[Greenbuilding] More thoughts on Ethanol

[sanjay jain]

Lawrence,

Firstly let me say I agree that ethanol is no panacea and that change alway has some unforeseen consequences.

All those people that think we will replace gas by ethanol or even solar, miss a very simple point. What will the oil producers do once these technologies are available? The most likely answer is that they will lower the price. It's very had to compete with a high intensity energy source that you can simply take out of the ground. So oil will continue to be used for the foreseeable future.

Until we bring about a change from leadership based system, where a few people lead the herd, to a mode where most people make real empowered decisions and choices by them selves, we'll always have waves of unpredictable changes and fads.

>Another secondary effect is that high corn prices cause food
>distribution disturbances in other countries.

The disturbance that would happen is the hindering of the existing disturbance - ie the subsidized dumping of food on world markets.

~sanjay










Lawrence Lile <LLile at projsolco.com> wrote: 
Here's another thought on ethanol.  The only thing I learned in
Economics 101 (the rest didn't make any sense, and still doesn't) was
that secondary effects matter.  

A primary effect of using ethanol as fuel is directly lowering
greenhouse gas emissions, because the carbon in the stuff is made out of
biomass. 

But a secondary effect of growing that biomass the way we do, is more
greenhouse gas emissions, because we raise corn with diesel and make
ethanol with heat made from coal. 

Another secondary effect is to boost the farm economy in rural states by
raising corn prices.

Another secondary effect is that high corn prices cause food
distribution disturbances in other countries. 

So the point here is, something that looks good on the face of it has
far-reaching effects, some positive, some negative some really, really
negative.  

We are seeing this because Ethanol is one of the first widely adopted
alternatives.  

Now, stand back from the pros and cons of ethanol for a minute, and look
at it this way:  Every time our economy switches from a major,
polluting, conventional source of energy, there will be disruptions and
secondary effects.  Let's say everyone in the country went out and
bought a solar water heater right now.  Great!  You might say.  But
there'd be 100 people fall off the roof and be killed installing them,
there's be effects on propane and natural gas prices, there would be
effects on manufacturing, there's be more jobs in some sectors, there
would be less jobs in other sectors, and somehow, I can't tell you how,
but somehow there would be some dire effect on some poor guy in the
third world.  

Let's say we all decided to drive Prius's and other hybrids today.
There'd be losers in the car biz, because some companies don't make
efficient cars (listening, Ford?) There'd be small towns in Alabama with
plant closings.  There would be effects on gas prices, less demand might
lower the price and make everybody want to sell their hybrids next year.
10 years later there would be all these batteries to get rid of.
Everntually there would be a scandal when someone figured out how to
dump all those batteries in a Mexican neighborhood on the cheap instead
of recycling them.  

If everybody rode the bus, like I experienced on a visit to Rio de
Janero, the buses were groaning full and there was no room on them,
despite one coming by at every streetcorner every ten minutes.  So you
can't get anywhere on the bus.  Secondary effects. 

My prediction is that every time a new alternative technology becomes
wildly popular, there will be totally unforeseen negative secondary
effects.  These can be used to argue that (XXXYYYZZ) technology is bad,
because it affects (AAABBBCC) in a bad way.  This will tend to increase
the momentum of the status quo and block widespread adoption of
alternatives. Or it will even be used as a counterargument by
conservative forces bent on blocking any change.   We are seeing this
with ethanol right now.  

The more rapidly we adopt a new technology, the more painful these
unforeseen secondary effects may be.  We all want efficient, low
greenhouse technologies to be widely adopted quickly.  Watch out what
you wish for, as they say.

Ethanol is not a panacea, it is a baby step toward a different energy
economy.  It won't replace gasoline, nothing will.  If we have vehicles
at all in 25 or 50 years, they will run on a wide varying mix of energy
sources, and they will be 3X as efficient as what we are tooling around
in today, I predict.  The energy economy our grandchildren will live in
will be far more diverse, and biofuels will be one small component of
it.  After some point, the secondary effects of ethanol will settle out,
we can hope.  


 
 
Lawrence Lile, P.E., LEED AP

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