~SUSTAINABLE LIVING FOR CHALLENGING TIMES

[sumisu]

The corn ethanol approach has proven to be a failure based on its continued survival with government subsidies. Remove the government subsidies and if would fail. Further, we are wasting our last few great inches of top soil and valuable water in the Midwest to keep people motoring on the highways.

On October 26, 2006 I attended the 2006 Boston World Energy Conference held at Boston University. One speaker was Milton Maciel, an organic farmer and former Secretary of Agriculture, Alagoas State, Brazil. His speech was titled "Sugar Cane and Corn to Ethanol."

I just searched this topic again and present the following for review and digestion:

Ethanol from Brazil and the USA

by Milton Maciel, originally published by ASPO-USA / Energy Bulletin | Oct 2, 2006

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-10-02/ethanol-brazil-and-usa

This report is not long, but I will highlight some important facets:


"Brazilian ethanol, produced from sugar cane, is much cheaper than Brazilian gasoline distillated from locally extracted oil. Most of the year, its price is around 55% of gasoline price. In order to be economic, the ethanol price must be at least 70% lower than the price for gasoline."


"But corn and sugar cane are very different

Sugar cane is a semi-perennial culture (6-7 years cycle) that needs far fewer nutrients (fixing nitrogen from air through Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus, for example) than corn. It is the less soil-eroding large crop in Brazil because soil remains covered most of the year or all year round. Sugar cane in Brazil is not irrigated.

All energy for the industrial process comes from bagasse burned in high pressure boilers, providing all thermal, mechanical and electrical energy needed, with at least 10% surplus electrical energy sold to the grid. Corn needs natural gas or fuel oil and electricity from the grid to supply its process-energy demands in the factory.

Ethanol yield (gallons/acre) for sugar cane under good tropical conditions is double that for corn. For all those reasons, sugar cane ethanol is seven times more energy efficient; its net energy, expressed as ERoEI, is 9:1 while corn ethanol has an ERoEI of only 1.3:1"

I spoke to Mr. Maciel after his speech. In his thick accent, he told me that as an organic farmer he was very comfortable with the sugar ethanol project in Brazil because it leaves the land intact.