Mythbusters: Ethanol and Foreign Oil Displacement

[4dsc]

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2851

Forgive me if this has been posted here before but Robert Rapier does a great job showing us all the misinformation that is being passed off by the ethanol industry.. This information should be useful as I head off the great Iowa State Fair today. they will have representatives from the ethanol industry there..

Interestingly, the RFA's page on industry statistics shows that ethanol production in 2006 was 4.86 billion gallons. This is 116 million barrels. Somehow using 116 million barrels of ethanol, with a per barrel BTU value of just over half that of a barrel of oil, displaced 170 million barrels of oil. To be precise, 116 million barrels of ethanol contain the BTU equivalent of 64 million barrels of oil.


How on earth are people coming up with these numbers? Can 64 million barrels of oil equivalent displace 170 million, 206 million, or even 500 million barrels of oil? And recognize that we haven't even touched upon the fact that the 64 million barrels is the gross output, and not the net. To get a true displacement number (for just petroleum), we have to subtract out all of the petroleum inputs that went into making those barrels of ethanol. At least that's what we would do if our goals were scientific, with the intention of getting to the truth of the matter, and not politically motivated.

Since ethanol is a gasoline replacement, this oil displacement should be most pronounced if we look at the gasoline demand curve. As ethanol has ramped up exponentially since 2000, how much gasoline has been displaced? It's not apparent that there was any displacement. As shown in the link, as ethanol has ramped up since 2000, not only has gasoline demand increased by 10 billion barrels per year, but there isn't even any obvious effect from ethanol on the gasoline growth curve. As ethanol has ramped up, we have become more dependent upon petroleum. That is not my opinion. That's what the numbers say, in black and white.

[rurallib]

1. Plus isn't there a large amount of oil used in the growth and

processing of corn? I am not a big fan of ethanol either.

[razzleberry]

7. No.

oil needed is one-tenth to one
enregy basis

[NickB79]

20. Spoken like someone who's never farmed before

On the other hand, I have personally helped my dad use THOUSANDS of gallons of gasoline and diesel per year in tractors, combines, and trucks tending to the fields on his relatively small family farm.

[GliderGuider]

2. Every single proposed "oil substitute" founders on issues of scale.

It amazes me that so few understand that simple fact. Think about the amount of oil we use, the vast energy it provides, its physical and energetic uniqueness, the fact that our civilization in the form we know it could not exist without those qualities, and the fact that there is no other substance or energy source that has all those necessary qualities.

Ethanol will save us? Riiiiight. :eyes:

[Captain Hilts]

3. Making ethanol requires too much energy!!!!! nt

[GliderGuider]

4. You got it.

Any energy source that has an Energy Return on Energy Invested of less that 2:1 isn't really worth pursuing, at least if we're trying to preserve our current civilization in its present form. We are heading down the back side of the net energy curve. We need to understand what it means for a civilization to be spending more and more energy just trying to make energy.

[tnlurker]

5. The only way ethanol or bio-diesel makes sense is

To use the waste products from agriculture to produce it. Use the corncobs and leftover stalks to make it instead of the corn that should be used for food. Then the energy cost would be mainly for food production with a little energy required to recover and process the waste material into fuel. Otherwise it is a bust.

[GliderGuider]

6. There is no indication yet that the EROEI of cellulosic ethanol wil break 2:1

Given that cellulosic ethanol processes are still in the R&D phase, we have no reliable estimates of their net energy. And in light of the environmental impacts of biodiesel production in Indonesia I think that's probably a loser as well.

I have serious doubts about the viability of any and all biofuels, frankly. They may be useful in localized niche applications, but trying to force them to fulfill a civilization-scale role is asking for heartache, both for ourselves and the other species that share the planet.

[razzleberry]

8. ethanol cuts middle-eastern oil out of the deal .n/t

[GliderGuider]

9. You've said this before. Please explain how.

I claim it won't. Here's why:

2006 ethanol production was 116 million barrels. The energy content of that is equivalent to 77 million barrels of oil. That amounts to 200,000 barrels of oil per day. Over the last five years American oil consumption has risen by 1 million barrels per day. Taking the ethanol production off the top means there's 800,000 bpd that had to be bought from somewhere. ha

Now you could say that at least the nasty sheiks aren't getting the money from that 200,000 bpd, but that's utterly insignificant alongside the 2.2 million barrels per day you import from KSA, Algeria and Kuwait.

"Cutting the oil sheiks out of the deal" is political rhetoric, pure and simple.

[razzleberry]

10. ethanol, most of the energy comes from domestic (non-liquid)

the energy to make ethanol, a liquid,
comes from (90%) non-liquids

[GliderGuider]

11. It doesn't matter if it's made from dirt.

200,000 bpd just isn't enough to keep any significant amount of money out of the coffers of the nasty sheiks.

By the way, how do you know you're cutting the nasty sheiks out of the game rather than a bunch of inoffensive Canadians?

[razzleberry]

12. general info ...

ethanol energy input ...

one-tenth that of the product - is liquid
(implies, petroleum products)



nine-tenths from 'other'
coal
NG
Hydro
.0000001 from non-hydro renewables


.........................
overall energy gain, is I guess, something like 1.2
........................
but the input is largely non-liquid

[GliderGuider]

13. OK, but so what?

How does that fact keep any significant amount of oil from being imported? As I said, even assuming you could make it from dirt - 200,000 bpd is still a spit in the ocean. America currently uses 100 times that, and imports 60 times that amount.

[razzleberry]

14. any spit produced is 0.9 less spit needed from the middle east

controversial-renewable-liquids,
are bigger then you would think,

6 billion gallon /yr ethanol -->
4 billion gallons of gasoline equivalent

not sure about biodiesel

(US nimbers)

[phantom power]

15. Two things...

1) The entire point is that 4 billion gallons of gasoline equivalent is nothing. It means nothing. It's not "bigger than we think." It's much smaller than you think.

2) "sticking it to the middle east" is way, way down on my list of priorities, especially when it comes to thinking about options for facing peak fossil and climate change.

I'm curious. Why is "sticking it to the middle east" such an overriding concern for you? You bring it up a lot, even though it's only tangentially related to environment or energy.

[razzleberry]

16. the persuit of petroleum, causes unimaginable human suffering

Darfur ....
you think they want to fight over scub bushes?
....................

Nigeria ........
fight over swamps?
no, something else

..........................


Kansas
millions dying over fight for cropland?
.........................

Illinois
billions die over fight for a coal field?

[razzleberry]

17. a lion does not fight for fun

gangs don't fight over nothing

gangs fight for easy money

[phantom power]

18. You'll get to see us fighting over cropland and/or coal soon enough.

Even sooner, if we start trying to ramp up biofuels. Do you see why?

As far as the middle east goes, consider: Oil is going away. The middle east as a geopolitical power based on oil supplies is going to be history in 50 years. No matter what. We have plenty on our plate just worrying about our own survival, don't you think? Growing enough food for ourselves is going to become a challenge. A massive biofuel industry is going to fuck that up worse than it will be already.

[razzleberry]

19. coal / cropland. are not easy money

you have to work at it .


because the word

--> FREE <--

does not apply,

most of humanity is not interested

[NickB79]

21. Most of humanity isn't interested in electricity and food?

Who knew :shrug:

[razzleberry]

23. those items require work

OTOH, when you own an oil field,

the dictator just sits back and collects the
checks from the oil companies.




guess which situation, is the most attractive?

[NickB79]

24. Oh, so oil fields pump themselves?

They drill themselves? Oil bubbles to the surface, flows into oil pipelines, hop into oil barrels all by itself? Oil spontaneously refines itself into gasoline, diesel, kerosene, etc? It loads itself onto tanker ships?

Yeah, if that were the case then yes, oil production would be a pretty sweet deal for the owner of that oil field.

[Ready4Change]

22. Don't use corn at all.

Corn is one of the WORST choices for a fuel crop. It's the one getting all the attention because
1. It's produces ethanol, which is handy for all our gasoline burning cars,
2. we produce a lot of it, and
3. It compares really poorly with continuing to burn fossil fuels, which keeps the petroleum industry happy.

You get far better return by growing soy or switchgrass to produce biodiesel, and if that were our goal, then we could ramp up production at the same time obsolescence would have us replacing most of our vehicle fleet anyway. If we knew we were switching to biodiesel, people could buy diesels on preparation and we'd be good to go. when the oil wells go dry.

Even better, research indicates that producing biodiesel from algae has TREMENDOUS potential, perhaps so great as to make petroleum look expensive. Again, diesel is the way to go.

Corn based ethanol? Dead end.

[amandabeech]

37. The stalks are usually left in the field to decrease erosion and

improve soil health. Some people don't consider them "waste."

As to cobs, all I know is that my grandmother used to burn them as kindling in her wood-fired stove. However, I'm sure that composting them is what the sustainability movement would do. Or burn them and then use the ashes.

[Wilber_Stool]

25. Ethanol is distilled.

You have to evaporate off three to four gallons of water to get one gallon of ethanol. Were is all of that water going to come from?

[losthills]

26. Ethanol is a fraud.

Because our ag system is so dependent on mechanization, and on fossil fuel derived pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, and because it takes more fossil fuel to distill it, it's really just another way of selling us lots of oil.

There are a lot of different studies out there, with different calculations of how many gallons of oil it takes to produce a gallon of ethanol, but the bottom line is that it is too much. I have seen studies that show it taking more oil to produce a gallon of ethanol than it does to produce a gallon of gasoline...

It is also fraudulent because there is not enough available land to produce enough corn or other fuel crops to make much of a dent in our fuel needs. The attempt to power our transportation system with fuel crops would lead inevitably to deforestation and food shortages.

Bio-diesel is a better idea, if it's made from waste products, but with any plant-to-fuel scenario you could say that the bio-mass would be better put to use in generating electricity. Electric vehicle technology is the way to go with transportation, and it is really time to phase out the internal combustion engine completely.

"Bio-fuels" are just a way to keep selling us oil by keeping the internal combustion engine on the road, and in an era of expanding population growth and expanding development in the third world they would put too much pressure on our remaining productive croplands as well as our remaining wildlands.

[skids]

27. Well, I can tell you where the numbers came from...

The way they figured it is thus:

1 barrel of oil makes 19.5 gallons of gasoline. The rest of the oil makes other stuff.
19.5 gallons per barrel times 170 million barrels is 3.3 billion gallons.

84000 BTUs/gallon for ethanol versus 124000 for gasoline is a bit more than "just over half" to be fair.
It's more like 2/3rds.

2/3rds of 4.86 billion gallons of oil is about 3.3 billion gallons of gasoline equivalent.

So that was their thinking -- they were not counting the coproducts of oil distillation. Now in the case of most of those, although they do enter into the energy mix, they are of no value for transportation. However, leaving out diesel was not accurate even for this line of thinking.

Not to say that the transportation-centric line of thinking is correct (though transportation is one of our more critical needs the way this country is structured, which just cannot change overnight,) just that's how they must have figured it.

Corn ethanol needs to give way quickly to other forms and eventually to cellulosic. Biodiesel is actually a much better energy story but is more limited in potential unless they get the algae thing going. However, corn ethanol and sugar based ethanol in general are only harmful to the extent that they become self perpetuating eco-politcial entities -- that is, to the extent that they discourage (compete for) both public and private investment versus better liquid fuel techs and to the extent that they delude people into thinking there is a future in liquid fueled internal combustion engines, which are a dead end ecologically.

[razzleberry]

28. if the US doesn't produce ethanol from corn ...

some other country will

you might as well avoid unnecessary transportation costs

[4dsc]

29. Name one

Name one country that will be able to produce as much corn ethanol as the USA?? Nobody out there that I know of!

Corn ethanol is a bad investment and always has been..

[razzleberry]

30. IIRC, South Africa

the economics are compelling

corn, 3.51 /bu

ethanol. 1.83 / gallon

yield is 2.8 gallon / bushel


one bushel of corn --> $5.12 of ethanol

...............................

[losthills]

31. That money can be made from it

is not in dispute.

Ethanol is an environmental disaster because it is made from oil. And because as the price of oil goes up, farmers will have an ever greater incentive to grow crops for ethanol instead of food. And because of the already growing pressure to cut down forests to grow more fuel crops.

[razzleberry]

32. people will do what they want, with their own property

for example

corn is LOTS cheaper than fuel oil,

usually,
cheaper then propane,
sometimes cheaper the natural gas

corn to ethanol, is kinda iffy.

...............................
the oceans are being stripmined,
farmland is being paved.
but the most important
enviro issue is that
millionaires need to make more
money peddling carbon offsets

[losthills]

33. That's what we have laws for.

[razzleberry]

35. where do you get this ...

where do you get this ...

'ethanol is made from oil' BS ?

the portion of energy supplied by
oil is about 10%.

[losthills]

39. You should do your own research, but...

6. What impact does corn-based ethanol have on global warming gasses?

Many people believe that using ethanol from corn would greatly reduce the emission of gasses implicated in global warming. This belief is based on the observation that if a corn plant grew, and then was burned, without any fossil fuel inputs or fertilizer, there would be no net gain in global warming gasses. This is because the carbon dioxide released in the burning of the plant would be offset by the carbon dioxide absorbed by the plant while the plant was growing.

This simplistic model is not correct for the production of corn-based ethanol because fossil fuels are used in the growing of corn and the production of ethanol, and these contribute to global warming gasses. Nitrogen used in fertilizer also tends to produce nitrous oxide, which is 300 times as potent a global warming gas as carbon dioxide.

There are also secondary impacts — for example, increasing US corn production is likely to result in less US soybean production. If this occurs, Brazil, the largest producer of soybeans, is likely to increase its soybean production. Space for this increased Brazilian production is likely to be obtained by cutting down rain forests, which will tend to increase global warming gasses.

http://www.energybulletin.net/30685.html

[losthills]

40. Net loss of energy...

The Sustainable Energy Myth Called Ethanol
By EV World


Cornell professor Dr. David Pimentel's address to the Sustainable Energy Forum's 2006 Peak Oil and Environment conference.

http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?archive=1&storyid=1059&first=2391&end=2390

"Which means we have a minus energy return of 29 percent. It takes roughly 30 percent more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than we actually get out in the ethanol fuel itself."

......

Biomass Movement


Deutch, John. "Biomass Movement." Wall Street Journal (10 May 2006).

Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

http://bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/publication.cfm?program=CORE&ctype=article&item_id=1466



"In the U.S., cultivation of corn is highly energy-intensive and a significant amount of oil and natural gas is used in growing, fertilizing and harvesting it. Moreover, there is a substantial energy requirement -- much of it supplied by diesel or natural gas -- for the fermentation and distillation process that converts corn to ethanol. These petroleum inputs must be subtracted when calculating the net amount of oil that is displaced by the use of ethanol in gasohol. While there is some quarreling among experts, it is clear that it takes two-thirds of a gallon of oil to make a gallon equivalent of ethanol from corn. Thus one gallon of ethanol used in gasohol displaces perhaps one-third of a gallon of oil or less."

[4dsc]

34. Name one

name one country that can produce the amount of corn ethanol as the USA!!

[razzleberry]

36. any country could ...

if the US sells them enough corn.

unfortunately for them, the US has smarted-up
and is (gradually) no longer selling corn for
far below the value of its constituent parts.

[amandabeech]

38. Actually, lots of fossil energy in corn ethanol is in natural gas.

Natgas is used to produce the nitrogen fertilizer that corn loves, both as an energy source and a food stock.

Natgas is used in many ethanol refineries to supply the heat for the distilling process. Some operations are now being set up to combine the distillery with a CAFO for cattle. The cattle's waste generates methane gas which is used in the distillery, and the left-overs from the distilling process are fed to the cattle as part of its diet.

North America does not now hold lots of natural gas, and a considerable amount of it in Canada is being used to mine and process the tar sands.

Natural gas is difficult and expensive to import, and the biggest gas reserves are in are our friends Russia and Iran, as well as Qatar.

In fact, we import at least as much nitrogen fertilizer as we make here because the cost of natural gas is much cheaper closer to the source. And nitrogen fertilizer is easier to ship than the natgas from which it is made. IIRC, we import nitrogen fertilizer from Saudi Arabia.

Sweet, isn't it?

Don't get me going on phosphorus.