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Hybrid Vehicles Ethanol - E85 FlexFuel Is Ethanol good for the environment?
165 messages, Last post on Sep 24, 2008 at 5:25 AM
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Replying to: highender (Apr 21, 2006 9:44 am) |
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Replying to: boilermaker2 (Apr 01, 2006 2:53 pm) Also, all cars/common trucks in Brasil use 96% alcohol and 4% water. The cost for them for Alcol is far cheaper than gas so they all have had a lot of incentive to use Alcol(as it's called in Brasil). They get their alcohol from sugarcane the highest return for any alcohol fuels. In the USA corn, wheat, soy, peanuts etc could be used if a real commitment was made to actually build an infrastructure of having E85 in the states. Now if a country like Brasil can break away from the fossil fuel grid and can not be ever held hostage again, why can't the USA push forward in alternative fuels? because if we don't we will surely pay dearly in our future!
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Replying to: gem069 (Apr 30, 2006 6:15 am) Brazil has found enough oil they do not need to buy from other countries. Ethanol is still a small part of their overall usage. RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brazil's booming ethanol industry has won international acclaim, but recent supply and pricing problems suggest that it's not the grand solution to tight oil supplies and ever-rising prices that had been hoped. Brazilian ethanol producers are struggling to keep up with domestic demand for ethanol, which is projected to grow by 50 percent over the next five years. Yet a 15 percent jump in prices earlier this year sparked a sharp drop in consumption. Even so, suppliers are struggling to plant enough fields of new sugar cane, from which ethanol is produced here, to keep up with the anticipated growth in demand. Some energy experts say this has revealed the limits of Brazil's ethanol program and that it is an unreliable energy source, one that can't be depended on to make much of a dent in worldwide use of fossil fuels. "Here is the classic dilemma of biofuels," said Tad Patzek, geoengineering professor and biofuels expert at the University of California at Berkeley. "They fight for space in the environment, they fight food production and they fight consumption trends. They are not the answer to the energy crisis." Such hard lessons come as unwelcome news for U.S. consumers, who are encountering record high prices at the gas pump and threats to oil supplies in politically troubled countries. In his State of the Union address in January, President Bush asked Americans to look toward alternative fuels such as ethanol as a way out of their energy crunch. Yet if Brazil is hitting bumps on the ethanol road, Americans, who consume more than 10 times as much oil as Brazilians, face a minefield. Replacing a year's worth of U.S. gasoline consumption with sugar cane-based ethanol would require a swath of farmland a little smaller than California. Replacing that gasoline with less efficient corn-based ethanol, which the United States produces lots of, would require farmland the size of Texas. "Biofuels will not make any kind of impact on Americans, the way they're consuming now," Patzek said. Backed by enormous subsidies, Brazil's ethanol industry flourished during the 1980s, prices were low, and Brazilians bought millions of ethanol-powered cars. However, those cars became all but useless by the end of the decade when rising sugar prices turned growers away from producing ethanol as oil prices fell. Brazil's ethanol program struggles
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Replying to: boilermaker2 (Apr 01, 2006 7:29 pm) What was the seepage from the silo full of corn ensilage that made the cows and pigs drunk (ruined milk shipment for a couple of days). Was that Ethanol...it seemed to have quite a kick to it? Should have mixed it with the gas in the Allis Chalmers! ...darned AL seems to be visiting more lately..! |
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Replying to: gagrice (Jul 29, 2004 5:33 am) 2) U.S. produces about 33% of all the corn in the world. We can just rely on our own resources and not put money into the hands of people in the Middle East. How does that not enhance energy security??? 3) Ethanol can continuously be reproduced as long as we have maize. So only if we lose all of our maize will this become an issue. The fact that it's not a renewable energy source is erroneous because we will probably have maize for as long as the U.S. will be in existence. 4) Yes, it’s true, it won’t produce clean air and it causes environmental degradation. Not any different than gasoline!!! 5) Finally, yes, I agree with John. Show me an actual white paper! I can just as easily write up nonsense in my own document and post it to start a following. I want to see all the cited references of environmental damage caused by the use of oil/gasoline as well.
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Replying to: zarplex2003 (May 16, 2006 1:40 pm) How much more would you like? Here is what the Canadiens think of Ethanol corporate welfare. ethanol production does not enhance energy security, is not a renewable energy source, is not an economical fuel, and does not ensure clean air...its production uses land suitable for crop production and causes environmental degradation." |
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Replying to: zarplex2003 (May 16, 2006 1:40 pm) I don't think anyone is arguing that we cannot raise corn and make ethanol. The problem is the amount of fossil fuel that is used to grow the corn and distill it into ethanol. So it is only renewable until we run out of fossil fuel. If the US is so set on ethanol they need to find a better crop than corn to produce it. So far it is all talk and no production as it pertains to Switchgrass, tree stumps or pollywogs. Currently Ethanol is just corporate welfare worse than that given to the oil companies. What is so great about that?
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Replying to: gagrice (May 16, 2006 4:25 pm) Even for more efficient crops, the land requirements are huge. One estimate here says: As for the land required to support significant biofuel production from a dedicated energy crop, switch grass offers a basis for estimation. It grows rapidly, with an expected harvest one or two years after planting. Ignoring crop rotation, an acre under cultivation will produce five to 10 tons of switch grass annually, which in turn provides 50 to 100 gallons of ethanol per ton of biomass. Thus the land requirement needed to displace one million barrels of oil per day (about 10% of U.S. oil imports projected by 2025), is 25 million acres (or 39,000 square miles). This is roughly 3% of the crop, range and pasture land that the Department of Agriculture classifies as available in the U.S. So, based on this, replacing all imported oil would take 30% of land. |
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Replying to: zarplex2003 (May 16, 2006 1:40 pm) |
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Replying to: fireball1 (May 18, 2006 5:29 pm)
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