Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[MLD38]

Debate over economics of corn-based ethanol

Pimentel & Graboski

..."While debate over the economics of corn-based ethanol is not settled, the scientists agree that producing ethanol from corn is an energy intensive process. Determining ethanol's validity is part of the necessary scientific process."...

David Pimentel, a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has conducted research he says shows ethanol's promise as an alternative fuel is greatly overstated because it is not economical to produce.

David Pimentel: Professor
College of Agriculture and Life Science
Cornell University
5126 Comstock Hall
Ithaca, NY

..."In an article for the new edition of the peer-reviewed Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences and Technology, Pimentel asserts it takes more energy to produce ethanol from corn than ethanol can create. He also says that for ethanol to be a substitute for gasoline, and fuel all the cars in the United States, 97 percent of U.S. land would have to planted with corn."...

Pimentel's work has sparked a heated debate about the economic viability of ethanol.

Chemical engineer, Michael Graboski, of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, and consultant for the National Corn Growers Association, reached very different conclusions.

Michael Graboski: Research Professor
Department of Chemical Engineering
Colorado School of Mines
451 Alderson Hall
Golden, CO 80401

..."His analysis compared Pimentel's findings to a report on ethanol production created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Graboski asserts that Pimentel's results are premised on out-of-date farming and ethanol processing statistics. Recent improvements in agricultural efficiency and ethanol processing plants have made corn-to-ethanol production much more cost effective, according to Graboski. Using these new figures, Graboski says, ethanol production does not consume more energy than it produces. There is actually a significant net gain of energy. Graboski is a consultant for the National Corn Growers Association and they published his analysis.

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David Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek paper, "Ethanol Production Using Corn, Switchgrass, and Wood; Biodiesel Production Using Soybean and Sunflower"
http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/papers/Biofuels/NRRethanol.2005.pdf

Michael Graboski's paper : Comparison of USDA and Pimentel Net Energy Balances
http://www.ncga.com/public_policy/issues/2001/ethanol/08_22_01b.htm


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Blowing smoke on gas savings?
By Alan Reynolds
http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20050402-111003-4494r.htm

..."In the late 1950s, some people really believed Detroit and Big Oil had suppressed a remarkable invention -- a tablet you could drop in you car's gas tank that would let it run on water."...

..."What is this "alliance of neocons, evangelicals and greens," and what do they really want?"...

Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS): http://www.iags.org/

Set America Free : http://www.setamericafree.org/who.htm
group set up by R. James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney and other national security hawks."

Apollo Alliance : http://www.apolloalliance.org/about_the_alliance/
the other key "member" of the IAGS group Set America Free

Apollo Alliance : ..."It was founded by Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Washington Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, the heads of the United Steel Workers Union and the Sierra Club, and a few left-fringe organizations like the Institute for America's Future. This Apollo Alliance gets generous support from MoveOn.org and the Tides Foundation -- both heavily funded by Bush-hater George Soros -- and Ted Turner's "United Nations Better World Fund."...

....The five-page IAGS "Set America Free" memo is an undocumented list of grandiose assertions based on bad science and worse economics. The bad science begins by treating electricity and ethanol as if they were energy sources producible without any energy use....

...You can't produce corn for fuel without farm machinery and petrochemicals, and you can't move it to a plant and process it into alcohol without burning more fuel.....

....Transportation accounts for 67 percent of petroleum use. The rest goes into things like plastics, polyester, pesticides and fertilizer, fueling farm machinery and heating some homes.

Even within that 67 percent of a barrel of oil devoted to transportation, 41 percent is not used in cars and light trucks but in heavy trucks, airplanes, ships, buses and trains.

So cars and light trucks combined (many essential for business) account for about 59 percent of the 67 percent of each barrel of oil used for transportation -- only 40 percent of total petroleum consumption....


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NOTE: I am not advocating Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. or Executive Intelligence Review, but wanted to round out the background research.

Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. & Executive Intelligence Review

Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. : Political
http://www.larouchepub.com/resume.html
..."During the interval 1976-1992, he has sought the office of President of the United States five times. In 1976, he ran in the general election as a candidate of the U.S. Labor Party, an independent political association committed to the tradition of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Henry C. Carey, and President Abraham Lincoln. In 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992, he sought the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, and has also sought election to the U.S. Congress, as an independent Democrat, from Virginia's 10th C.D."...

Articles on Ethanol:

(1) Ethanol Takes More Energy Than It Gives
by Marjorie Mazel Hecht
This article appears in the May 12, 2006 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2006/3319ethanol.html

Pimentel & Patzek : ethanol

Includes:
..."One of the strongest arguments against the use of ethanol comes from Prof. David Pimentel of Cornell University, a longtime low-technology advocate. He and a colleague, Tad W. Patzek, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, conducted a detailed analysis of energy input-yield ratios of producing ethanol from corn, switchgrass, and wood biomass. Their findings, published in Natural Resources Research (Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2005, pp. 65-76), are that

ethanol from corn requires 29% more fossil fuel energy than the fuel produced;
ethanol from switchgrass requires 45% more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and
ethanol from wood biomass requires 57% more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
Pimentel and Patzek looked at the energy used in producing the crop, which includes pesticide and fertilizer production, farm machinery, irrigation, and transportation, and the energy necessary for distilling the ethanol.

As Pimentel told the Cornell University News Service in July 2005, "There is just no energy benefit to using biomass for liquid fuel. These strategies are not sustainable.... Ethanol production requires large fossil energy input, and therefore is contributing to oil and natural gas imports and U.S. deficits."

Pimentel calculated that it takes about 131,000 BTUs (British Thermal Units) to make 1 gallon of ethanol—but 1 gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTU—a net loss of 54,000 BTU per gallon.

Pimentel and Patzek did not include in their calculations the cost of the Federal and state subsidies that are handed out to the large corporate biomass-energy producers. Pimentel, it should be noted, supports the use of biomass (wood) for home heating, just not for producing liquid fuel."...


(2) CEOs' Bio-Fuel Comedy Distracts Congress From Auto Crisis Action
CORNBALL BROTHERS ON THE HILL
by Paul Gallagher
This article appears in the May 26, 2006 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2006/3321three_ceos_hill.html

..."facts are known, having been proven in studies by academics who themselves are environmentalists and advocates of the use of "sustainable fuels," wind-power, and so on, but admit this has nothing to do with auto or other transportation.

Several studies by Dr. David Pimentel of Cornell, published since 2002, have shown that corn ethanol, switchgrass ethanol, and wood ethanol consume 29%, 45%, and 57% respectively more btu's of fossil-fuel energy in their production, than they produce when they're burned as fuel (see "Ethanol Takes More Energy Than It Gives," EIR, May 5).

Another exhaustive calculation, based on government reports of prices, taxes, and subsidies, and recently published on http://zfacts.com, shows that substituting ethanol for one gallon of gasoline from "imported oil," costs the nation $7.24"....

..."neo-cons' major go-ethanol manifesto is signed by a group called the Apollo Energy Alliance, consisting of friends of Al Gore and George Soros, and various "progressive Democrats" and unionists."...
...."Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) gave a disoriented "Apollo project" speech about ethanol and "flex-fuels" at the Detroit Economic Club May 1. Proposing an Apollo Project for ethanol fuel, is like proposing an Apollo Project for laetrile as a cancer treatment; ethanol might as well be laetrile for cars.

As one United Auto Workers union leader in a southern state succinctly put it recently, "the only thing you can run on ethanol, is an old drunk."...

..."The ethanol part of the "flex-fuel" package is 100% fakery, along with related proposals to burn various products of "atholes."

By contrast, the hydrogen-fuel proposals, including some work by the major automakers, are potentially revolutionary for engine propulsion. But the best prospects for producing hydrogen efficiently involve, again, using the high heats from nuclear power plants to crack hydrogen out of ammonia or related stocks. The storage and use of hydrogen may point to new engines much larger than those of automobiles. This is a crucial area of research and development."...

..."third element of "flex-fuel," electric-diesel hybrid engines, while obviously not fakery, changes nothing in the collapse of the U.S. auto sector, but a few more miles per gallon in a somewhat more expensive car."...