[Greenbuilding] [BULK] Re: bio fuels and ethanol

[Lawrence Lile]

Rob wrote:

>And although I will confess that I've been feeding my vehicles  
corn-derived fuel for the past decade-and-a-half ( but I have driven
less  
than 6,000 kms per year over that time), I agree that it makes little  
sense to take food crops like corn and soybeans to make petro-fuel  
substitutes, from an energy-in-energy-out perspective since IIRC it
takes  
something like 3 units of energy (usually petro-derived) to produce one

unit of corn or soy derived energy.


I've been following this fuel vs. food thread with interest. I have a
couple of takes on it.  


Ethanol plants don't destroy food.  They consume starch, leaving
protein.  When the feedstock is done, what is left over is high protein
cattle feed.  Given that most of this corn was headed into a cow's
stomach anyway, we aren't diverting as much food out of the food chain
as people have claimed. The point is, all of the feedstock does not turn
into fuel.  

If I were to choose where to buy my vegetables, I'd rather buy them from
a local guy with a pickup truck under a shade tree than buy certified
organic produce from  six states away in California.  Neither may have
good agricultural practices, or may be very good indeed, but local
production beats shipping anytime.  I have the same attitude about
biofuels.  I live within a day's bike ride of several ethanol plants.
Would I rather buy my fuel from Saudi Arabia, or Macon Missouri, where
half my ancestors are buried?  You bet I'd rather buy fuel locally.  

Ethanol plants do raise the price of corn, by consuming more, which
begins to have global effects on the poor.  This is not good, agreed.
Almost everything we do in the US has a footprint on the neck of someone
in the third world, and biofuel is no exception.  However I don't see
this as the only consideration.  Were I to base all my actions on their
effects on far flung peoples, I'd be living a far different life.  I
wish I could achieve such a saintly condition.   

The local farm economy has been in free fall for a generation.  I have
watched small towns dry up, farmers age as their children leave, a brain
drain in the schools where all of the National Merit Scholars pack for
the coast after graduation like there was a plague, boarded up houses,
land prices plummeting.  Ethanol has saved the farm economy in my state.
There are farmers able to make a living now, that were starving out ten
years ago.  Now there are technical, engineering and management jobs in
small towns running ethanol plants that didn't exist ten years ago.
Ethanol has been the biggest boon to the Midwest farm economy since the
Homestead act.  

Critiques of energy balance are based on old information.  A major cost
of producing ethanol is energy input, and producers have been tweaking
efficiencies since the beginning. I've seen much more positive numbers
than the figures thrown around here, although I don't have a source
right handy so I won't quote them now.  Critics also don't realize that
gasoline has a big energy cost, too, being a refined product.  

Biofuel is a step. It isn't the final solution to mobile fuels.  It
begins to get average Americans used to the idea that in 20 years, they
will be using more than one kind of energy to move cars around.  The
sources we use for energy will soon become far more diverse than they
are today - plug-in hybrids, fulltime EV's, biodiesels, biofuels and
[gasp!] human power are going to become much more common.  You wean a
baby from milk using soft cereals, and the American public will have to
be weaned off of gasoline.  Eventually, we will have to use none of it.


Biofuel can't replace gasoline, nothing can.  We use far to much of the
stuff.  I'll be doing everything I can to use as little fuel as
possible, but when I do buy fuel, it will be gasohol.  

Despite the criticism of alcohol fuels I've read on this forum, I'll
still be purchasing 10% gasohol at the pump whenever I can, without any
guilt.  

--Lawrence