23 Oct 2008: Surprise: Government Mandates Behind Ethanol ‘Bubble’
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11 Oct 2008 Update: A journalist notes that if biofuels don't establish themselves in the market within the next 10 years, biofuels might be edged out by plug-in vehicles. See article at the bottom entitle Creating a bio-fuels market faces numerous challenges, study shows.
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Farmers Should Be Wind Farming, Not Making Moonshine for Cars
The future seems clear that the future of transportation will involve electricity, either with battery-powered cars and trucks, or else hydrogen-powered, or hybrids of the two. Batteries are improving drastically thanks to nano-technology.
The electrolysis for hydrogen generation would occur at home between commutes, and at gas stations. Electric cars would be charged at home or work, but if one were driving longer distances, he'd need to swap a dead battery for a charged one at filling stations. Israel right now is setting up such a scheme, and will have 200 battery-“swap” stations by 2011.
So what's needed for the coming battery/hydrogen vehicle age is for farmers to set up wind farms on their treeless properties, especially on hills and ridges where wind is concentrated. High voltage lines need to strung to these rural locations to take power into the cities, and to rural interstate hydrogen/battery swap stations.
In my post about wind power, I link to this map (better map here) that shows that most US farmers are in areas where the wind is rated Power Class 2 or better, which is a good wind-power rating, by the way. The only area of the country that is mostly Class 1, which is a poor wind-power rating, is the Southeast. Many farmers are already bringing in $3 to $5 thousand per year per wind turbine, and the turbines take up only a small foot print. The US Farm Subsidy Bills even subsidize wind power!
Farmers with wind farms grow crops among the wind turbines, and cattle graze right among the wind turbines, which are not very noisy. Some neighbors complain about wind farms because they don’t want to see the turbines, or hear the repetitive whoosh sound. Of course, if they had enough land for wind turbines of their own, or if they were getting a cut of the leasing arrangement, they’d put up with the sound soon enough. Wind farms are not as noisy as rural highways can be.
In America, people have primary or vacation homes in rural locations, mostly out of choice, meaning they could live in town, but they chose to live in a rural setting. Many people think that if they buy an acre somewhere out in the country, that from horizon to horizon should forever remain undeveloped. In Europe, however, rural locations are used more intensively, so much so that farmers live in small towns and travel to their land rather than take up valuable cropland with yards and houses as is done in America. The situation in America is becoming more like in Europe every day. There are 300 million Americans now, so rural areas must be used more intensively for wind turbines, power lines, roads, crops, and such.
In YouTube videos, I noticed that the neighbors who were complaining often lived in rundown shacks and trailers that are located 450 meters from the wind farms in accordance with zoning regulations’ required setbacks. It would seem that with the money generated by the wind farms, the neighbors could be easily be bought out, or else their house or trailer could be moved to the far corners of their properties, a noise abatement wall or berm could be constructed, or some other solution could be found. Here are some videos where the noise can be sampled:
- Do wind turbines make noise?
- Industrial wind turbine noise
- Vertical axis wind turbine
- Wind Farm in My Backyard: ScienCentral Report
Here are some articles on the subject of wind turbine noise:
- RESIDENTIAL WIND TURBINES AND NOISE
- How does the sound from a wind turbine compare to other sounds in our immediate environment?
- Noise from Wind Turbines - The Facts
- Wind turbine regulations approved by Will County Board: Measure sets height, noise limits for energy producing devices on roofs, in backyards
Ethanol Just Doesn’t Make Economic Sense, Except for Disposing of Surplus Corn
It's already known that corn could never generate more than a tiny fraction of the US vehicle fuel needs. Already, an estimated 20 percent of the corn crop is being converted into ethanol in 2008, and most cars are still running on the same fuel as before: 10 percent ethanol gasoline (E10), not 85% ethanol (E85).
Some people say that non-food cellulosic ethanol is the way to go, but that's not the case. Corn transportation costs are high, and corn packs a lot of energy by weight and volume compared to switch grass and other non-food cellulosic biomass. Thus, transportation costs to the fermenting plant for the bulky material would mean that non-food ethanol is not viable. Because ethanol corrodes pipes and fittings, pipelines cannot be used for ethanol distribution, meaning that ethanol has high transportation costs. However, for farmers who generated electricity from wind, there's no transportation costs unless one counts maintenance of high voltage power lines maintained by utilities.
The energy that it takes to produce a gallon of ethanol almost equals the amount of energy in that gallon! Just to grow and harvest a bushel of corn takes a half gallon of gasoline. Experts note that US ethanol is not competitive with gasoline, but due to US laws, US consumers have to buy it anyway. CNN reports:
Brazilian sugar cane is the classic example of a type of biofuel that is now performing efficiently and competitively. They are alone among all the major biofuel foodstocks in being competitive at market prices. Whereas in the U.S., maize continues to cost more to produce it than it does to be competitive with the fossil fuel counterpart.
It's only a matter of time before the voters find out about the voodoo economics and voodoo environmentalism behind ethanol, and pulls the plug on the subsidies that make it profitable for farmers. Not only is converting corn to ethanol helping to drive up food costs for the US public, and causing hunger around the world, but corn ethanol is a net monetary loss for the US public. It's hard to find an upside to ethanol.
Ethanol provides 75,700 Btu per gallon, while gasoline provides 115,000 Btu per gallon. Thus, a gallon of ethanol provides only 65% of the energy of a gallon of gasoline. This means you'd need a tank and a half of E85 to equal a tank of E10 gasoline. You'll find yourself gassing up 35% percent more often/sooner if you using E85 rather than E10.
The above Btu figures means it would take 83.55 gallons of ethanol to equal one 55-gallon barrel of oil. The difference between 55 and 83.55 gallons is 28.55 gallons. So, let's call 83.55 gallons of ethanol the "barrel-equivalent of ethanol."
The blenders of ethanol and gasoline receive 45 cents per gallon of ethanol under the 2008 US Farm Bill, but it used to be higher—51 cents per gallon. This particular federal subsidy is called the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC). VEETC means the US taxpayer is paying $37.60 for each barrel-equivalent of ethanol as it is produced, even before it goes in the gas tank. The 45 cents per gallon is transferred from the blender to the farmer in the form of higher corn prices, since converting corn to ethanol makes corn a scarcer commodity.
In May 2008, the average price of E85 in Michigan was $3.21 per gallon, while the price of gasoline was $4.09. Since the taxpayer is paying already 45 cents per gallon subsidy on the ethanol, the net price he's paying is $3.66 per gallon for E85. (Note: For simplicity's sake, I'm treating E10 as though it were 100% gasoline, and E85 as though it were 100% ethanol).
Since a gallon of ethanol provides only 65% of the energy of a gallon of gasoline, ethanol should only cost $2.21 a gallon (0.65 x $4.09 minus the $0.45 subsidy) at the pump when gasoline is $4.09. Thus, as in the case mentioned above, when E85 is selling for $3.21 per gallon and gasoline is selling for $4.09, consumers are paying 78.5% of what gasoline would cost to get ethanol. That's 13.5% too much, or 88 cents per gallon too much for E85, considering the number of Btu's ethanol delivers compared to gasoline.
Of course, overpaying a little per gallon all adds up when one considers per tank full or per barrel quantities. A barrel of gasoline at the above-mentioned price would be $225 ($4.09 x 55 gallons). At the afore-mentioned price, the barrel-equivalent of ethanol would be $306 ($3.66 x 83.55 gallons), or $81 more. That means US consumers are paying farmers $81 more per barrel-equivalent of ethanol than we are paying oil companies and OPEC for a barrel of oil.
Right now, because the price of a bushel of corn is so high ($6), the government is not paying much in subsidies to grow the corn, which is an unheard of situation. However, if the price dropped back to anywhere near historical levels, the US taxpayer could be paying farmers, say, the usual 45 cents to grow each bushel of corn, and another 45 cents to turn it into ethanol. Then, if the price of ethanol stayed the same, the barrel-equivalent of ethanol would cost the taxpayer $106 more ($3.06 + .45 + .45 = 3.96 x 83.55 = $331 per barrel-equivalent) than a regular barrel of oil ($4.09 x 55 = $225) ($331-$225=$106).
The $81 profit per barrel-equivalent of ethanol explains why the farmers don't go broke while they use nearly a barrel's worth of fossil fuels (gasoline, diesel, natural gas, electricity from coal, etc.) in the long, involved process of creating a barrel-equivalent of ethanol. Moreover, the fact that we are overpaying for our transportation fuel at the pump, and are subsidizing farmers for energy we could easily buy cheaper elsewhere, not only putting the squeeze on the American standard of living, but also on the upkeep of our roads and bridges. The reason for the latter is that there is no excise tax on ethanol products that would normally go toward maintain the US transportation system.
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Inventor hopes to make it big on renewable energy, Jun. 23, 2008
Ehud Zion Waldoks , THE JERUSALEM POST
excerpts: "The cut-in speed [on the Wind Lotus wind turbine] was two meters per second. That means the wind speed at which the turbine starts to rotate. It tells you indirectly how aerodynamically efficient the turbine is. The equivalent turbines on the market start at three meters per second.
"Most wind turbines only start turning at three meters per second. 5-6 meters gets good energy. The UK has very good winds at 8-10 meters. Israel is much milder with 3-4 meters per second, sometimes slower. One of my small wind turbines starts producing at less than one meter per second. That is an exceptional figure.
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Video: Ethanol gets worse mileage
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/06/24/video-ethanol-gets-worse-mileage/
excerpt: Democrats like Barack Obama like to say we can’t drill our way out of an energy crisis, but we certainly can do that, especially in the short term. What the rapid increase in food prices shows us, based on corn shortages, is that we cannot grow our way out of the energy crisis. We need realistic alternatives, not expensive and inefficient replacements that we can’t produce in amounts anywhere near impact levels. Anyone who says differently has their own power shortage.
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Yup! Ethanol is more expensive than gasoline:
Excerpt: Obama claims E85 is cheaper. We ask: Cheaper than what? The latest Clean Cities Alternative Fuels Price Report, which was issued in March and is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, shows the average retail price per gallon of E85 was approximately 20 cents less than that of gasoline, but ethanol was 66 cents more expensive when measured as a per-gallon gasoline equivalent. This is because, as we explained earlier, E85 gets fewer miles to the gallon than gasoline. So when drivers run their cars on E85 they spend more to get where they're going.
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China in quiet energy revolution may have beat out the US in wind turbine manufacture in 2008: http://www.grist.org/news/2008/07/25/china_wind/
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Creating a bio-fuels market faces numerous challenges, study shows
by Ehud Zion Waldoks , THE JERUSALEM POST
Bio-fuels are here to stay but carving out a share of the market for them is going to be much more difficult than previously envisioned, according to a study by the global consulting company Accenture released this week. The report envisions a 10 percent to 15 percent market share for various bio-fuels over the next two decades, but also outlines several potential problems.
The report cited three areas of potential challenges: environmental, distribution and infrastructure investment. The environmental benefits might be a hard sell to consumers, particularly the food versus fuel debate, the study argued. In the US and Europe, bio-fuels are based on corn and soy, respectively.
Also, "There are distribution challenges related to integrating bio-fuels into the established fuels value chain, with tough decisions to be made around storing, blending and accommodating different grades of bio-fuels," according to a statement released by the company.
Yuval Hod, a supply chain management specialist at Accenture Israel, told The Jerusalem Post that there were certain difficulties that had to be overcome before bio-fuels would really be able to enter the market.
"First of all, bio-fuels harm the rubber components of the engine in their current format. They still need to work on the distillation. In addition, since [the product] is biological there may be no constancy of quality," he said.
The report also noted that required investment might not be so easy to find when the size of the market and potential returns were uncertain.
Regarding timing, the report suggested that bio-fuels needed to establish themselves in the next 10 years before alternatives such as algae or plug-in hybrid vehicles edged them out.[snip]
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