Evilhol?

April 24, 2006 8:11 AM

Ethanol Evil? I've heard having energy and food competing for land will be bad for the environment. I've heard ethanol burns cleaner and will create less CO2 which is good for the environment. Also a side question, how much ethanol is currently in gasoline, and is that a good or bad thing?
posted by parallax7d to Science & Nature (9 answers total)

Ethanol has a relatively low energy returned on energy invested (EROEI), which is a tool used to generally measure the expenses in extracting a fuel. For example in the Arabian oil fields it is said that the EROEI is still a fairly high 10, meaning 10 units of energy are extracted for every one put in. In comparison the EROEI on ethanol is around anywhere from 1 to 2. It is much more costly to process grains into ethanol than it is to simply pump already existing oil. Of course that is a rather straightforward economic tool, it doesn't address environmental concenrs except we can expect something with a low EROEI as needing more energy and energy means the release of carbon emissions.

I don't know whether you'd consider it a good or bad thing that we have gasoline in ethanol. Currently it's uneconomical to make ethanol in quantities that would replace gasoline, it won't be done. Artificial restrictions, such as the government E85 program (85% ethanol) make this possible with subsidies. You get worse gas mileage, meaning you do need to burn more and purchase more, as you purchase more we end up spending more for energy than before and the whole process is less efficient.

Whether it's good or bad is not an easy answer. While burning ethanol is much cleaner than burning gasoline, that alone doesn't take into account the inputs in getting it to you. If it matters, I don't think ethanol will ever be commercially viable without government subsidies, sans a large technological leap in processing. From a utilitarian perspective there are probably much better things we can be doing for the environment (updating Eastern European power plants with carbon scrubbers, etc.), than burning ethanol. But as we know environmentalism is more about politics and lobbyists than it is about the environment.
posted by geoff. at 8:27 AM on April 24, 2006

There are a few things to look at:

-- The miles-per-gallon is a good bit lower than gasoline
-- You get more horsepower, according to this study, but it costs more to run your car because ethanol is less efficient...

-- This page looks like a good source of information.

And for the kicker, here is some Iowa propaganda about Ethanol...
posted by wonderwisdom at 8:30 AM on April 24, 2006

Well, the standard argument is that the process involved in getting ethanol from corn is fundamentally inefficient to a horrendous degree, involves fossil-fuel derived fertilisers and fossil-fuel-powered machinery, accelerates soil erosion, and serves as a pure boondoggle to states like Iowa. There have been a few papers spelling this out: one's here and there's a summary of another here.
posted by holgate at 8:34 AM on April 24, 2006

At the pumps, lately, I've been seeing "up to 10% ethanol."
posted by knave at 8:44 AM on April 24, 2006

It may burn cleaner and it may make less CO2, but you are still looking at the most common engineering problem confronted every day.... the tradeoff.

The real question, is when all the inputs and capital requirements are assembled, which of the two has lower COSTS, not just lower prices? COSTS in this sense include non-recurring infrastructure investment requirements, offsets of food production acreage (reasonably efficient) to fuel production acreage (stupendously inefficient), environmental costs, etc.

I've heard a lot in the last few years about how Malthus had it wrong about food production increasing arithmetically and population growth proceeding geometrically, and have always thought it a little premature to call him wrong. If we start making the tradeoff of land for energy production versus food production, it will be interesting to see the seemingly endless hunger for more energy evertually balances the more urgent hunger for food.

Regardless of the alternative energy source under consideration, it seems to me that the best intermediate solutions for the planet are to invest in conservation and efficiency (see Amory Lovins writings at www.rmi.org) and toward creating a global energy economy that recognizes that the only energy we have that isn't non-renewable has the sun as it's basis. Burning crap you have to mine from the earth is cheap, easy and dirty right now. Later this century, it'll get expensive, hard and dirtier.

Sorry to digress, but:

If we put 10% of the money W is wasting on Iraq into alternative energy in the US, we'd never have to go on conquest for oil security, as we are in his war of choice!
posted by FauxScot at 8:56 AM on April 24, 2006

Ethanol refinement is becoming more efficient, although I am unsure how great the gains have been. The last number I heard was higher than geoff's 1 or 2, but not by a lot. Unless we switch to a majority-ethanol system, food land will not be competing for space. There's usually a corn/grain surplus for every year, not a deficit. Part of the interest in ethanol comes from using more corn, not just from finding an additional fuel source.

The amount of ethanol in gasoline varies by state and by type of gasoline you buy. It's around 10% on fuel labeled as such, but some states without subsidies will not even carry it. Finding an E85 station is still difficult in most areas.
posted by mikeh at 9:00 AM on April 24, 2006

It is likely that there will be some ecological impacts of increasing the use of biomass but there has so far been very little research into the matter of specific impacts on specific ecological niches. In the UK, the Rural and Economic Land Use programme run by the nationally funded research councils is just about to begin funding research into the area under the RELU biomass stream. It might be worthwhile you looking into their outputs next year or after.
It is likely impacts will vary from place to place, dependent on the local ecology and the type of crop used, amongst other things. Particular impacts may occur with regard to the use of land which is currently marginal and thus non-viable to exploit but which may become viable with the changing economics associated with greater demand for land.
posted by biffa at 9:10 AM on April 24, 2006

Response by poster: Will the increased demand for land accelerate the depeletion of the worlds rain forests? Do we need the rain forests if we are burning clean ethanol?
posted by parallax7d at 9:22 AM on April 24, 2006

the difference with Ethanol is that you pay the pollution price at the begining of the cycle, rather than at the end as with gasoline. Sure, it comes out of the car cleaner but it does more damage to the environment BEFORE it gets in your car in the first place.

I'm waiting for nuclear-powered rocket sleds, personally.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:50 AM on April 24, 2006