[Greenbuilding] More thoughts on Ethanol

[Steve T]

I know this is over simplifying the OP, but in a nutshell:
The glass is not half full,
It's empty.

I'm just wondering why everything has to be black or white, good or bad?  It
is possible to make forward progress without a magic pill that fixes
everything immediately.  Biofuels are not a magic pill, that we understand,
but with responsible development it can be a part of the solution.  What if
ethanol plants ran on ethanol?  What if farm equipment ran on biofuel?  What
if semi-trucks and other transportation used ethanol and biofuels?

There are too many possibilities to just write this off.

On 5/11/07, 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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