Ethanol: competition between food and fuel?
Earth & Sky has more from Lester Brown. Read or listen: Expert speaks of rescuing a planet Read or listen: Lester Brown on how to know what's true Interview: Do we need to transform our world economy? (US Dept. of Energy)
On the world’s need for food versus the need for fuel.
A debate in this area centers on ethanol, a crop-based substitute for oil. A blend of gasoline and ethanol can be used as motor fuel for most cars. Ethanol can be made from grain and many other crops. In the U.S., ethanol is made from corn. In Brazil, it’s made from sugarcane.
Earth & Sky spoke to Lester Brown, president and founder of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington DC. He’s concerned that the explosion crop-based fuels might eventually absorb too much food that would otherwise go to feed people.
Lester Brown: Probably the most interesting calculation that we’ve done is that the grain required to fill a 25 gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol would feed one person for a year.
With Earth’s increasing population, and growing food needs, Brown wonders how much of our food crops should be used for fuel.
Lester Brown: What we’re looking at now is an emerging competition between supermarkets and service stations for the same commodity. It turns out that almost everything that we eat can be converted into fuel for cars. And once the price of oil gets up to 60 dollars or 70 dollars a barrel, it becomes profitable to convert these commodities into automotive fuel.
Tell us what you think about ethanol, below.
Ethanol is a net energy loss. Ehanol cannot be run in most automobiles built today in any concentration over 5% as it will dissolve seals and gaskets in the fuel systems of most cars not identified as ethanol friendly. Ehanol from corn is going to cause a spike in all food prices where the food is derived from corn. This will include corn sweetened sodas and confections. L
I’ve been following the current trends on ethanol production, and have little hopes for decent use/production in the USA.
On the other hand, how do the economics for bio diesel work? I’ve read that most oils, like peanut oil, and cottonseed oil will work without much post-processing. Is this true? Post-processing of used vegetable oils used for cooking needs a good bit of methanol and lye to take out the glycerin by-products from the frying process.
Are bio-diesel powered cars in our future?
Ethanol has much less energy per gallon than gasoline and can’t be pumped through existing petroleum pipelines, making it much harder to distribute. Also, engines cannot burn 100% ethanol fuel without modifications. I read an article recently about another alcohol that can be made from plant matter- butanol- that stated it has almost the same energy density as gasoline, can be pumped through the same pipelines, and burned in cars in any mix with gas from 0 to 100% butanol without modification. How about some more information on butanol?
Finding a suitable biological REPLACEMENT for petroleum-based fuels is probably a pipe dream; the amount of energy we consume each year is much too great to be replaced by bio-fuels.
Using peanuts as an example, growing enough high oil-content peanuts to replace only ten percent of the diesel fuel used each year in the U.S. would require the planting of something like 75,000 square miles of peanut fields—an area roughly one-and-a-half times the size of Alabama. Replacing all of the diesel fuel would take 750,000 square miles of peanut fields. That is an area almost three times the size of Texas, or just about every square foot of land between Virginia and New Mexico. And that would only replace the diesel fuel, which is a fraction of the consumption of gasoline, fuel oil, etc.
Bio-fuels, especially biodiesel, will become an important part of the fuel mix in the next several decades, but the long-term solution to energy problems is conservation and efficiency. I think those things will happen, but only when fuel prices go high enough to make them palatable to the public.
It is sheerest fantasy to think we can even begin to come close to replacing the current volume of fossil fuel consumption with bio-fuels. This is clear to nearly everyone who thinks about the issue in terms of the numbers involved. (The space on the front of one of those little yellow post-it noteys is sufficient to do the calculations, BTW—requiring about 30 seconds of time. “Yes, Virginia,” the calculation is that simple—”there is [no biofuel] Santa Claus.”)
Fossil fuels were “naturally stored” in the earth’s crust over millions of years. In other words, by using fossil fuels we are currently tapping a portion of millions of years of past biofuel production. Again, this is known to many.
If it is fairly clear to people capable of thought that there no way biofuels can replace the current volume of fossil fuel use, why the hype to the contrary? Could it be that some (read: the more privileged, and those who make a profit from serving them) hope to be able to keep the wealthier segment of the population driving the freeways using biofuels long after the poor and the true middle class have been forced to give up their cars in order to buy food?
Ok. Perhaps that is a bit cynical, but without understanding we can’t replace fossil fuels with biofuels, I fear that is exactly where we are headed.
The one message almost everyone simply doesn’t want to hear is this: We are going to have to sharply cut back upon fossil fuel consumption in all sectors of our economy, and this will inevitably result in significant and painful changes. Better painful changes presently, I argue, than catastrophic changes in the future.