So, just for kicks I looked up how much ethanol the US produced in 2006

[NickB79]

http://www.eere.energy.gov/news/news_detail.cfm/news_id=10504

In 2006, the US produced approximately 5 BILLION gallons of ethanol. Sounds like a lot, right?

A barrel of oil holds 42 gallons, so the US produced the equivalent of 119 MILLION barrels of oil, volume-wise (I'm not even going to go into the lower BTU's/gal of ethanol vs. oil). 119 million barrels of oil is a lot, right?

The US uses 20 MILLION barrels of oil PER DAY.

So, in 2006, the millions of bushels of corn converted into ethanol produced, at best, enough fuel to run the US economy for 6 DAYS!!!

Put into that context, does that still sound like a lot?

[phantom power]

1. That is pretty much the crux of it.

[IrateCitizen]

2. "We've decided to burn the last two inches of Midwestern topsoil in our gas tanks."

Perhaps the best comment on ethanol boondoggles I ever heard -- a quote from a farmer in an article on energybulletin.net I read a few weeks back.

[MLFerrell]

8. "We've decided to burn the last two inches of Midwestern topsoil in our gas tanks."

That is the perhaps the most profound statement I have ever read.

[baldguy]

3. Shut up & drive yer Hummer.

[GliderGuider]

4. Oo, oo, Mista Kotteh, Mista Kotteh...

K: "What is it, Horschach?"

H: "Mista Kotteh, ethanol only has like two thirds of the energy of gasoline, and it's EROEI is only 1.3, so we actually only produced enough net energy to run the US economy for like, what, a day and a half?"

K: "Sigh. Thank you, Horschach..."

[NickB79]

5. Depress me further, why don't you

Now you're going to have to factor in the amount of ethanol I'm about to drink up to drown those woes.

That's it! The true value of ethanol production after Peak Oil won't be from replacing oil, but getting us drunk enought to not care anymore.

[fed-up]

6. off to the greatest....nt

[losthills]

7. Yeah, but the great thing about ethanol

is all the money it made for those mid-western farmers who trade big campaign donations for farm subsidies.

And don't forget that the road to the presidency begins in Iowa....

[depakid]

9. That's actually a very disturbing thought....

[Javaman]

27. All those farmers? 5% of the population farm now.

most of the "farmers" are giant agricultural corps, such as: Agra-corp, AMD and Monsanto.

those are the corps making the money here, they are the ones getting the subsidies hand over fist, they are the ones growing the corn for ethanol.

Very few small independent farmers are making money off of this. Especially now that there is a glut of ethanol due to the over production from the corps. What was once a booming biz for the small farmer, is now dying because of the over production. On top of that, there just isn't the delivery system in place to transport the ethanol across the country, plus, very very very few gas stations are set up for ethanol.

The corps sprinted out, made a bucket of money, while the smaller independent tried playing catch up and then when finally arriving, found that the market was glutted.

The corps have cut back on corn production and have moved on to their next windfall: switch grass.

Cellulose ethanol will be the future (will never fill the nations needs, but less harmful on the environment)), however, they still have to find the right enzyme to crack the cellulose molecule.

[AZ Criminal JD]

10. Your math is off

According to the Energy Department http://www.eia.doe.gov/. the U.S. uses 736 hundred million gallons of gas a day. Ethanol is used in a 10% formulation so it will be used in about 50 billion gallons of gas. This works out to 68 days of gas consumption in the U.S. A fairly significant amount. Ethanol is a terrible additive and causes a reduction in the miles per gallon in any engine. The only reason we have it is a pay-off to the Iowa farmers who demand our candidates endorse their special interest at the cost to the rest of the country.

[NNadir]

14. No, your conception is off.

If I dilute ethanol to a 1% formulation, that doesn't mean that I have 680 days worth of gasoline.

I mean, this is the sort of thing that "renewables will save us" advocates do all the time, but still...

Don't give them any ideas. They'll start putting an eyedropper full of ethanol in every gas tank and announcing that they produce a 10,000 day supply of gasoline.

[w4rma]

11. As long as it doesn't take 5+ billion gallons of gas to create all that ethanol, I'm all for it.(nt)

[AZ Criminal JD]

12. It takes about 1.3 BTU of energy to create ethanol

for every 1 BTU it produces. It costs energy to make ethanol and it is one of the main reasons we import the amount of oil we do. It is a cancer on our energy policies.

[w4rma]

13. It still sounds like ethanol helps keep us from having to use more foreign oil.

And wars to control that foreign oil harm the environment and use up far more oil and resources than ethanol manufacturing does.

[losthills]

20. How?

[razzleberry]

28. the liquid energy gain is ten to one

that is how to reduce the use
of imported crude oil

[losthills]

31. Is this the Hemp thread?

Or did you just get lost?

[razzleberry]

29. you will find this link interesting

http://www.ncga.com/public_policy/PDF/03_28_05ArgonneNatlLabEthanolStudy.pdf

look at the right part of the top graph on
page two, notice how little petroleum is used.

[GliderGuider]

15. It's not quite that bad

If you count in the dry distillers grains (DDG) as an energy output, then the return is positive: 1 BTU in gives about 1.3 BTU out. Without that energy credit though, it's around break-even or a bit less. If you have just one inefficient step in the process, the whole shooting match goes negative on you.

Even at its best there isn't enough net energy in it to build an industrial civilization on. Let alone the fact that if you used ALL the world's grain for ethanol and ALL our oil crops for biodiesel, you could supply 8% or so of the world's oil consumption.

Biofuels: Use With Caution

[Dickster]

16. I'm amazed at how ignorant you people are about ethanol

Ethanol produces 35% more energy than it takes to grow the corn and distill the ethanol. http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_energy.html.

I am a farmer from Minnesota who raises corn for an ethanol plant in the western part of the state. I get so sick of reading the bullshit about ethanol on here that I regularly want to puke when I read it. We have been swimming in excess corn for 50 years in this country. We finally have a way to consume excess corn and provide clean, renewable fuel, and a high protein feed from the leftovers. The ethanol refineries provide good paying jobs in my local community. I finally have a decent price for the corn that I raise. I might even get to pay some income tax for a change because of it. I have a car and a pickup that runs on E85 fuel. I haven't bought any gasoline for close to three years. Those ethanol plants don't require any soldiers to keep the flow of oil up. They provide good jobs. provide good returns for the investors who pay taxes on those returns. the fuel is renewable and the plants are virtually non polluting. I don't get what the hell there is to not like about ethanol.

[GliderGuider]

17. And don't forget the tidy subsidies that keep the whole thing profitable.

Ethanol may be good for you and the people that work in the plants, but when it comes right down to it you've been swindled by Archer Daniels Midland. Ethanol has never been about making clean, renewable, non-arab fuels. It has always been about corporate welfare.

Give Green, Go Yellow: How cash and corporate pressure pushed ethanol to the fore

Before it became widely used as a car fuel, ethanol was just grain liquor -- and the federal government was not particularly kind to it.

Shortly after the American Revolution, the new government imposed a draconian tax on the stuff, hoping to pay down wartime debt. Instead, it got the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, an insurrection eventually put down by forces led by President Washington himself. Similar hostility -- including the indignity of Prohibition, the 1920s-era federal ban on alcohol production -- marked official attitudes toward ethanol until 1978.

That year and thereafter, however, the government warmed considerably to "white lightning," as the 200-proof elixir is sometimes known. Rather than tax ethanol heavily, the government now lavishes it with tax breaks. Rather than ban production, the government subsidizes it. And commercial ethanol production, which withered away after World War II, now booms.

Ethanol's revival is intimately linked to one company, the giant grain-trading firm Archer Daniels Midland, and one seemingly unrelated product, high-fructose corn syrup.
...
ADM won friends and influenced people by spreading its largesse across the political spectrum. CEO Andreas gained legendary status as a double-dealer during the Watergate investigations, when the congressional hearings revealed that he had cut the $25,000 check used by Richard Nixon's "plumbers" to finance the famous hotel break-in.

Despite its legal snafus, ADM moved into the new millennium with its political clout intact. George W. Bush has diligently maintained the four pillars of ADM's business model: heavily subsidized corn production, a stiff tariff against foreign ethanol, the sugar quota, and ethanol's tax exemption. He even signed off on a fifth pillar, for good measure: The Energy Policy Act of 2005 stipulates that the U.S. gas supply must contain at least 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2015, about double the 2005 level. Since corn ethanol has a vast head start over rivals, most analysts assume the mandate will mainly affect corn ethanol production.

Soon after taking office in 2001, Bush displayed his fealty by tapping Chuck Conner -- then-president of an ADM front group called the Corn Refiners Association -- as his "special assistant to the president for agriculture, trade, and food assistance." In 2005, Conner became deputy secretary of agriculture.

ADM, meanwhile, has thrived. In a landmark study this year for the Geneva-based International Institute for Sustainable Development, researcher Doug Koplow attempted to come to terms with the situation. Here's how he described the "major challenge" of quantifying the value of government support for ethanol and other biofuel: "Virtually every production input and production stage of ethanol and biodiesel is subsidized somewhere in the country; in many locations, producers can tap into multiple subsidies at once."

After 50 pages of detailing seemingly every one of those supports, Koplow reaches his estimated bottom line: total government support for ethanol clocks in at somewhere between $6.3 billion and $8.7 billion per year.

Read the whole story at the link. THAT should make you want to puke.

[losthills]

23. You might just be part of the problem....

and profitting nicely, it seems.

[Nihil]

24. I'm amazed at how ignorant people are (full stop).

> I get so sick of reading the bullshit about ethanol on here that
> I regularly want to puke when I read it.

I agree: there is often a lot of nauseating bullshit posted about ethanol ...

> We have been swimming in excess corn for 50 years in this country.
> We finally have a way to consume excess corn and provide clean, renewable
> fuel, and a high protein feed from the leftovers.

In other words, you have been swimming in unnecessary wastage of resources
for 50 years - a state maintained for business reasons alone - and now there
is a new "business reason" (=boondoggle) to "justify" the continuation of
the waste.

> I have a car and a pickup that runs on E85 fuel.
> I haven't bought any gasoline for close to three years.

Psst: The difference between E85 and E100 is the gasoline you've *still*
been buying for "close to three years".

> Those ethanol plants don't require any soldiers to keep the flow of oil up.

Not directly. The fertiliser you consume to grow the crops though
(not to mention the weedkillers, the fuel for your vehicles and the
transportation of said crops) that's a different story. Sorry.

> They provide good jobs.

I can understand your attraction to anything that brings "good jobs" into
an area that would otherwise be depressed. I'm not denying that there is
a short-term gain for a small group of people.

> provide good returns for the investors who pay taxes on those returns.

Yeah right ... most of the "investors" have accountants whose sole reason
for existance is to minimise or avoid the payment of taxes on their returns.
You and I pay taxes on our income, "investors" shuffle everything bar a tiny
tidbit for the Revenue into "other places".

> I don't get what the hell there is to not like about ethanol.

What you don't "get" is that the comfortable short-term benefit for you
(slightly) and the industry corporations (mainly) comes at a cost and that
cost is two-fold: it damages the environment by depletion and it damages
the environment by diversion.

Working for George W. Bush would put bread on your table but, when taken
in the larger context, is not a particularly wise long-term strategy.
:shrug:

[Egalitarian]

18. Production of biofuels 'is a crime'

relevant article here: http://environment.independent.co.uk/green_living/article3101993.ece

[GliderGuider]

19. A lot of us have felt that for a while now.

Let's burn up the last two inches of Midwest topsoil in our gas tanks...

[Dickster]

22. I'll tell you whats a crime...

Historically cheap grains have driven farmers off the land worldwide, so they no longer can feed themselves from their own land, thus are forced to buy "expensive" grains to survive. If they were still farming, they would benefit from the increased prices.

[bananas]

30. Welcome to DU - sorry about the doomers - they hate farmers, because farmers feed people!

Doomers hate civilization, they want to return to the good old days of hunter-gatherers.
They look forward with glee to famine and mass starvation.
So to them, farmers are the enemy!
Doomers dream about the day when humans are reduced to a few tribes,
foraging for berries and hunting squirrel by throwing rocks at them.
The transition from fossil fuels is going to be difficult, but it won't be the end of civilization - or farming.
This post explains them pretty well:
"Secular Apocalyptists, Dystopias and Christian Millenialists."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2101764

[NickB79]

32. Weird, because I grew up on a farm

I must be one of those self-hating doomers, huh?

[Dickster]

21. I'm no friend of ADM

, and a lot of what the article says is probably true. but you could make that same argument for virtually any other big corporation in the US. They have all been at the government trough, especially the oil companies. I'll stand by ethanol any time over oil. I don't think anyone has said that ethanol will solve all ove our enrgy problems. It's one piece of the puzzle. As for the topsoil, it's my livelyhood. Do you think most farmers are stupid enough to let their livelyhood go down the drain? In the past 40 years there have been massive efforts to stop the erosion of soil in this country. Years ago it was a problem. it's not as much of one anymore.

[razzleberry]

25. ten percent of US's gasoline, is a lot

ethanol in the next year or two.

better than sending money to the muddle east

[Javaman]

26. Since a barrel of oil holds roughly 19 gallons of gasoline...

that's 38 million gallons of gas a day.

38 mill x 30 days = 1,140,000,000 gallons per month.

1,140,000,000 gallons x 12 (months) = 136,800,000,000 gallons of gas a year (approx)

5 billion gallons of ethanol works out to roughly 6.8% of our yearly needs.

ethanol is a pipe dream and always has been.

bottom line: there is nothing NOTHING like oil. There are no equivalents, there are no substitutes.

Where the refined output from a barrel of oil created thousands of different products, what ever we use next won't come close to that. Nothing can replace oils concentrated energy.

We will have to diversify, reduce, and ration. Living simpler won't become an option.