Why Ethanol Free Gas is More Popular than E85

Sign at a gas station that sells only ethanol free gasoline

Cross-posted from Energy Trends Insider

Sam Avro, Energy Trends Insider editor, recently received an inquiry from a reader about the popularity of ethanol free gasoline in the Midwest. Coincidentally, I recently visited Indianapolis and had noticed a large billboard advertising ethanol free gasoline.

I thought I’d share what I found. Much to my surprise, there are about 8,000 gas stations offering ethanol free gasoline and only about 1,200 offering  E85 (85 percent ethanol). There are about ten million flex fuel cars on the road designed to burn E85. Assuming a cost of about $100 per car to make it flex fuel, and assuming that about 10% of flex fuel cars actually use E85, this would mean that consumers have paid about nine billion dollars for nothing.

Why is ethanol-free gasoline so much more popular than E85? I poked around in comment fields to come up with a short list of reasons, some rational, some not so much.

1. Many consumers realize that E85 reduces gas mileage, but this is largely irrelevant when E85 is cheap enough to make up the difference. Maybe people don’t want to bother running the numbers every time they use E85 to figure out if  it’s cheaper or maybe they don’t want to visit gas stations thirty percent more often.
2. Others fear that gasoline with ten percent ethanol might harm their car. This is a rational concern only for owners of older cars.
3. Some consumers don’t want to use gasoline with corn ethanol for ethical reasons. Using food stock to produce car fuel increases the cost of basic food staples like corn meal and eggs, which impacts the poorest of the world far more than it does the richest.
4.  Still others don’t want corn ethanol in their fuel because of its negative environmental impact. When farmers plant corn instead of some other crop it causes a dominoe effect where farmers in other parts of the world create farmland to plant the crops replaced by corn. Many thousands of acres of wildlife habitat (conservation reserve land) has been converted back into corn  fields as farmers understandably use unproductive land to capitalize on the record breaking high price of corn thanks to government mandated consumption of corn ethanol creating a demand that continues to exceed supply (thus the tripling in the price of corn).
5.  Yet others buy ethanol free gasoline as a way to protest government mandated consumption of what they believe is an inferior product.

Although I am unaware of any environmental organization that supports corn ethanol, some states have made it illegal to sell ethanol free gasoline. Go figure.

As part of writing this article, I discovered that there are two gas stations serving ethanol free gasoline within a few miles of where I live. If I didn’t drive an electric car, I might be buying ethanol free gasoline, for some rational reasons and maybe a few not so rational ones.

Ethanol Saved Consumers $134,400,000,000 in 2011?

Cross-posted from Consumer Energy Report

Back in 2009 two researchers released a study that suggested corn ethanol was saving American’s money at the gas pump. I wrote to one of the authors asking for clarification. His reply:

In the paper, we conclude that evaluated at the average ethanol production level of 01/1995-03/2008, the wholesale gasoline prices is $0.14/gallon lower. The change of retail gasoline prices varies across refinery markets from $0.29-$0.40/gallon.

He also added that the results were unique to prevailing conditions in 2009. According to Wheels, the report has been updated and now claims corn ethanol saved Americans a buck a gallon. However, thanks to ads trying to make hay from this study by the nation’s largest corn ethanol lobbying firm, aka, The Renewable Fuels Association, the study caught the attention of two other researchers:

Mr. Knittel of M.I.T. said in an interview that ethanol most likely reduced gasoline prices, at most, by 10 cents a gallon, after adjustments were made to account for the biofuel’s lower energy potential relative to pure gasoline. He described claims made by the trade group, which have appeared at bus shelters and billboards, particularly around Washington, as “false advertising.”

 Economic studies of this nature can be hard to refute because the only people qualified to critique them are other agricultural economists or statisticians. Common sense can only get you so far. However, Mr. Knittel and Mr. Smith are qualified to critique the study:

To illustrate their critique, the professors employed the same statistical models used in the Iowa State report to draw intentionally absurd conclusions, among them that ethanol production depresses the price of natural gas and increases unemployment in the United States and Europe. “We also used their model to show that ethanol production is causing my daughter to grow older, and if it was taken away she’d get younger,” Mr. Smith said in a telephone interview. “We know that’s not true, or at least we hope it isn’t true.”

Now that’s what I call good use of sarcasm. Shockingly, a spokesman for the RFA defended the scholarship their ad was based on, and never mind that he is no more qualified to defend it than you or I.
The study results are based on regional restraints on supply caused by refinery capacity, so the results will change if you enter a period of lower domestic fuel demand, increasing export of refined petroleum products, and record high prices for corn. Don’t expect to see results of the next study on any bus station billboards if it finds that ethanol is costing Americans $billions.
1200 x 112,000,000 = 134,400,000,000

Nuclear Reactor May Kill 192,000 Annually!

Photo: Wikipedia Commons

Oh, wait a minute. I got that wrong. I meant ethanol reactor, not nuclear reactor.

From a paper published in the spring 2011 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons--the official journal of the AAPS (Association of American Physicians and Surgeons):

Research by the World Bank indicates that the increase in biofuels production over 2004 levels would push more than 35 million additional people into absolute poverty in 2010 in developing countries. Using statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Indur Goklany estimates that this would lead to at least 192,000 excess deaths per year, plus disease resulting in the loss of 6.7 million disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) per year.

Source: http://www.jpands.org/vol16no1/goklany.pdf

While tens-of-thousands of grossly inaccurate and wildly sensationalist headlines about a single nuclear power plant that caused not a single radiation related fatality after being hit with a 36 foot high wall of water and magnitude 9 quake circled the globe ...200,000 poor people quietly die from malnutrition--annually.

How do you prevent a profit driven media from competing for readership with an ever-escalating arms race of sensationalist headlines? The damage done by the lay press probably matches that of the quake.

Journalists like George Monbiot with the courage to stare down reality, along with the Internet and comment fields, may save us yet:

The unpalatable truth is that the anti-nuclear lobby has misled us all

Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power

The double standards of green anti-nuclear opponents

And this from IstockAnalyst:

"We have to be aware that as long as the government is mandating using these food sources for fuel, despite the fact that there is still grain that comes out as a by-product, that is going to be a large demand that's not going away," Noonan says.

Meanwhile, global grain supply fell about 2.5% short of demand this year, says George Lee, the manager of the CF Eclectica Agriculture fund. As a result, with demand growing at about 2.5% a year, the harvest needs to grow by 5% next year, which he says is a big number compared with historical data. "

EPA approves E15--Bob Dinneen unsatiated

Bob Dinneen, head of a very well-funded corn ethanol lobbying organization, has a new press release in the Huff Po green blog which begins by claiming:

Other nations, including Brazil, with at least as many older vehicles on their roads, allow higher levels of ethanol blends with no discernible damage to their cars and light trucks.

In reality, unlike American cars, cars in Brazil where ethanol blends have been 22% since 1993 are all designed to run on that higher blend. According to Wikipedia:

"All Brazilian automakers have adapted their gasoline engines to run smoothly with these range of mixtures, thus, all gasoline vehicles are built to run with blends from E20 to E25, defined by local law as "Common gasoline type C". Some vehicles might work properly with lower concentrations of ethanol, however, with a few exceptions, they are unable to run smoothly with pure gasoline which causes engine knocking, as vehicles traveling to neighboring South American countries have demonstrated.."

Next he tells us about a study conducted specifically "for" his lobbying organization and paid for in part by the Illinois Corn Marketing Board:

In fact, the internationally recognized automotive-engineering firm, Ricardo, Inc., recently conducted a study for the Renewable Fuels Association [my emphasis] that used EPA's own engineering assessment methodology to determine the efficacy of E15 in vehicles MY2000 and older [not exactly true, the study went back only 6 years]. The report concludes: "... the adoption and use of E15 in the motor vehicle fleet from the studied model years should not [my emphasis and note they did not use the term "will not"] adversely affect the vehicles or cause them to perform in a sub-optimal manner when compared with their performance when using the E10 blend that is currently available."

Hmmm, who to believe? An organization chartered to protect the environment or a company that designs fuel systems for the car industry? Your call. According to the Ricardo study:

Six automotive manufacturers were identified as representing the overwhelming majority of vehicles sales for the study period, and the top selling platforms of these manufacturers thus became the focus of the Ricardo study. This approach enabled Ricardo to carry out engineering analysis without individually inspecting or testing each of this very large number of vehicles.

...this study demonstrates for the first time that raising the blend ceiling to E15 is "likely" to have a "negligible" [my emphasis] impact on vehicles manufactured between 1994 and 2000.

That's right. They only actually physically tested a handful of cars. In other words, if a 15 percent blend screws your car up immediately, or slowly over time, too bad for you because they never said it wouldn't, they said the higher blend is "likely" to have a "negligible" impact.



Bob goes on to tell us that EPA mandated labels on gasoline pumps to warn consumers that they are about to put a 15 percent blend into their cars "will ...confuse gasoline marketers, retailers and consumers.."

I own four cars (because my family has four drivers--myself, my wife, and my two daughters who are still in school). Half of our cars are quite a bit older than the study covered using statistical methods. What about all the poor people in America driving older cars, Bob? Is your organization going to pay their repair bills, (assuming the Ricardo study is correct, which is not "likely")?

...while making it more difficult for the nation to transition from imported oil to clean-burning, American-made renewable fuels. As it says in Scripture, "For if the bugle produces an indistinct sound, who will prepare himself for battle?"

Above Dinneen(along with quoting scripture that references violence), continues to claim that corn ethanol can scale up to the point of replacing imported oil. It can't. Using a third of our corn crop it barely displaces five percent of our gasoline use. And this fuel is not what you could call clean. In addition to being the major cause of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/E85PaperEST0207.pdf:

"..Due to its ozone effects, future E85 may be a greater overall public health risk than gasoline.."

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/02/02/0812835106.full.pdf:

"health costs are $469 million for gasoline and $472–$952 million for corn ethanol, with the higher totals coming from coal-fired production."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091214101408.htm:

"..would likely worsen health problems caused by ozone, compared with gasoline, especially in winter.."

Although his overarching concern appears to be national security, below he plays the global warming card:

On the environmental front, according to an analysis conducted by the EPA, ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 61 percent, compared to gasoline.

Actually, according to this NRDC article:

At its worst, lifecycle GHG emissions from corn ethanol exceed those from gasoline in all three scenarios. At its best, corn ethanol is not that much better than gasoline on a climate basis, and certainly not good enough to warrant the soil degradation, water resource depletion and water pollution it continues to cause.

Bob continues distorting reality:

On the economic front, the US ethanol industry supports nearly 400,000 jobs

Actually, according to this NRDC article:

"..by some estimates, fully 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the jobs were already there... But US farmers would have been growing crop any way thanks to domestic agricultural subsidies and just exporting more than we do today. Thus if there’s any significant job creation in agriculture, it’s probably internationally where farmers are trying to make up for the higher level of exports our farmers would have been able to supply."

Next, Bob tells us ethanol paid $15.9 billion in federal, state and local taxes. What he does not tell us is that those taxes would have been paid by the gasoline the ethanol replaced, so no new income was generated as he suggests.

When it comes to energy security, the production of a record 10.75 billion gallons of ethanol last year replaced 364 million barrels of oil that would otherwise have been imported from unstable nations with unfriendly governments, such as Hugo Chavez's Venezuela and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran.

America has not imported any oil from Iran since the hostage crisis during the Carter administration and 10.75 billion gallons barely represents five percent of our gasoline use. Considering that it took about a third of our corn crop to do that it's easy to see that corn ethanol can't scale up enough to provide a modicum of energy security.

Meanwhile, the Blend Wall also stands in the way of developing the next generation of biofuels from feedstocks such as woodchips, corncobs, native grasses, and even garbage.

The above quote is a beautiful example of what Orwell called "doublespeak." In reality, it is thanks to corn ethanol that there is little market left for alternative versions of ethanol. It has hogged the entire market up for itself. The greatest impediment to alternative forms of ethanol ...is corn ethanol.

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Saddles To Replace Seats In All Electric Cars

[UPDATE 9/12/2010]
Picture above from Gas 2.0. Beautiful example of good marketing. But to tell the truth, it would be more accurate to have a whale hug the Leaf owner.

As I write, I'm watching the above video of a test drive of the Nissan Leaf (you can right click on the video to watch the full sized version on YouTube). Also see this article about the Leaf by Todd Woody over on Grist, and this one by Sami Grover at Treehugger. Today, car dealerships make most of their money from car maintenance, which is why electric cars will spell the end of a lot of car dealerships and car repair shops. They will also shrink the car industry in general.

This will result in the loss of jobs--but only in the car manufacturing and repair industries because it will free consumer dollars up to invest in other things, like solar panels to charge their electric cars. Same thing happened to saddle makers and if they had a lobby as large and powerful as the oil and corn ethanol lobbies, we would probably have government mandated saddles instead of seats in our cars today.

On the other hand, an industry may spring up to convert used cars to electric if a standard motor, controller, and battery pack can be purchased by third parties.

And for all of you Luddites, the used batteries will be too valuable to throw away and they also don't require the mining and smelting of nickel.

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Corn Ethanol's Enemy List

Photo courtesy of, er, Hidinhumiliation via Flickr

A short, relatively innocuous post on an obscure farming blog created a small stir last week when it caught the attention of some less obscure bloggers, Robert Rapier in particular, who was was on the corn ethanol enemy list presented in this article.

I didn't want to open a can of worms in that blogger's comment field, but the can got opened anyway so I finally chimed in. Mine was comment number 41.

I outed an anonymous commenter named "Cindy" who was critical of anonymous posts:

Cindy,

"If you believe so strongly in what you are saying, put more than just your first name on it!"

Ah, internet espionage. I suspect you are Cindy Zimmerman, the corn ethanol lobbyist who publishes the Domestic Fuel blog, and by using only a first name without a link, you can deny this should someone point it out, or have another person named Cindy deny it ...tricky ; )

These anon posters are taking reasonable precautions. Note that the corn ethanol lobby does not limit itself to critiquing research, they publicly attack individuals including the lead authors of published research (Pimentel, Searchinger, etc).

Note also the hint of militarism here (Corn Corps with Kernels in charge) as well as in the Domestic Fuel blog where a recent post talks about a general (Wesley Clark of Growth "Force") addressing the "troops."

The fact that corn ethanol enjoys broad support from both Democrat and Republican politicians (Bush, McCain, and Obama all used it to buy votes from the farm belt) is the only thing keeping this debate from degenerating into another intractable culture war.

Ironically, and irrationally, science-based debate is being drowned out to garner government handouts for the same crowd that purports to reject global warming and government handouts.

The bottom line is this. All through human history, our species has banded together into cooperating groups to take resources from other cooperating groups. The most extreme form of this is called warfare. In this case, the corn and corn ethanol lobbies are out to raid America's public larder (taxes collected from other citizens).

The power brokers know they are raiding the larder and being at the top of the pyramid scheme are planning to get out with their bag of money after riding the pony as far as they can.

Their propaganda machine has convinced the minions that corn ethanol is God's gift to humanity. They have been convinced that it creates jobs, which it does, in the same manner a single mom with kids who spends the welfare check on food and housing for her children will create jobs.

Welfare is a good way to help a struggling single mom care for her kids but it isn't hard to see why we can't all be on welfare. Do corn ethanol refiners deserve welfare? The corn ethanol lobby is hoping to net $100 billion of it in the next decade.

There are people out there now who have actually been convinced that corn ethanol is creating more food than it is consuming and it goes on and on.

It has always been this way. Power brokers all through history have found ways to get the little people to go to bat for them. Usually it is done by promising them riches and by controlling knowledge, keeping them ignorant and away from the truth. This is getting harder to do in the age of the internet.

The closing comment in the blog post shows how effective propaganda can be:

Waterman also notes that the number one slot could have easily gone to “mainstream media” who publish uninformed articles and are too lazy to complete adequate research, but he was trying to be more specific.

Although it's true that the mainstream media is generally quite inaccurate and definitely not the place to go for reliable information, it is still far preferable to reading websites published by lobbying front groups and blogs by dupes who have been brainwashed by them.

One commenter was appalled by all of the negative comments. In my experience, ethanol articles always draw about 95% negative comments. She just doesn't know that is the norm outside of her smaller world of corn farmers.

She also somehow managed to take the critique of corn ethanol to be a critique of farmers in general, and by association, herself in particular, as a farmer.

She has also bought hook, line, and sinker, the party line that farmer's are God's chosen people because they are in the business of providing food. But, restaurants are also in the business of providing food. When one goes bankrupt, another quickly fills the hole left behind, just like with farms. Farmers, like restaurateurs, are just businesspersons with thin profit margins, which are the norm for all mature industries.

Who do you suppose it was that convinced farmers that they are somehow better and more deserving than restaurant owners? Hint--somebody who wants to use them.

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The Bobs--Corn Ethanol's Dynamic Duo

Photo courtesy of Chuckumentary via Flickr

"Could it be the unholy alliance between oil interests and environmentalists?"--Bob Dinneen, CEO of the RFA

*Bob Dinneen (the Bob on the right) is the CEO of the RFA, a corn ethanol propaganda mill lobbying organization that never prints the word "corn" next to the word "ethanol." Note also that he has dropped the whole "energy independence" canard for a new one called "reduce America's reliance on oil." This is because ethanol exports (including some to the Middle East) are going ballistic because ethanol refiners are getting a better price from foreign consumers. Bob's job is to attack anything and anyone critical of corn ethanol.

One tactic used is to publicly denigrate individual researchers who have findings not conducive to corn ethanol:

Environmentalists who have attacked ethanol on the basis of ILUC have relied, almost exclusively, on a highly speculative study by non-scientist, Tim Searchinger.

By my count, this "non-scientist" has been published five times in the prestigious journal Science (including the above referenced study), an honor most researchers don't obtain once in their entire careers. Brace yourself Science, you are undoubtedly next on the RFA hit list.

However, the latest research by Purdue University reflects the scientific community's rejection of Searchinger's initial paper that brought the ILUC issue to the front burner in February 2008. Since then, the estimated emissions purportedly occurring from ILUC penalty have fallen by nearly 90%. Rather than acknowledge the evolution of the science, Big Oil's environmentalists say nothing.

Here we have Bob trying to cherry pick his science. In this case he picks a study from Purdue University (my Alma Matter) which he claims contradicts Searchinger (and by the way, it is done by economists, not scientists). Following are some direct quotes from those Purdue researchers:

"...with almost a third of the US corn crop today going to ethanol, it is simply not credible to argue that there are no land use change implications of corn ethanol."

"...show that ethanol could be a somewhat better option than previously thought for reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

"The third simulation, which Tyner said is probably the most accurate, reduces the amount of carbon dioxide that would be emitted by about 10 percent. But he warned that the numbers are still uncertain because the model contains many complex relationships..."

I don't link to Dinneen's rant because I don't want to draw traffic to it because that will just encourage the publisher to allow him to post more rants to draw more traffic to generate more ad revenue. I parse the rest of his article below:

The slow and tepid response from the nation's major environmental organizations to the massive and devastating oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico ...

He made that up of course. There was nothing slow or tepid about it. How do you know when a politician is lying? His lips are moving, and we are all painfully aware that corporate lobbyists are the ones pulling the strings that move those lips.

...stands in stark contrast to their sustained and voracious attacks on homegrown renewable fuels such as [corn] ethanol.

There is no "sustained and voracious" attack against ethanol. There is a lot of critique of corn ethanol policy, its costs to other citizens, and its environmental impacts and these critiques are coming from all over the place, not just from environmental groups (livestock farmers, food wholesalers, scientific researchers, duck hunters, recreation vehicle organizations, and on and on).

And corn ethanol isn't a "renewable" fuel. About 3/4 of the energy found in a gallon of corn ethanol comes from non-renewable fossil fuels. This is largely a process that converts coal and natural gas into ethanol. Note how he will not use the term "corn ethanol" even though that is what 99% of all ethanol used in this country is made out of.

Environmental organizations such as NRDC, Friends of the Earth and the Environmental Working Group have been working hand in glove with the National Petroleum Refiners Association to undermine expansion of America's renewable fuels industry.

He also made that up. The corn ethanol lobby just launched a gargantuan propaganda blitz to convince congress to reinstate the blender's subsidy, which is supposed to end this year. They want it extended another five years to the tune of about $34 billion taxpayer's dollars. The blender's credit is a bribe to petroleum refiners to blend more corn ethanol than they are already forced to blend by mandate laws. They get about fifty cents for every gallon of ethanol they blend into our gas supply. Click here to see my anti-propaganda propaganda blitz.

Oil companies already own a significant number of our corn ethanol refineries--liquid fuels are their bag, baby. They will own them all before it's over.

This should come as no surprise. Recently, The Nation magazine, not a bastion of conservative thought, in an extensive article highlighted the close relationship between major oil companies and some of the nation's major environmental organizations. "They [the environmental organizations] take money, and in turn they offer praise, even when the money comes from the companies causing environmental devastation." The article cites Christine MacDonald, author of Green, Inc., noting, "Not only do the largest conservation groups take money from companies deeply implicated in environmental crimes; they have become something like satellite PR offices for the corporations that support them."

Dinneen has cherry picked quotes from a diatribe he found in a liberal publication to support his own piece of crap. Liberals everywhere should be flattered that he thinks anything published in a liberal magazine must be accurate. The following is another quote from that article in the Nation:

I have stood in half-dead villages on the coast of Bangladesh while families point to a distant place in the rising ocean and say, "Do you see that chimney sticking up? That's where my house was... I had to [abandon it] six months ago."

Riiight, as if the ocean has risen enough in six months to cover an entire house ...eyes rolling.

This tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico is likely to be the largest ecological disaster our nation has ever experienced. It is likely to be worse than the Exxon Valdez and the 1969 Union blowout off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. The 1969 disaster helped mobilize the environmental movement, led to the first Earth Day in 1970 and paved the way for numerous environmental laws. Environmentalists focused on the importance of improving the safety of offshore oil drilling and called for ways to reduce America's reliance on oil.

In the above, he finally gets something right as he describes the oil spill and praises environmental organizations (the same ones who he attacks for opposing expansion of his corn ethanol product).

So far, this incident has only precipitated scorn from the environmental community toward those of us that had the temerity to state the obvious: if we invest more in renewable energy we wouldn't have to drill in ecologically-sensitive land or waters to begin with!

Not true. Most scorn is directed at offshore drilling although there certainly is some directed at lobbying organizations like the RFA for trying to take advantage of this disaster to hawk their product. Environmental organizations are all for investing more in renewable energy, but as I pointed out before, corn ethanol isn't renewable. Environmental organizations are against replacing oil with something that is in its own ways worse than oil.

Runoff from industrial agriculture is the primary driver of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone. It's a chronic unending, ongoing, slow-motion, ecological disaster that dwarfs this oil spill in size and longevity but does not make the headlines specifically because it is chronic and ongoing.

Could it be the unholy alliance between oil interests and environmentalists?

"Or could it be ...Satan?!" --Church Lady

This is what I would call (called) an unholy alliance:

Transgressing identified and quantified planetary boundaries

Environmentalists have spent millions of oil industry dollars to fight ethanol, concocting various strawmen and red herrings, namely Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC).

And again, not true. ILUC stands for indirect land use change. Dinneen wants you to believe that you can hand over thirty thousand square miles of land to corn ethanol that was being used for other things like wildlife habitat and various food crops without it causing farmers around the world to clear more land to make up for that loss of land to grow food instead of fuel. All you need is a modicum of common sense to see that.

Roughly a third of our corn crop was turned into fuel last year. Imagine the impact of turning it all into fuel. The same legislation that provided the subsidy bribe to oil companies to blend ethanol into our fuel supply set a limit of 15 billion gallons for corn ethanol's contribution to the ethanol supply for a reason. Otherwise, the RFA would happily turn all of our food into fuel.

That is why high-fructose corn syrup was invented and why corn has found its way into just about everything we eat. There is no other explanation for the fact that the price of corn has remained about twice as high as historical averages for the last three years even though farmers have planted historically high amounts of it. Typically when farmers plant huge amounts of corn the price drops because supply exceeds demand. Corn ethanol is making sure demand exceeds supply.

Second, and most unfortunately, this accident reminds us once again of the destructive power of oil. Are major environmental organizations so focused on climate change that they can avoid focusing on the devastation that an offshore oil accident can produce? Have they become so enamored with bringing Big Oil to the climate change negotiating table that they need to show their power by kicking ethanol, even when it is less polluting than oil [not true] and where a spill has little discernible or lasting impact on the environment [not true]? We hope that like a condemned man who finally sees the light, environmental organizations now realize that renewable ethanol [not true] represents a cleaner [not true], less polluting [not true] future.

Renewable ethanol is one thing, corn ethanol is another, the Gulf of Mexico dead zone is rather irrefutable evidence of corn ethanol's longevity and impact on the environment.

when compared to the search for, production, importation and consumption of oil. I for one am not holding my breath.

Riiight. This isn't about energy independence. It's about profit. European officials estimated that 80 percent of U.S. biodiesel production was exported in 2008 and corn ethanol exports are starting to surge as well. The corn ethanol industry will sell to the highest bidder, even if that bidder is in the Middle East. From Ethanol Producer Magazine:

Washington – Ethanol exports have boomed in recent months, with shipments destined for dozens of energy-thirsty nations around the globe, including some in the Middle East. The United States has been a net importer of ethanol for the last decade, but the nation is quickly evolving into a net exporter. While this is welcomed news to an industry looking for new markets, it serves to undermine the fundamental value of America’s ethanol industry as a domestic replacement for imported oil.

The RFA of course has cobbled together a new list of excuses for why they are now exporting fuel, you know, like, "Well if the government won't let us force more of this down our fellow citizen's throats while simultaneously forcing them to subsidize it, then we will just have to export it to the highest bidder." Which will always be true anytime there is a higher bidder offshore, regardless of how much we are forced to consume domestically. Short of making it illegal to export our energy independence, they will export it.

[Update 5/27/2010] A paper published in Ambio, the journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, found that by 2050 there will barely be enough land and water to grow enough food with nothing left over to grow biofuels:

http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/Ambio_Agriculture.pdf

Here, I adapted a chart found on the Oil Drum to show how we have to expand land use to meet biofuel mandates. It shows what will happen if we stay on our present course and don't usurp rainforests and grassland carbon sinks.

*Photo linked to RFA Flickr account. Taking bets this photo will soon disappear from that address.

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Corn Ethanol Propaganda Blitz Backfires

For the full effect, turn your speakers on and click on the box with four arrows in the lower right-hand corner of the video before playing it.

I see it has already drawn a video response from a company that retrofits cars to run on E-85. I cringe at the thought of the hateful comments this video will elicit. Human nature can be an ugly thing to behold.

I put the above video together as an example of anti-propaganda propaganda. The truth is complex; propaganda is simple. The $13.7 billion number in the concluding Google search applies to all lobbying in the united states, not just corn ethanol or biofuels.*

About $8 million was spent on lobbying by various biofuel groups in 2009.

Also note that my title is, ah, presumptive and with a little time may grow into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Propaganda hit its zenith during the World Wars. All sides used it to garner support from the public by fanning the flames of xenophobia. Germany's propaganda in particular was appallingly effective at this.

The concept of evil is all in our minds. In reality, everyone thinks they are the good guys. Here's a recent article on that subject.

Growth Energy has launched this $2.5 million dollar campaign to secure an additional $30 billion in subsidies in the next five years and to get the amount of ethanol blended into our gas increased by 50%, oh, and they are also planning to get our government to fund a dedicated ethanol pipeline to the coasts (so they can export it) making corn ethanol too big to fail.

General Wesley Clark is one of the main players behind this blitz. He has a typical militarist's "us against them" worldview, which I'm guessing overrides the rational, scientific, environmental, and economic arguments against government support of corn ethanol.

IMHO, he's being used by the corn ethanol industry, which would happily export every drop of corn ethanol if they could get a higher price for it overseas as the biodiesel producers were doing (before being slapped with countervailing import duties). And if he protests when they start doing that he will more than likely have to find a new job because this is not really about national security; it's about profit. He just doesn't know that yet.

The following is a screen shot of a Google search I did yesterday on "food vs fuel:"



Note at the top the three sponsored links meant to deflect what you will find with this search term. Is Google being used as a propaganda mill by the highest bidders?

Go here to their $2.5 million dollar propaganda blitz er, ad campaign you have probably already seen on television (note that the word "corn" never precedes the word "ethanol" even though 99.8 percent of all ethanol produced in the United States comes from corn and that the word "food" is also conspicuously absent):

ETHANOL has not shipped a single job overseas--AMERICA'S "ECONOMIC" FUEL--Growth Energy

Well, that's not entirely true. The fertilizer, pesticides, and diesel fuel used on farms and the trucks that transport ethanol, and many of the components in farm equipment as well as the ethanol refineries came from overseas.

I'm not a big fan of fossil fuels but let's be honest here. Which fuel is worse? Imported oil is refined in America, creating many jobs. Saudi Arabia imports its refined gas and diesel. Oil does not send jobs overseas, although buying a Prius or any computer certainly does.

We don't have to wait millions of years to replenish our ETHANOL reserves--AMERICA'S "RENEWABLE" FUEL--Growth Energy

Roughly 75% of the energy contained in a gallon of corn ethanol came from non-renewable fossil fuels. Not to mention, the corn is wholly dependent on fertilizers and pesticides derived from fossil fuels. You can't call a fuel that is utterly dependent on fossil fuels renewable. Well, I guess they just did, but not with a straight face.

ETHANOL has contributed $0 to the governments of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela--AMERICA'S "SENSIBLE" FUEL--Growth Energy

Here they are fanning the flames of xenophobia to hawk their product. Last time I checked, Saudi Arabia was our ally in the Gulf war and even paid for half of it. We still have five air bases located there.

We have not imported oil from Iran for decades. Note, however, that they still manage to sell every last drop to someone. That's because the world is now flat and oil is highly fungible (look it up). We can't crush our "evil" enemies by not buying oil from them.

No wars have ever been fought over ETHANOL--AMERICA'S "PEACE" FUEL--Growth Energy

...yet. Corn ethanol only represents about 2% of our supply. Using all of our cropland for corn ethanol would replace maybe 12%. To replace all of our imported oil with ethanol will require a lot of imports from places like South America where sugarcane ethanol is about ten times more energy efficient to produce.

The "NO WAR FOR OIL" bumper sticker was invented by big biofuel. If you have one on your car you are a dupe. Corn ethanol is not a ticket to world peace and note that our military budget has not been impacted by increased ethanol production.

Our efforts to maintain peace in the Middle East has to continue, oil or no oil, because the world is now flat. Mutually interdependent trading partners are the best chance for maintaining world peace. An energy shortage that brings our trading partners down would bring us down with them, as our banking and housing debacle just did to them.

No U.S. soldiers have been deployed to defend our ETHANOL reserves--AMERICA'S "INDEPENDENT" FUEL--Growth Energy

...yet. According to George W. Bush, our soldiers were deployed to root out weapons of mass destruction and to punish the guy responsible for bringing the Twin Towers down (who actually had nothing to do with it). Is Growth Energy saying our president lied to us? Are they saying he really went to war to protect our oil "reserves?" I'm stunned.

No beaches have been closed due to ETHANOL spills--AMERICA'S "CLEAN" FUEL--Growth Energy

...yet. Remember, corn ethanol only represents about 2% of our supply. Ethanol tanker spills have been causing their share of damage already. The largest fish kill in Illinois history occurred last year when a train pulling corn ethanol tankers derailed. The year before that 25,000 fish were killed and an entire population of an endangered mussel species was wiped out when another biofuel refiner dumped waste into a river in Missouri.







*I tried to replace the words "total spent on lobbying 2009 ...$13.7 billion" with something less potentially misleading like "$30 billion in subsidies, a 50% blend increase ..." in an updated video but was abruptly censored by somebody at Google (who I suspect is a big corn ethanol proponent) with the message, "We're trying to keep these appropriate for everyone ..."

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Question for Arianna Huffington

(Photo credit catchesthelight via the Flickr Creative Commons license).

Why does Bob Dinneen, CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association (an organization that just spent almost a quarter of a million dollars last quarter lobbying for corn ethanol) have a blog in the Huffington Post's environmental forum? Why not give a spot to the ACCCE so they can use it to tell us how clean coal is?

The RFA has been retained to defend a client--corn ethanol. It is analogous to the NRA, which is currently fighting to keep lead bullets legal in Arizona even though they are poisoning California condors.

The RFA's claim to support all biofuels is a Trojan Horse to hide corn ethanol in. The last thing the corn ethanol lobby wants is a competitor that can make ethanol cheaper than they can. Right now the only feedstock that can do that is sugarcane and that is why they continue to support the tariff against it. If or when another feedstock becomes cheaper, they may well find a way to thwart it as well.

From his latest post:

"Consensus in Copenhagen? Replace Gasoline with Biofuels!"

Riiiight. The title insinuates that the consensus in Copenhagen is to replace gasoline with biofuels regardless of environmental impact or cost. He starts exaggerating right away:

"Transportation accounts for 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions"

Transportation accounts for about 12 percent of GHG, not 25 percent. He is off a modest 100 percent.

"Delegates to Copenhagen may not know it, but the limousines in which they are riding are running on ethanol made from straw."

Good to see some progress on biofuels that are not made from food but the delegates also may not know that:

"..Denmark’s Inbicon today [one month ago] opened its first demonstration facility producing cellulosic ethanol, but potential customers will have to wait.

Inbicon has already sold its first year of production to Statoil, which plans to blend the ethanol into the Danish fuel supply early next year. In addition, some of the ethanol is being reserved to fuel E-85 vehicles during next month’s COP-15 meeting in Copenhagen.."

Source: http://cleantech.com/news/5322/inbicon-cellulosic-ethanol-denmark-dong

Dinneen continues:

"...there's one issue on which the world's wealthier and poorer nations should be able to agree:

Immediate action is needed to increase the production of biofuels of all kinds, particularly for use in the transportation sector"

Most climate experts agree (Jim Hansen in particular) that coal is the biggest problem, not gasoline. And you would only want to promote biofuels that actually reduce GHG emissions. Corn ethanol, which accounts for 99 percent of the ethanol used in the United States does not fit that bill.

"Fortunately, one solution is already available. With the support and coordination of governments and international bodies, existing and emerging biofuels can continue to replace the use of gasoline and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases."

Actually, the only biofuels that produce less GHG than conventional petroleum are those made from waste and from sugarcane grown on degraded or existing cropland. And another solution that is readily available are high mileage cars like the Prius, Insight, Civic hybrid and on and on which produce about 100% less GHG than America's present car fleet average.

"In 2008, the 9 billion gallons of domestic ethanol produced and consumed in the US resulted in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions comparable to removing 2.1 million cars from the road."

That 9 billion gallons of ethanol (which usurped about thirty thousand square miles of cropland) all came from corn and 2.1 million cars represents only about one percent of our registered cars. About 70 percent of corn ethanol comes from fossil fuels. The thirty thousand square miles of corn fields diverted to gas tanks displaced carbon sink land outside the US, and the large amounts of fertilizer created large amounts of nitrous oxide (hundreds of times more potent than CO2). When accounting for fossil fuel input, land displacement, and fertilizer generated nitrous oxide, corn ethanol likely produced far more GHG than the gasoline it displaced.

"This year, the world is expected to produce 80 billion liters (around 21 billion gallons) of ethanol, replacing the need for 1.9 billion barrels a day of crude oil."

A commenter in the Huffington Post article pointed out several days ago that the above sentence makes no sense. The world consumes about 86 million barrels of oil a day. About 1% of global oil consumption replaced by ethanol.

"It is estimated that the global production of biofuels will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 123 million tons in 2009 alone. Such an impressive and growing environmental benefit stands in stark contrast to the environmental footprint of the petroleum industry which continues to worsen."

That estimate, wherever it came from, is likely 100% wrong, and I would not call it impressive. Assuming he meant metric tons CO2 equivalent (I doubt he has any idea) 123 million tons is minuscule (a fraction of a percent) in comparison to total global emissions.

"Researchers from the University of Nebraska have reported that, compared to gasoline, today's ethanol reduces direct greenhouse gas emissions between 48 percent to 59 percent."

Those values are estimates for the newest biorefineries, not an average for all existing refineries. I love how he quotes research that supports his product while simultaneously denigrating researchers with findings that don't support his product. The researchers also state in the Nebraska study that this does not include GHG from land displaced nor does it include the latest findings for nitrous oxide release which suggests corn ethanol is up to 50% worse than gasoline.

"According to the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, ethanol produced from these cellulosic feedstocks has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 85 percent, compared to gasoline."

Bait and switch baby. The RFA is using the potential of future non-food based fuels as a Trojan Horse to hide corn ethanol in.

"Meanwhile, as conventional oil is depleted and exploration shifts to unconventional sources such as tar sands, shale and the deep sea, finding and using petroleum will require more energy and release more greenhouse gases."

The above sentence is the first accurate one in this article. However, the environmental impact of biofuels are already gargantuan and will only get worse as biofuel production increases.

"All of this is occurring against a backdrop of increased agricultural productivity activity."

I took the liberty of editing that sentence. The number of hungry human beings just passed through a billion for the first time. A recent paper in Nature demonstrates that our agriculture is primarily responsible for exceeding planetary nitrogen boundaries. I talk about it in the following article titled "Transgressing identified and quantified planetary boundaries."

"Vast tracts of arable land remain unused. As the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has reported, there are, at present, 1.5 billion hectares of land used for farming. That is only 11 percent of the world's surface area, and almost twice as much arable land - 2.8 billion acres - remains unused. With new magical farming technologies, this land can be responsibly and sustainably managed to provide a growing population both food and renewable fuel."

The above paragraph is nonsensical gibberish. If there is so much arable land going unused why don't we grow corn for biofuel there instead of using our rich, fertile farmland? That's a rhetorical question. Everyone knows that answer--cost.

"That is why it is so encouraging that the developing world has huge supplies of the "biomass" (wood and plant wastes) that will be the feedstocks for the next generation of biofuels. As one recent study concluded, biomass could fuel 65 percent of the world's energy consumption by 2050. Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America account for about half of this global potential."

The above paragraph got a chuckle out of me. Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America account for about half of this "wood and plant waste." By waste, I suspect he means "ecosystems not yet destroyed by humanity."

"These facts stand in contrast to those who argue biofuels are destroying the land and responsible for deforestation."

See what I mean? By using the word "those" he is denigrating not just the science, but the scientists that have demonstrated that instead of trying to grow crops on degraded and denuded land, farmers tend to clear virgin land to grow crops when price signals (corn ethanol hogging up 30,000 square miles of land and doubling the price of corn) suggest they may profit from creating that new cropland. That's what slash and burn agriculture is all about.

"Yet, forest land in the US has been increasing at the same time that ethanol production has grown."

That would of course prove nothing, assuming it is even true. More land is being planted with corn to capitalize on its high price. That land is not coming from protected American forests.

"Moreover, global deforestation has slowed as global biofuel production has accelerated. The development of biofuels could fuel the economies of developing countries, reducing the desperation that produces deforestation by illegal logging, cattle ranching, and subsistence farming."

Global deforestation has slowed with the economy, but it would have slowed even more without the demand for biofuels. Biofuels won't reduce "the desperation that produces deforestation by illegal logging, cattle ranching, and subsistence farming." It will add to the destruction being caused by those things. Biofuels are a new demand on the biosphere.

"Energy security, economic growth, and environmental responsibility: These are three reasons why the Copenhagen climate change conference should create a new consensus, among developed and developing nations, to encourage the production and use of biofuels."

Corn ethanol does not provide any meaningful energy security, economic growth (it would disappear in a year without government largess), or environmental responsibility.

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The Myth of the American Farmer

Image is everything. Whatever image you may have in your head of an American farmer, the too-numerous-to-count agriculture promotional groups most likely planted it there. Thanks to my teenage daughter who is very active with 4H, I have a bumper sticker on my car that says, "I love my farmer," and in her case that is quite true.

Here are some results of a recent poll conducted for the National Corn Growers Association.

A nationwide survey conducted for the National Corn Growers Association found broad public respect and trust for family farmers and support for corn as food, feed and fuel. Ninety-five percent of those polled find farmers to be trusted messengers on issues such as agriculture, corn products and ethanol – and ethanol itself was supported or strongly supported as a good fuel alternative by 65 percent.

Respondents also spoke out about what they saw as the top benefits of corn-based ethanol. Thirty-four percent mentioned reduced dependence on foreign oil [so small it can't be detected], 19 percent mentioned the creation of new jobs [tens of billions in subsidies to give farm states like Nebraska a grand total of 1,000 new jobs] and 16 percent liked it for its environmental benefits [of which it has none].

I'll bet the word "corn" was never put next to the word "ethanol" in that poll. You can also bet that the wording was loaded to get answers they could publish. For example, using the word "family" next to the word farm.

Farmers can't be trusted on food and fuel issues anymore than oil companies can. It is a fact of human nature that the profit motive clouds judgment:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding."--Upton Sinclair

Following is a quote from a Nebraska corn farmer from a recent article in CNN (I don't link to it because it has no comment field):

"The food versus fuel argument is, you know, not my decision," Jeff Shaner told us. "It is the market decision. If in five years the market is telling me to go with switchgrass, we'll go with switchgrass. ... Whether if be corn or soybeans or whatever the case may be, I just hope I am flexible enough to realize it and change what needs to be done in order to be successful."

That's right. He will plant grass instead of food if that's where the money is.

The small family farm is a small business, no more deserving of charity than any other small business. Farmers are businessmen, nothing more, nothing less.

And when the farm lobbyists threaten that your food supply will be in jeopardy if you don't subsidize farmers, understand that your food would cost even less if a lot of these marginally profitable farms were bought out and run by companies that are capable of making a profit.

I doubt that your image of an American farm involves a series of steel buildings filled with cages of chickens laying eggs onto a conveyor belt. That's an egg farm. I recently watched an episode of Dirty Jobs where the film crew visited an egg farmer. The show's host scooped up tons of chicken offal off a concrete floor with a front-loader tractor under the elevated chicken cages while said chickens continued to crap on him. Not real interesting, but dirty.

I also doubt that your image is of a heavy equipment operator. Ever see the documentary called King Corn? As far as I could discern, there is little difference between a corn farmer and any other operator of heavy machinery except farmers drive their machines in a straight line. Check out some of this John Deere equipment that helps them do that.

Here is a short list of adjectives (in the order they appeared in my head) that you can stick in front of the word farmer: organic, tobacco, cotton, wheat, corn, soybean, chicken, pig, egg, and dairy. There are also tree farms but we usually call those people foresters, although a tree farm is not by any stretch of the imagination, a forest. Note that you don't have to actually produce food to be called a farmer nor will your crop necessarily be used for food now that government mandates for biofuels exist.

On the surface, farming sounds like a great way to make a living. Imagine a small business where all you need is some land and a tractor. You have no boss, no office cubicles, no commute, and depending on what kind of farmer you are, you might get to take winters off! Sign me up!

I had two uncles who thought farming sounded like a great lifestyle. Both purchased farms and gave it a go. Both also worked part time jobs to stay fed, and both gave up the farm after a few years. As a child I recall watching a show (that was boring even to a child) called Green Acres. It was a comedy about a city slicker and his socialite wife moving to the country to become farmers. It's a recurring theme that continues to this day as the resurgence of farmer's markets attest. People will forever decide to test the waters of that fantasy that keeps them going as they sit behind that cubicle in the office.

My late next-door neighbor started out in life as a farmer. He was born and raised on a farm that didn't have electricity. One day he broke his back lifting something a little too heavy. He gave it up and moved to the city, like 98% of the rest of us. His name was Farmer Breakfield, seriously.

Small farmers incessantly complain about how little money they make, even though they are some of the biggest subsidy recipients in the country. Razor thin profit margins are a fact of life in market economies. Mature industries drive profit margins down as businesses compete for consumer dollars (if government does its job to bust monopolies). The consumer is king, not the business owner. Book sellers, grocery stores, petroleum blenders, computer retailers, and on and on all have razor thin profits.

Ever watch any of the logger episodes (Swamp Loggers, Ice Loggers, etc) on the Discovery channel? They also operate on razor thin profit margins. The only difference between small book shop owners, or small loggers, and small farmers is the size of their lobbies.

If you want to be your own boss and own your own business in the country, maybe you should just accept the compromises that come with that decision, or move to a city and get a job like just about everyone else does. There is no need to preserve rural communities. American citizens are all free to move to where the jobs are like I did, and most others do.

Life is one giant power struggle. Only politicians have access to the public larder. Only politicians can access that larder to buy votes. Government support of corn ethanol is bribe money to buy farm belt votes.

Farming is a necessary evil to keep us fed. From an environmental perspective few occupations are worse. A corn field is one species away (corn) from being as biologically impoverished as a mall parking lot. The less agriculture we do, the better off this planet is.

[Update 10/7/09]:

Just stumbled on this piece of footage promoted by Growth Force, which is a fitting name for an organization dedicated to forcing corn ethanol onto fellow Americans. You will find a pro football player standing behind a flatbed truck. Wonder why they picked a guy with the name Chad Greenway?

In any case, much of what he says turns out not to be true, which isn't his fault. He didn't write the script. He starts with a statement that sums up why xenophobic rhetoric cajoling us to strive for energy independence via corn ethanol works so well:

"... it's an us against them kind of world ..."

He goes on to tell us why it's a myth that corn ethanol has raised the price of food. The proof offered is a vague reference to a non-existent correlation between dropping corn prices and increasing fuel and food prices. Corn and fuel prices dropped at about the same time, as the 2008 commodities speculation bubble collapsed.

Food price changes (up and down) lag feedstock price changes because they have to draw down already purchased grain stocks. They also move much more slowly than commodities prices. You can't suddenly double the price of your eggs to cover losses from feed prices that tripled. Unless your competitors all did the same thing, at the same time, your eggs would be left to rot in grocery stores. And it's illegal for good reasons (thanks to anti-collusion laws)to get together with your competitors to fix prices. Odd that he didn't mention the Congressional Budget Office report saying that corn ethanol raised the cost of food about $9 billion last year.

He points to a bushel of corn and tells us it can produce "three" gallons (almost) of clean (not true) renewable (not true) ethanol (while pointing at "three five-gallon" containers). He tells us that this bushel (56 pounds) will produce 17 pounds of distillers grains (while pointing at a container that contains about 50 pounds of distillers grain). He concludes by telling us that our home grown energy potential (corn ethanol) is "practically limitless" (also not true).

Transgressing identified and quantified planetary boundaries

[Update 10/9/2010: A study was just published in Science (click here for full text--$ub reqd) that parallels a study published in Nature earlier]

Apparently, we've punched through three of those boundaries already, two of them big time. See here. You can read the entire paper in the journal Nature here.

Now, largely because of a rapidly growing reliance on fossil fuels and industrialized forms of agriculture, human activities have reached a level that could damage the systems that keep Earth in the desirable Holocene state.

Note that of the two causes listed, one of them is industrial agriculture, which is also wholly dependent on fossil fuels. I don't have the answer but it surely isn't mixing the products of industrial agriculture with fossil fuels and burning the unholy union in our SUVs.

What image does the term "industrialized forms of agriculture" conjure-up in your mind? I suspect that for most Americans it's corn. For me it is biofuel, which in America is synonymous with corn ethanol and soy biodiesel. In Europe it might be wheat (Hunger for biofuels will gobble up wheat surplus), in Kenya it might be jatropha (How a Biofuel 'Miracle' Ruined Kenyan Farmers), in Tanzania it could be just about anything (Public Fury Halts Biofuel Onslaught On Farmers), in Indonesia, the world's fourth third largest GHG emitter, palm oil will soon drive the wild orangutan to extinction and in South America, sugarcane is king.

We have tried to identify the Earth-system processes and associated thresholds, which, if crossed, could generate unacceptable environmental change.

The nine processes that define these planetary boundaries are as follows:

1) climate change
2) rate of biodiversity loss (terrestrial and marine)
3) interference with the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles
4) stratospheric ozone depletion
5) ocean acidification
6) global freshwater use
7) change in land use
8) chemical pollution
9) atmospheric aerosol loading

Items 1, 2 and 3 have already exceeded the boundaries, and not by just a little bit.

Records of Earth history show that large-scale ocean anoxic events occur when critical thresholds of phosphorus inflow to the oceans are crossed. This potentially explains past mass extinctions of marine life.

The air we breath is about 80% nitrogen, 20% oxygen. The nitrogen is mostly inert, just taking up space in our lungs. We 6.7 billion human beings (soon to be 9 billion) have been grabbing this harmless nitrogen gas in the air and turning it into harmful nitrogen compounds. Sewage from both human beings and our domesticated animals and agricultural runoff from nitrogen fertilizers (another form of sewage) all ends up in our rivers, lakes, and oceans.

We are killing the oceans:

At about 400 locations worldwide, agricultural fertilizer and other pollutants flowing into rivers and deltas have created underwater conditions so low in oxygen that aquatic life can't survive. These locations are called dead zones …If we did no biofuels, and we just allowed for food production to increase …you still can't meet the hypoxia goals in the Gulf of Mexico. You still need to take mitigation actions even if we didn't produce biofuels.

The above photo shows trails of mud behind fishing trawlers as they scrape the bottom of the Gulf.

You can't kill the oceans and expect life on land as we know it to survive. It has happened before. The geologic record has shown that. It is called anoxia. The oceans lose their ability to hold enough oxygen to keep anaerobic bacteria at bay. These organisms emit things like sulfur compounds (the rotten egg smell) instead of CO2 as metabolism waste products and will kill all oxygen breathing lifeforms in the oceans.

Today's biofuels simultaneously exacerbate biodiversity loss and the nitrogen putrefaction of oceans and waterways, all the while releasing massive amounts of greenhouse gases that had been locked up in forest and grassland carbon sinks to boot. How stupid is that? If you've been holding your breath waiting for politicians to save us, well, you can at least exhale now.

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Corn Ethanol Shuts Down Police Cruisers

(Updates have been added at the end of this post)

According to Green Inc., lab tests have confirmed that a high ethanol blend was to blame for taking about 70 police cars out of service in Baltimore.

At first it was suspected that diesel had contaminated the fuel. Here is a video of the mechanics flushing out the fuel injectors.

According to the maintenance supervisor in that video the cars were misfiring and some were running on only two cylinders resulting in low power. If you have ever fantasized about escaping from the police in a high-speed chase, you just missed your chance.

I suspect that the ethanol flushed residue out of the gas tank, fuel lines, pumps, etc clogging filters and injectors.

This made the news because it was a fleet of police cars. This is proof that there are millions of cars out there ending up in repair shops because of ethanol. Had this been a gas station in the middle of the city serving the general public, hundreds of cars would have ended up in repair shops but because each car would have been in a different shop, nobody would have known about the problem. Many repair shops suspect this is happening but why make a stink about something that is so good for business? Statistically speaking, this has to be happening all over the place. There are likely tens of millions of cars out there that are susceptible to higher ethanol blends.

And then there is the slow, methodical degradation of old rubber seals in older cars by constant exposure to 10% ethanol blends. These cars will fail randomly instead of in large numbers all at once. They will not be detectable without a statistical search of repair databases.

For the older car I drive, it cost me about a $100 to replace my fuel filter, $400 to replace damaged injectors, and $800 to replace a fuel pump. I have replaced all three in the last two years, plus my gas cap, which had a rubber seal that fell apart in my hands.

Low-income people tend to drive older cars, which are the most susceptible to ethanol. As rubber ages it becomes brittle and develops cracks, which can increase the area exposed to ethanol a hundred fold. But the politicians pushing to increase the ethanol blend to 15% are not worried about poor people, who don't vote or line politician's pockets with contributions.


Update 10/4:

From an article dated 9/22:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bal-fuel0922,0,7240327.story

"..Tests were being conducted at a Towson lab to determine the precise problem, but officials say they were looking into whether the gas station's unleaded tank might have been filled with diesel fuel.."

The lab results arrived the next day as confirmed in an article dated 9/23:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bal-md.ci.fuel23sep23,0,1002895.story

"..Officials had expressed concern that the unleaded gasoline might have been mistakenly refilled with diesel, but results from a lab in Towson showed that ethanol was the apparent culprit.."

Next up, in an article dated 9/28:

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/hancock/blog/2009/09/city_vendor_denies_excess_etha.html

The President of the company (Charlie Joanedis) that supplied the gasoline told Jay Hancock that he had a sample of the fuel in question sent to

"..a petroleum inspection company ..the gas was 10 percent ethanol -- just what it was supposed to be.."

To recap, on 9/23 a lab test (submitted by the city) found ethanol to be the problem and on 9/28 test results (submitted by the fuel supplier) found everything was hunky-dory--nothing wrong with the fuel at all and neither report made any mention of diesel contamination. If you had to bet your first born on it, which test result would you believe?

Now things start to really get confusing. In an article dated 9/30:

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/hancock/blog/2009/09/suspicion_in_policecar_breakdo.html

Blogger, Jay Hancock gets confused, sending us back to the original 9/22 article when diesel was first suspected (but rejected the next day after the lab results came back) thinking it was a newer article blaming diesel again. It appears that Hancock failed to check the date on the article, which was 9/22. Sigh.

It gets worse. The NYT blog Green Inc. followed suit in an article dated 9/30, also linking back to the original 9/22 article, apparently also mistaking it for a new article:

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/ethanol-hobbles-baltimore-police-fleet/

Word of advice to my fellow bloggers. Always check the dates on articles and it never hurts to read more than just the headline while you are there.

And while we are revisiting this let's look into some of these theories offered by the President of the company that sold the fuel to the city. From this link dated 9/28:

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/hancock/blog/2009/09/city_vendor_denies_excess_etha.html

"..Joanedis [president of the fuel company] wondered why only police cars and not other city vehicles seemed to be affected …"

Nice effort but according to the original article dated 9/22, they were not the only vehicles affected:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bal-fuel0922,0,7240327.story

"..Jeremy Ark, who said he is the fleet manager for a Maryland Transit Administration contractor that provides services for the disabled, said he had 17 buses break down beginning Friday afternoon .."

He then offers up another hypothesis:

"..Perhaps the Chevies were unusually sensitive to normal seasonal changes in the gas formula that take place at the end of September.."

Perhaps ….but if "Chevies" are unusually sensitive to normal seasonal changes in the gas formula that take place at the end of September, then why are the roadsides all across the country not littered with stalled Chevies (not to mention that Sept 21 is not the end of September)?

The bottom line is this. Every car make and model is different and will be impacted differently by ethanol blends. This is especially true for older cars. The impacts may be immediate (like lower mileage, rough running, stalling) or long term (slow degradation of seals and corrosion of metal by water absorbed by ethanol). That, in a nutshell, is why we invented the flex fuel car, which is still only good up to 85% ethanol.

Unlike American cars, cars in Brazil where ethanol blends have been 22% since 1993 are all designed to run on that higher blend. According to Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ethanol_fuel_mixtures#E20.2C_E25

"..All Brazilian automakers have adapted their gasoline engines to run smoothly with these range of mixtures, thus, all gasoline vehicles are built to run with blends from E20 to E25, defined by local law as "Common gasoline type C". Some vehicles might work properly with lower concentrations of ethanol, however, with a few exceptions, they are unable to run smoothly with pure gasoline which causes engine knocking, as vehicles traveling to neighboring South American countries have demonstrated.."

[Update 5/13/2010]

More cars taken out of action by too much ethanol:

All came out of the same pump during the same time frame," Cohen said.

Dominick Garretson, assistant service manager of Honda of Nanuet, said his mechanics have "had our hands full of vehicles."

He said whatever is in the tanks has been "eating up" the engine. There is damage to catalytic converters, fuel systems and spark plugs. Repair costs could range from $500 to $5,000.

(Photo credit 888bailbond via the Flickr Creative Commons license).

Are biofuels really worse than Canadian oil sands?

Hardi Baktiantoro

Does it matter? What do biofuels have to do with oil sands? This is called a logical fallacy. Specifically it is a false dilemma in which only two alternatives are assumed (biofuels or oil sands), when in reality the options are not mutually exclusive, related, or even dependent on one another.

I borrowed this title from a post by John Guerrerio over on Examiner.com.

When several scientific studies began publishing reports that supported the common sense contention that food-based biofuels usurp farmland the Renewable Fuels Association (which just spent almost a quarter of a million dollars last quarter on lobbying) had to cobble together some kind of defense.

Bob Dinneen, head of the RFA, has been using the Huffington Post blog to disseminate this false dilemma, see here and here.

I'd debate John on the Examiner blog in the comments but they only allow a thousand words characters and no active links to verify claims. So I have to take him to task here.

In some ways biofuels are worse, and in some ways they are not, depending on what metric you are measuring and what biofuel you are talking about. For example, tar sands do not have nearly the impact on food prices, biodiversity, or the Rhode Island sized Gulf of Mexico Dead zone as corn ethanol, but corn ethanol produces less GHG than oil from tar sand (although not less than conventional gasoline depending on type of land displaced, nitrous oxide released from fertilizers, and time given to displace fossil fuels).

In addition, "biofuels" can be gaseous, liquid, or solid. They can come from landfill gas, used restaurant grease, or our food supply. They can help drive the orangutan to extinction as is the case with palm oil, or capture a powerful green house gas as is the case with manure treatment methane digesters.

At some point, environmentalists are going to have to face some harsh realities. In addition to subsidizing and mandating the use of environmentally destructive corn ethanol our politicians have just permitted the construction of a pipeline to deliver oil made from Canadian tar sands. Jobs, pork barrel politics, and the illusion of energy independence will always trump environmental issues.

The market funds Canadian oil to satiate consumer demand while corn ethanol is kept out of bankruptcy via subsidization by taxpayers who are then forced to consume it via government fiat. It does not matter which is worse in the aggregate. Both ideas are worse than just using regular sources of petroleum and certainly worse than investing in the replacement of our conventional internal combustion engine car technology, which wastes 80% of the fuel in a gas tank regardless of what it is made from.

Here is a study for example that measured several types of biofuels against their fossil fuel equivalent and found in most cases that biofuels were actually worse and this does not even include land displacement or higher than realized nitrous oxide releases from nitrogen fertilizers (which can make corn ethanol up to 50% worse than gasoline).

Ironically, in this post, John tells us about the latest finding from NOAA:

The report shows that nitrogen emissions from natural processes are basically static, while manmade emissions such as the nitrogen fertilization of agricultural soils and fossil-fuel combustion have been growing steadily…

Whoosh, right over his head.

And here's a nice piece of contradiction where he begrudgingly concedes that:

While factorially ommissive [sic] in its considerations, the Nature Conservancy report's ulitmate [sic] finding, "Energy sprawl deserves to be one of the metrics by which energy production is assessed", is a good one that should enter into the debate on energy.

Factorially? The Nature Conservancy, as you might guess, is all about conservation. Conservationists (hunters and fishermen) are often "conservative." In a masterful piece of diplomacy, these researchers coined a new term for indirect land use change (a term the RFA and the likes of John here have been busily denigrating) called "energy sprawl." It's like an atheist calling herself a secular humanist in an attempt to dodge the negative connotation religionists have given to the word atheist. It’s a robust term because to denigrate it you have to defend sprawl.

In the above article John tells us that the Nature Conservancy is just as wrong as every other researcher that has findings not supportive of food based biofuels. Biofuel missionaries are prone to cherry pick their science.

I know this post is getting long but I have just barely scraped the surface. I begin the line by line parsing below:

The simplified argument against biofuels states that "cutting down forests to clear more land for growing biofuel crops could double greenhouse gas emissions over the next 30 years", according to Wilson School research scholar Timothy Searchinger.

The concept is simple to understand, not simplified. If you divert food into gas tanks, someone will make up the difference by putting more land under the plow.

Critics rush to judgement against biofuels saying that it is not intelligent to spend money in this way, but these sme critics remain silent when it comes to figuring the direct land use costs associated with increasing our oil supply with imports from the Canadian oil sands.

The dozens of recent peer reviewed studies have hardly rushed to judgment. Claiming that biofuel critics are not also critical of oil from tar sands is a strawman argument. The land displaced by tar sands is minuscule on a gallon per gallon basis compared to food based biofuels.

A recent report by WWF highlights some of the direct costs of Canada's dirty oil.

Unlike John, who feels compelled to refute the Nature Conservancy study in defense of food-based biofuels, I wouldn't want to refute the WWF study. But don't fall for this false dilemma. Oil sand has nothing to do with biofuels. In addition, here is what the WWF said to Obama in 2008:

Reconsider corn-based ethanol and support the development of best-practice performance standards. The demand for biofuels has increased food prices and accelerated deforestation that releases as much CO2 as gets saved at the tailpipe. Biofuels have a role to play in our response to climate change, but the rush to produce them has been ill-considered. The administration should support the development of performance-based standards to ensure that biofuels are part of the solution, not the problem.

John continues ...

Using biofuels to power our vehicles reduces overall emissions.

Again, no. How badly a biofuel increases emissions depends on what kind it is, where it is grown, and how many decades or centuries it will be grown. This has been documented in several studies now. From Wikipedia:

"Ad nauseam" arguments are logical fallacies relying on the repetition of a single argument to the exclusion of all else. This tactic employs intentional obfuscation, in which other logic and rationality is intentionally ignored in favour of preconceived (and ultimately subjective) modes of reasoning and rationality.

He continues ...

For this reason, the debate over whether or not to commercially produce biofuels has shifted to include these indirect costs associated with chopping down forests or taking land out of conservation status to grow plants to turn into fuel that we hear about so much in the media. Have these anti-biofuel number crunchers seen the landscape of the Canadian oil sands development? Can biofuel production really destroy a forest worse than this or this or this?

"Anti-biofuel number crunchers?" I think he means authors of published peer reviewed science papers. He goes on to link to photos of tar sand mining, which is analogous to coal mining except you get a liquid fuel instead of a solid one.

"Destroy a forest worse?" A destroyed forest is destroyed. It is a step function, not a matter of degree. It is destroyed or it is not. And yes biofuel production really can destroy forests just as bad. But the real clincher is that most of the destruction done by biofuels is in tropical forests, which are far more biologically diverse and store far more carbon than high latitude northern forests. It takes decades to centuries to recapture the carbon released by a destroyed forest.



From here:

"…The area of rainforest in the process of being deforested — razed but not yet cleared — surged in the Brazilian Amazon during 2008…"

"…24,932 square kilometers of Amazon forest was damaged between August 2007 and July 2008, an increase of 10,017 square kilometers -- 67 percent -- over the prior year. The figure is in addition to the 11,968 square kilometers of forest that were completely cleared, indicating that at least 36,900 square kilometers of forest were damaged or destroyed during the year

"…The surge in activity is attributed to the sharp rise in commodity prices over the past two years. While grain and meat prices have plunged since March, higher prices have provided an impetus for converting land for agriculture and pasture. Accordingly, the burning season of 2007 (July-September) saw record numbers of fires in some parts of the Amazon as farmers, speculators, and ranchers set vast areas ablaze to prepare for the 2008 growing season

"…U.S. consumption of corn to supply domestic ethanol production created a global corn frenzy which drove up prices and spurred expansion of croplands around the planet. Two examples are Brazil and Laos. Brazil increased production of soy to essentially make up for soy acreage lost to corn in America. In Laos (pictured), returns from corn were so high that Vietnamese traders pressured national park officials to open up protected areas in parts of the country to corn fields. They refused.

"…falling grain prices early in the year coincided with a sharp slowing in deforestation. As food and fuel prices peaked through late 2007 and early 2008, it appeared that Amazon deforestation would climb to levels not seen since 2005 — more than 15,000 square kilometers were expected to be lost. The sudden downturn changed all that. When the final numbers came in for 2008, they showed that deforestation only increased a modest 3.8% to 11,968 square kilometers…."

He continues ...

One square kilometer is roughly 247 acres, so the Canadian oil sands cover roughly 34.5 million acres.

That number represents the total area of tar sands in Canada, not what is actually being mined and according to Wikipedia, only ten percent of those reserves are concentrated enough to be economically mined. So, make that 3.5 million acres, or 5,400 square miles. You could drive a car at 60-mph around a circle that big in 4 hours. Our ethanol crop alone usurps about 30,000 square miles every year, never mind the impact of canola, soy, palm, and cane, and the area of land converted to biofuel crops grows every year along with government mandates for biofuel use.

Joule Technologies with their 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year technology could make 691,600,000,000 gallons of biofuel on the very same spot in Canada that we have already clearcut for oil sands production.

What does this have to do with food-based biofuels? This is another case of bait and switch. Not that I wouldn't support a magical technology like that, but good God, Joule Technologies is just another snake oil sales firm. How naïve can you get? The EPA was counting on Cello for most of our cellulosic fuel next year, a company just convicted of fraud.

Why do biofuels get strapped with ILUCs until their production capabilities are so hindered with doubt that investors run for the hills, while oil sand development gets a free ride?

Note that John's argument oscillates between calling land use change a crock, and claiming oil sands are just as land intensive (land use change isn't a crock), one argument contradicting the other. The EPA looked into the land use issues associated with tar sand oil and found what I did. Gallon for gallon, and over all they are not anywhere near as land intensive as today's food-based biofuels. This is a false dilemma, don't fall for the bait and switch.

The simple fact of the matter is that biofuels will never be as dirty as the oil sands in Canada, both in terms of energy cost to extract it and environmental degradation from its recovery.

The term "dirty" is not well defined. This is a debate technique where you deliberately choose words that can mean just about anything. It is left to the imagination. And he is flat out wrong about the energy balance of corn ethanol being better than oil sands. Roughly 70% of the energy contained in a gallon of corn ethanol came from fossil fuels. His contention that the environmental degradation gallon for gallon of tar sands is worse than corn ethanol is also pure conjecture.

Note how he conflates the fact that tar sand oil is more carbon intensive than food-based biofuels with land displacement use issues. Don’t fall for it.

We ought to be placing the the same level of scrutiny upon our fossil fuel industry that we are placing on biofuels. Since 'experts' say biofuels cannot sustain our society, we dont't foster their development; the same experts say that oil can no longer sustain our society, and we throw billions of dollars at securing the resource for the future...no common sense.

The above comment is riddled with errors. For starters "we" do scrutinize fossil fuels. Our politicians ignore that scrutiny for personal gain, just as they are allowing continued subsidization and mandated use of corn ethanol.

It is a strawman to say that because biofuels can't sustain our society that we don't foster their development. The government is flushing billions down the toilet on corn ethanol and cellulosic. The government isn't throwing billions of dollars at Canadian oil, we consumers are. That is being driven by and paid for by the market, not by government handouts. I agree that our government should not allow the use of such a carbon intense fuel. The hard reality is that oil is fungible. If we don't buy it, someone else will.

Perhaps a closer look at today's biofuel technology will reveal that the ILUCs for biofuel are far lower than the direct costs associated with oil sands and OCS driling as well as mountaintop mining practices in Appalachia. We need to start looking at the costs of the alternatives to biofuels and comparing production them.

The above comment continues the attempt to connect tar sand oil to biofuels. There is no connection. Why would a serious researcher compare apples to oranges? Direct costs obviously favor tar sand oil over biofuels, which is why one has to be subsidized and use mandated and one does not. One is kept out of bankruptcy only by continued government largess and the other sustains a profit in the market. Biofuels disrupt food supplies, destroy vast carbon sinks and biodiversity. The tar sand oil creates more CO2 than conventional oil but usurps very little in the way of carbon sinks and biodiversity.

We are already getting oil from Canadian oil sands; biofuels definitely stack up cleaner than the oil sands process.

Here we go with the vague terms again. What exactly is the definition of "cleaner?" This is also pure conjecture, but even if future scientific studies prove biofuels "cleaner," there still is no connection between tar sand oil and biofuels.