NASCAR hits 5 million miles on 15% Ethanol blend, with 20% less emissions...

[Bill USA]

47. you're out of your mind: "preserve fossil fuels"? the Oil industry is fanatically fighting ethanol..

They know ethanol represents a real threat to their business model of oligarchic price control and protected excessive profits. Over the past several years that ethanol has been supplying additional fuel, it has forced oil/gasoline prices down, costing Big Oil profits.


[font size="4"] Big Oil's Big Stall On Ethanol[/font]
(emphases my own)

Those who criticize the industry's stance see it as reminiscent of its attempts to discredit the theory that human use of fossil fuels has caused global warming. Mark N. Cooper, research director at the Consumer Federation of America, authored a recent paper characterizing the situation as "Big Oil's war on ethanol." The industry, he writes, "reacted aggressively against the expansion of ethanol production, suggesting that it perceives the growth of biofuels as an independent, competitive threat to its market power in refining and gasoline marketing."

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One prong in the oil industry's strategy is an anti-ethanol information campaign. In June the API released a study it commissioned from research firm Global Insight Inc. The report concludes that consumers will be "losers" in the runup to Congress' target of 35 billion gallons of biofuel by 2017 because, it forecasts, they'll pay $12 billion-plus a year more for food as corn prices rise to meet ethanol demand. The conclusions are far from universally accepted, but they have been picked up and promoted by anti-ethanol groups like the Coalition for Balanced Food & Fuel Policy, made up of the major beef, dairy, and poultry lobbies. Global Insight spokesman Jim Dorsey says the funding didn't influence the findings: "We don't have a dog in this hunt."

Academia plays a role as well. There is perhaps no one more hostile to ethanol than Tad W. Patzek, a geo-engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley. A former Shell petroleum engineer, Patzek co-founded the UC Oil Consortium, which studies engineering methods for getting oil out of the ground. It counts BP (BP), Chevron USA, (CVX) Mobil USA, and Shell (RDS) among its funders. A widely cited 2005 paper by Patzek and Cornell University professor David Pimentel concluded that ethanol takes 29% more energy to produce than it supplies—the most severe indictment of the biofuel. Michael Wang, vehicle and fuel-systems analyst at the Energy Dept.'s Argonne National Laboratory, says among several flaws in the study is the use of old data and the overestimation of corn farm energy use by 34%. Pimentel defends the study. In a recent update, he and Patzek hiked the estimate of ethanol's energy deficit to 43%.

more on Pimentel and Patzek's "study" in Farrell et al's meta analysis of several ethanol studies, published in the Journal Science, Jan 2006:

Ethanol Can Contribute to Energy and Environmental Goals - Science Jan 2006
http://fire.pppl.gov/ethanol_science_012706.pdf
(emphases my own)

To better understand the energy and environmental
implications of ethanol, we surveyed the
published and gray literature and present a
comparison of six studies illustrating the range
of assumptions and data found for the case
of corn-based (Zea mays, or maize) ethanol
(11–16). To permit a direct and meaningful
comparison of the data and assumptions across
the studies, we developed the Energy and
Resources Group (ERG) Biofuel Analysis Meta-
Model (EBAMM) (10). For each study, we
compared data sources and methods and parameterized
EBAMM to replicate the published
net energy results to within half a percent. In
addition to net energy, we also calculated
metrics for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
and primary energy inputs (table S1 and Fig. 1).<p>

Two of the studies stand out from the others
because they report negative net energy values
and imply relatively high GHG emissions and
petroleum inputs ([font color="red"]11, 12[/font]). The close evaluation
required to replicate the net energy results showed
that these two studies also stand apart from the
others by [font color="red"]incorrectly assuming that ethanol
coproducts (materials inevitably generated when
ethanol is made, such as dried distiller grains with
solubles, corn gluten feed, and corn oil) should
not be credited with any of the input energy[/font] and
[font color="red"]by including some input data that are old and
unrepresentative of current processes, or so
poorly documented that their quality cannot be
evaluated (tables S2 and S3).

[div name="Farrellmeta" id="Farrellmeta" class="excerpt"]

References and notes:

[font color="red"]11. T. Patzek, Crit. Rev. Plant Sci. 23, 519 (2004).
12. D. Pimentel, T. Patzek, Nat. Resour. Res. 14, 65 (2005).[/font}