hidden costs are the almost doubling (and climbing) of corn
prices resulting in higher prices for meat, milk and eggs. More acres
planted in corn reduce supplies of wheat and soybeans causing these
prices to rise.

It requires more energy to make ethanol than you can get out of it.
Otherwise the ethanol plants would be using it to fuel their plants
rather than our natural gas and coal. Converting all the U.S. corn
crop to ethanol would only reduce gasoline consumption by 1%,
according to Robert Panier, a former ethanol-industry chemical
engineer.

The negative environmental impacts by the use of crop chemicals are
significant. It takes 7 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. The emission reductions from ethanol-fueled
cars are so small that air quality is not improved at all.

Even China is smart enough to know that ethanol fuel is a loser. That
is why they shut down their ethanol plants this year.

But there is more. One-third of the corn feedstock becomes a massive
quantity of waste. This is sold to factory farms to force feed cows,
cattle and pigs along with the chicken manure. We are told that this
is a bonus because they count the calorie content (BTUs) of the slop
toward the energy gain, so it makes it look they are creating more
energy. Milking cows were fed these "grains", as they call them, pre-
1940s. These cows got sick, the milk became contaminated with harmful
bacteria, people got sick and died, ushering in pasteurization. Last
week, it was announced by two university research departments that
ethanol wastes fed to livestock is related to the surge in recent
meat recalls and e-coli breakouts.

But, there's more. Since the triangle of government (EPA, USDA, DOE),
industry (ADM) and environmental whackos, in all of their infinite
wisdom, believe so much in ethanol saving us from the planet's
certain and rapid doom. In fact, they crafted legislation which has
been made into regulations requiring a rapid increase to meet the
crisis head on. According to the Renewable Fuels Association, rules
call for increasing ethanol fuels from the current 5% of
transportation fuels to 36% over the next few years and install tanks
and pumps everywhere-- along with a huge fleet of trucks to haul it.

One has to wonder how many will die and suffer because of this money-
making scheme, in part allowed by recycling the profits into election
contributions.

Corn would be better used as food to help feed the hungry and not the
ethanol producers and their lobbyists. After all, ADM is the
supermarket to the world. Auto and oil companies fought for decades
that ethanol is an inferior fuel, but now are embracing it for
profits as the dumb-downed public is green-washed again by government and corporate sponsored commercials and free public relations strategies disguised as news.

Ethanol fuels is a major energy, environmental and economic loser, damages engines and is another threat to food supplies and safety. The true costs are
immeasurable. Ethanol is unsustainable.

David M. Augenstein, M.S., P.E.
Automotive Environmental & Safety Engineering

is not a human food crop. Look at the numbers of its use. You grow the fuel and back it up with food in rotation. You can have both and it works better for both. Corn makes unhealthy cattle, so it is not an indirect food crop, either.

Just one word "HEMP" stop using foodstuff for the purpose of making ethanol....Hemp is a weed that grows like a week..Grows anywhere anytime..Good soil or very bad soil..It is "The Miracle Plant"..Not one part of the hemp plant that isn't useful for some purpose..Not growing it is criminal...Tell these dead beat politicians legalize it or take a friggen hike.

using any ethanol in my vehicles.
We have stations around here that sell "ethanol-free" gasoline, and that's where I fill up.
You can keep your ethanol.
In fact, you can use my share, because I'm not buying it.

And it is very cheap to produce. It can even be produced from plant cellulose and NO it doesn't have to be made from food crops such as corn. This article is pure BS and propaganda and so are the many lies surrounding ethanol for decades. Ford built his first vehicle running on pure 100% ethanol, but what a coincidence that the ban on "drinking alcohol" which is ethanol came not much after. Ethanol production cannot be controlled by the elite very easily, even you can begin producing ethanol at home.

I find it interesting you cannot even operate a still (distiller to purify alcohol) at home without getting government permission. Oh yeah, they are protecting us from drug drinking alcohol.

“I’m fully diversified. I’ve got some under the mattress, some under the floor boards, some in the backyard.”

This is just a hatchet job on ethanol full of distortions and outright lies. I would like to see an article that compares the damage done by the subsidy of ethanol to the damage done by the long history of susidies for oil (start with most of the wars in the Middleast). As between a few melted fuel pump seals and millions of dead humans, I can make a pretty quick choice.

Of course the answer is a free market. Stop subsidizing oil and stop subsidizing ethanol and let the market sort it out.

But to suggest that ethanol is somehow an unsuitable fuel for internal combustion engines is stupid. The Model A was DESIGNED to run on ethanol. The auto industry switched to gasoline because it was cheap and the government made the manufacture of ethanol more difficult.

Ethanol is a perfectly fine fuel for internal combustion and has the huge advantage that it can be made from a wide variety of feed stocks (including non-food items grown on marginal farm land or in the ocean) AND it can be manufactured by small, start-up businesses on a decentralized basis.

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1. Ethanol engines last longer and have greatly reduced emissions
(I have torn down many ethanol engines) 500,000 miles average life
2.The only reason the industry is failing is that it is only subsidized when corn is grown, and that its subsidized, period.
3. Hemp is a better alternative, but the processing of the celluose is time consuming and expensive.
4. Jeruselem Artichokes, Sweet Sorghum, and Cat tails have much more capability. Sewage fed Cat tails~10,000 gph
5.Sweet sorghum yields 3500 gallons/acre when processed in similar fashion as corn, who yields 300 gpa.
6. Hemp would be a good side process suppliment
8.Emissions are documented at 90% cleaner, HC and CO

do your home work, you just got scammed by the article. There are many people growing and producing alcohol with increases efficiencies over gasoline by a long shot. Corn destroys the soil and is only used because of Monsanto and a few others, so you can be poisoned for a profit.

What is NOT sustainable is Monsanto GM FOOD and FEED crops, subsidized by govt. in the name of fuel.

What IS sustainable is Industrial Hemp as a FUEL crop.

Industrial hemp needs NO fertilizers, NO persiticides
Uses much less water then corn and cleans the soil.

What we NEED is Ron Paul Industrial Hemp Bill and FREEDOM for farmers to grow hemp, and an industry establishes to recieve the crops.

Now the real great thing about ethanol is you can make it at home. So why would you want to give up that freedom for Govt regulated petrol?

When they say NO ETHANOL you say HEMP HEMP HEMP

Wake em up

bump for others.

Support Hemp!

is when the ethanol diluted gasolines first came out, I got into a discussion with a filling station attentant who insisted ethanol fuel burns cleaner because "there's more oxygen in it!" LOL!