[Greenbuilding] More thoughts on Ethanol

Sat May 12 10:26:46 CDT 2007

To exacerbate the situation, there's been a subtle shift in supplies from
resource nationalization. For the last 30 years, like Venezuela and Russia
are doing now, more of the world's petro reserves have become controlled by
nationalized/state entities; it's about 70% now. They don't put profits into
R&D (it's sexier to build zero waste desert fantasies, bribe your populace,
and buy favors to your Western "allies"), meaning available supplies will
continue to dwindle as demand grows. This will create a fundamental floor on
prices. The Financial Times reported on it nicely this week.

Jason Holstine
Amicus Green Building Center
www.amicusgreen.com

-----Original Message-----
From: greenbuilding-bounces at listserv.repp.org
[mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of Ward Edwards
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 7:43 PM
To: sanjay jain
Cc: greenbuilding at listserv.repp.org
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] More thoughts on Ethanol

The point that you miss is that the oil companies will soon not be able to
produce oil for a few dollars a barrel.  Most of the easily produced oil is
already been produced and soon we will hit the point were production will
not meet demand (peak oil).  Within 50 years or so, unless oil consumption
is highly curtailed, most of the oil that can be extracted will have been
extracted.  We really needed to start looking for alternative about 30 years
ago.

Ward Edwards

sanjay jain wrote:
> 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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