Is Corn Based Ethanol Good or Bad for Global Warming 7

[JJPellin]

I have always suspected that the US method of converting corn into ethanol was detrimental. A new study suggests it has a net negative effect on global warming. In addition to that, we are turning food into fuel which would tend to drive up food prices. In the current situation of high inflation, this seems like a bad idea.

In parts of the US south, people still use corn to create high purity ethanol that they sell for more than US$100 per gallon. They call it moonshine. How does it make sense to take that ethanol and burn it in your car in place of gasoline that cost less than US$5 per gallon?

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/u-corn-based-ethanol-worse-200000730.html

Johnny Pellin

 

[GregLocock]

If anyone were serious about it they wouldn't be flying ghost flights in Europe.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...mpty-ghost-flights-to-retain-eu-airport-slots

Note that this is a direct consequence of EU rules.



Cheers

Greg Locock


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[dik]

As far as rail traffic, either one person is making a real lot of trips, or a bunch of people are making a lot of trips.

and the US is down at #12 on the list.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[1503-44]

"rail. It doesn't pick you up or take you where you want to go"

Strange. I always chose rail over flying, because it goes city center to center, whereas flying always leaves me miles away, usually out on the wrong side of town, which adds at least 2hrs and 50€ or more each way to the journey,

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

1503-44

I think this is a difference between the US and Europe. Or, at least places in the US and Europe. )

If you look at the older cities in the US, there are a lot of good subway / rail lines. New York, Chicago, San Francisco. Really good, mature systems that run where you want to travel. I imagine this to be similar to a lot of European cities.

If you look at the younger western states, there really aren't a lot of good rail systems. Train or subway. San Francisco is the outlier for the west. Lots of good trains and BART systems that go right into the heart of the city.

But, younger / newer cities (like Los Angeles) grew up around the automobile. They're very spread out with lots of sprawling suburbs. LA is trying to change this by building some good subway / rail lines. But, they are very lightly used. The city center just isn't as important of a transportation hub in those cities.


For what it's worth I've done a lot of traveling to Chicago, and I LOVE the rail system there. So much faster and easier than taking a cab or renting a car. Certainly there are often some sketchy people on the train. But, they're a small percentage of the people on the train.

 

[1503-44]

Probably true. Rail requires a good pop density.

I did 2yrs in London with no car. Not inconvenient at all, except on Christmas day when TFL shuts down COMPLETELY.

Most anywhere you want to go in Spain has rail service. When I lived in Marbella, it was 30min to Malaga center and 2.5 hr HI-speed to Madrid. Only an hour+ to Sevilla, Cordoba and Granada. The billboards are just a blur on the landscape at 300kph (200mph). You can get to the station only 15m before departure. It slows down more up north where hi speed hasn't arrived. I think they just opened a high speed line to Galicia, (YES December 2021 350kph

https://www.adifaltavelocidad.es/línea-madrid-galicia

, but Asturias, Cantabria, Pais Vasco are still on the slow lines.

National map

https://www.adifaltavelocidad.es/red-ferroviaria/mapa-de-la-red

I live on the northwest corner of Tenerife now, so no trains nearby.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher.

 

[ACtrafficengr]

Zoning in the US is a big reason transit and rail don't work well in the US. They don't work that well if stops and stations aren't convenient to where people want to go.

It's also hurting our standard of living.

Minimum lot sizes, maximum building heights, separation of uses, parking minimums, etc. conspire to make us drive everywhere, at an average cost close to $10k per year per car.

Infrastructure costs usually exceed municipal revenue for big box retail districts and single family residential tracts. More miles of road, pipe, etc. per capita forces taxes upwards.

I don't pretend to know the answer, but more of the same isn't it.

My glass has a v/c ratio of 0.5

Maybe the tyranny of Murphy is the penalty for hubris. -

http://xkcd.com/319/

 

[FoxRox]

Ethanol is a shameful misuse of resources, the most important of which is water.

I believe ethanol would have gone by the wayside years ago if not for our ridiculous presidential primary races. Winning the early primary race in Iowa is seen as a nearly mandatory stepping stone to the nomination. Iowa's economy is disproportionally reliant on corn and massively propped up by ethanol subsidies. Consequently, every four years, all the candidates from both sides march into Iowa and swear on their lives that they will never touch ethanol subsidies. Thus, the cycle of squander continues.

 

[dik]

Another issue is the lack of high speed trains... I think California tried to build a high speed rail with very limited success (failure?). Most countries that have high speed rail... it clips along at twice(?) the speed of US rail.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[IRstuff]

If you look at the older cities in the US, there are a lot of good subway / rail lines. New York, Chicago, San Francisco. Really good, mature systems that run where you want to travel. I imagine this to be similar to a lot of European cities.

SF is an anomaly; rail to the airport is an extremely recent thing, and the airport is nearly 13 miles from my son's condo in the city

If you look at the younger western states, there really aren't a lot of good rail systems. Train or subway. San Francisco is the outlier for the west. Lots of good trains and BART systems that go right into the heart of the city.

It's an outlier only because someone managed to finagle the financing to build BART, which did run into massive overruns. The SFO link is barely 20 years old

But, younger / newer cities (like Los Angeles) grew up around the automobile. They're very spread out with lots of sprawling suburbs. LA is trying to change this by building some good subway / rail lines. But, they are very lightly used. The city center just isn't as important of a transportation hub in those cities.

SF is ostensibly younger than LA, but the traffic choke on the Bay and Golden Gate bridges made it necessary, particularly those coming over the Bay Bridge to the city and farther south.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[moltenmetal]

Corn ethanol represents about a 50% reduction in GHG emissions relative to using pure fossil gasoline.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bbb.2225

If it were enabled by carbon taxes rather than by what amounts to agricultural subsidy, it would be far better still. Then they'd be burning corn stover to raise steam to run the distillations and dehydrators, rather than burning natural gas. They'd be less likely to run their farm equipment on fossil diesel too, and to use fossil natural gas derived nitrogen fertilizers too.

Ethanol is a good biofuel. The policy compelling ethanol blending, however, is not really about decarbonization much at all.



(

http://www.spitfireresearch.com)

 

[JJPellin]

Moltenmetal,

I don't normally nitpick about sources. But, the article you reference was based on a study by Argonne National Laboratory, funded by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy of the US Department of Energy. It was published in a non-peer reviewed trade journal: Biofuels, Bioproducts & Biorefining. The article I referenced was from a peer-reviewed study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study my reference is based on considered previous studies and found that they grossly underestimated the impact of land use.

As an example of a potential bias in the data of the Argonne study is the fact that they assumed that 100% of the corn oil produced as a byproduct of ethanol production would be used as a biofuel. "As corn oil can be used for other fuel production, it is assumed that corn oil displaces soy oil for the production of biodiesel and renewable diesel." Just because corn oil can be used for fuel production does not mean that all of it is used for fuel production. I believe that there are many other cherry picked assumptions in the Argonne study.

Johnny Pellin

 

[1503-44]

None the less it probably is not so far fetched to assume that corn oil produced as a byproduct of ethanol would continue along the biofuel production line, which would most likely displace a similar volume of soy oil. Assuming prices are similar for both corn and soy oil, why after all would a biofuel producer buy soy oil and haul it to the plant when there is corn oil sitting right there in his tank. Assuming (rightly or wrongly) equal land/bbl production rates, it would also appear, at least on the surface, not to make much difference in the total amount of land required for the purpose, if corn oil displaced soy oil or not, but if it did, maybe less soy could be planted. What I suspect is that in a market running short of oil of any kind, all the oil that can be squeezed out of the harvest of any oil rich crop will reach full capacity one way or another and little to none will wind up being sold as food products and what is will be at a higher price. I dont see where it matters if corn oil displaces soy oil one way or another, or v/v. All land that can produce oil will get planted. OK, I admit that soy based burbon whiskey doesn't sound all that great, so soy might not displace corn there.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher.

 

[moltenmetal]

The impact of land use is over-estimated by the study that was posted. Ethanol production produced a new market for corn- what was the land use alternative being considered? That farmers would have produced NOTHING on those fields? Remember, we're talking about the US here- it's very doubtful that marginal farmland was brought back into production just to satisfy corn demand for ethanol production.

(

http://www.spitfireresearch.com)

 

[JJPellin]

Farmers do not automatically plant every square inch of land they own every year. The high price and high demand for corn will absolutely drive farmers to move land from non-use (fallow) to use. It will shift land from pasture or hay to crop use and this will affect the impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Famers make these sorts of decisions every year based on economics and the knowledge of how land over-use can affect its long term viability. Leaving some land fallow in some years and rotating crops in certain ways affects the long term health of the soil. But, very high demand and very high prices for corn can drive these decisions toward more single crop use (corn). Ask any farmer anywhere about this and they will tell you.

The National Academy of Sciences paper included a methodical and detailed analysis of the true impact of changes in land use. This was not based on general gut feel or unjustified assumptions.

Johnny Pellin

 

[1503-44]

Well maybe it's the damned tomatoes.

No evidence of either replacing the other in these production charts, probably for land use, or for their % market share for biofuels either. The US production of both corn and soybeans each increased by 50% since 2005. With such a marked increase of each, I can't see any evidence of one having substantially replaced the other in land use at all; more probable is that there was a vast increase in land devoted to farming each one. The following charts indicate that around 30% of each crops total production is used for biofuel production. The % market share of each is apparently holding constant. The refiners are sticking with their same ole suppliers. Whatever is produced closer to the refinery is probably what's going into the bin.

The production of wheat fell by around 250MK bushels since 2005, but that number is way too small to suggest wheat was significantly displaced by either corn or soy.

And both corn, soy and petro-oil prices doubled starting in (yes) 2005. Not so much for the non-oil producing crops.

CORN PRICE

US CORN PRODUCTION

US SOYBEAN PRODUCTION

% SOYBEAN Crop used for ethanol

https://www.cmegroup.com/articles/2021/fuel-from-the-field-soybean-oil-and-its-energy-uses.html

US WHEAT PRODUCTION

OIL PRICES

If free carbon is being captured net+, as they say, by the growing process, then than that part of the equation is getting better.

Back to food prices increases.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

Leaving some land fallow in some years and rotating crops in certain ways affects the long term health of the soil. But, very high demand and very high prices for corn can drive these decisions toward more single crop use (corn). Ask any farmer anywhere about this and they will tell you.

Very well articulated. Thank you. What MoltenMetal was saying was pretty similar to my thinking in my first couple of posts on this thread.

The, what you're saying is essentially the same as what IRStuff said earlier in a reply to me. That argument (of yours and IRStuff) really makes sense to me and changed my understanding of that original article. I may not be 100% on board with the article's conclusions. However, I have a much better understanding of the basic premise of the article.

I still hold some skepticism, but it's a normal, healthy level now. The conventional wisdom before (based on USDA research and such) showed that ethanol would help reduce carbon emissions. This article gives valid reasons for why they don't believe this to be the case. Now, we just have to wait for other researchers to repeat this study, make corrections or critiques before there can be a true consensus on the subject.... Or, at least that's the level of skepticism that I have about it now.

 

[1503-44]

Well nobody seems to be doing much of any of that to any significance. That's a bit of noise in the data at best. I think it's following my theory. Plant every freeking acre with anything that'll grow on it. You don't get a 50% increase in production by rotating crops. The large companies are buying up small family plots and consolidating them into green oil fields. If you put enough fertiliser on them, you don't need to rotate anything. Stand back and watch it grow.

The only remaining question is if it's net+.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

If you put enough fertiliser on them, you don't need to rotate anything. Stand back and watch it grow.

There may certainly be some truth to that. If so, that's EXACTLY what this study was trying to say. That the "profit incentive" for over producing corn is enough for them to abandon their normal practice of rotating crops or such.

I'm not as 100% convinced as you are. Why? Well, I trust that farmers (whether corporate or family farms) understand how to most effectively manage their industry.

For what it's worth, I don't think you need to let anywhere near 50% of your land lay fallow each year. In fact, I remember someone talking to me about how "advanced" the agricultural practices in the old testament were. Specifically, that similar to requiring we each take a "day of rest / worship" every week, so should the Israelites give their fields a year of rest once every seven years.

Now, if that's the practice then it's more like 15% of your property remains fallow so that you can preserve the soil for the long term. Obviously, that would depend on the crop. And, you could probably "rotate" other crops in that rely on different nutrients or soil profiles so that even less than 15% of the fields would be bare at any given time.

 

[1503-44]

Crop rotation seems to be just another a red hering in the grand scheme of things.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

This is not a phrase that I'm familiar with. I'm not sure I fully understand it... or how it ties into Boeing. Care to educate me?