IMHO, Posts 59 & 57 are good replies to 58 and 56 (mine) but one of my points quadraphonics did not touch on is fact that Embraer is (via a subsiderary) already selling alcohol powered plane. (They were one of the two important aviation advances to win Scientific American's award for "best in field" in 2004 I think it was. The other was the airbus 380.) Interestingly, alcohol is both more powerful and has lower maintaince cost than the aviation gas version, but with a little less range. They are mainly used as "crop dusters" so this is totally unimportant as plane must land and refill the dusting chemical tanks more often than the alcohol tanks. I do not know if they have enlarged the dusting chemical tanks to take advantage of the greater power or not. - I sort of doubt it as difference in power is less than 5% as I understand it. They also have kit for converting the older gas powered planes to alcohol. All this is because alcohol is cheaper and better in this service. - Not because it is reducing the CO2 emitted by 110%. (I don't think people spreading pesticides are too concerned with CO2. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ) You are certainly correct that GE is making a push for more efficient engines, but I suspect the limit on this is about a 10% improvement. By going to alcohol fuel (produced from sugar cane) the improvement can be 110% ! (No error, 110% is correct as more CO2 is removed from the air than returned to it by burning the alcohol fuel.) Brazil is leading the world in use of alcohol fuel for vehicles and has been for 30 years!
There are some good things about alcohol fuel, although I'm not really sold on it as the big answer to future energy/emissions problems. The economics of production aren't very favorable outside of Brazil, and it's not clear to me that Brazil alone can ever produce enough to make a big difference in the global picture (at least without wrecking the environment of South America in the process). Moreover, Brazil's efforts in this area, while laudable, have more to do with social policy (and climate) than technology or manufacturing prowess. The same alcohol fuel technologies have been available in America for decades; indeed, most of them were developed here (Ford has been selling alcohol/gasohol vehicles in Brazil for almost 30 years). America has long-standing alcohol fuel subsidies, and ethanol is used as a gasoline additive in many states (California alone consumes nearly as much ethanol fuel as Brazil). The cars in the Indy racing league all run on alcohol fuel. It's had every chance to take off here, but people have never gone for it. Maybe that'll change when oil gets more expensive, but rest assured that America is primed and ready to take advantage of any approach that will outperform the current system. Also, Brazil (like America) still consumes much more gasoline than alcohol fuel (2 million barrels of oil per day vs. 280,000 barrels of ethanol). Maybe when they come up with a way to run a diesel engine on alcohol that'll change, but until then...
Why not? (Bio butannol* may be better and or bio-diesel, but all reduce the CO2 the more they are used. As for the cost, sugar cane Alcohol is competitive if oil is more than $30/barrel with out subsidies. US should trade for it with tropical countries, not just Brazil. Corn based alcohol requires at least as much energy in oil as produced, so it is just "converted oil." GWB's push for it will not hurt his friends in the oil industry. Look at any study not connected with the alcohol industry or a corn producing state's university. I.e. look at the Cornell or UCLA studies. Almost sure first is not true and doubt the second, but if "oil" includes all its uses, then probably is true, but a distortion as used here. Also almost sure alcohol cars were designed by Ford et al here in Brazil and evolved (as problems were noted they were fixed, by local engineers, etc.) Detroit specializes in style changes not efficient cars - made SUV and other gas hogs. You are correct that this was "market driven" Brazil is more "government driven" for example by end of 2008 (or during it - I forget) by law, all diesel sold will be 2% bio and by 2010 that goes to 10%. The 1973 oil crisis was meet by the government mandating the conversion to alcohol, but as there were problems and gas got very cheap ($10/barrel oil) it was relaxed to have both. 80% of all cars sold in dec06 were flex fuel (burn pure of either) and that would be higher if the imported gas only cars some of he rich buy are not counted. ------------------------------------------ *www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-06-20-butanol_x.htm?csp=34 Originally I had methanol by memory error - Thanks to spidermonkey I have this reference and corrected my memory error.
More on thread than last post: Brazil and Argentina are in the final phase of plans to use local curriencies for all bilateral trade - drop the use of dollar with its silly twin conversions (into dollars from the buyer and back out of dollars to the sellers currency.) This alone is not gong to make the dollar collapse, just one more nail in the coffin. Much more important is the sale of oil and immediate converion of the dollars gained into Euros etc. The world is slowly realizing it does not need dollars any more.
Alcohol fuel as such is not better than gas in terms of CO2 emissions. The advantage is in CO and particulate emissions, of which alcohol fuel produces almost none. However, alcohol fuel and gasoline produce very similar amounts of CO2. If all of the ethanol was coming from biological sources, this would amount to zero net CO2 release (since the biomass producing the fuel would be capturing it from the atmosphere). However, lots of ethanol is actually produced from fossil fuel sources and all ethanol plants, regardless of the feed stock, produce nasty emissions. Indeed, although it bears repeating that the environmental side-effects of the agricultural production (often fed with fertilizers derived from fossil fuels) and ethanol manufacturing are potentially very dire on a large scale, regardless of where it's carried out. Moreover, many tropical countries contain important rain forest masses that, if converted to agricultural production, would damage air quality and greenhouse gases much more than an alcohol fuel economy would help them. America has huge agricultural production, and doesn't have to chop down any rain forests to make room. It's more a matter of finding the right crop; corn is not a very good choice over all, but has dominated the policy debate in the US due to its extensive political influence. Sugar beets would be a better way to go. Actually, much of the energy used comes from coal, not oil. Although it's still energy extracted from fossil sources, the point about oil as such is misplaced. More than half of the electricity in America comes from coal. Yes, I meant to say oil. Anyway, here's the source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil "Presently the use of ethanol as fuel by Brazilian cars - as pure ethanol and in gasohol - replaces gasoline at the rate of about 27,000 cubic metres per day, or about 40% of the fuel that would be needed to run the fleet on gasoline alone. However, the effect on the country's overall oil use was much smaller than that: domestic oil consumption still far outweighs ethanol consumption (in 2005, Brazil consumed 2,000,000 barrels of oil per day, versus 280,000 barrels of ethanol). Although Brazil is a major oil producer and now exports gasoline (19,000 m³/day), it still must import oil because of internal demand for other oil byproducts, chiefly diesel fuel (which cannot be easily replaced by ethanol)." That's great, although I'd point out that America consumes 30 million gallons of biodiesel per year (expected to hit 1-2 Billion gallons per year by 2010). Several US states have already passed similar legislation requiring 2% of diesel to be biodiesel, some as long ago as 2002. There is an extensive grass-roots movement in Washington state to locally produce and distribute biodiesel. Brazil, meanwhile, has only a single operational biodiesel plant, producing only 10% of what America does. Plans are ongoing to build similar biodiesel capacity as America *already* has, but it's doubtful they'll ever catch up with America in terms of biodiesel production. Flexfuel is useful to get people to transition to alcohol and reduce dependence on foreign oil, but is not terribly efficient as such. This is because alcohol has a much higher octane rating than gasoline, and so needs to be burned at substantially higher compression ratios to achieve proper fuel efficiency. However, because flexfuel vehicles must be able to burn both fuels, they run at an intermediate compression ratio, compromising fuel economy.
Not true!!! Most certainly 75% of the carbon removed from the air does NOT end up in the alcohol fuel. I.e for evey pound of carbon coming out of the car's exhaust pipe four or more are removed from the air. The growing fields of cane are like growing trees storing carbon. Much of the crushed is used instead of fossil fuel to distill the alcohol out of the water/alcohol solution - only fossil fuel is used in US. From a CO2 / global warming POV you are very wrong about the relative merits of getting the carbon from the air (alcohol) vs. from safely sequested deposits deep in the Earth (fossil fuels). All of the carbon stored in alcohol in car fuel tanks, in distribution system tanks, in ocean transport tankers is also carbon that has been removed from the air. Cane is a grass, and needs no fertilizer, but some is used to boost yields. Corn requires much more; especially if growth must be simulated to compensate for a short growing season. (Iowa freezes or has early morn frost nearly half of the year.) US could produce its own coffee also if that were as well subsidized And protected by tariff walls etc. but that too would be silly and very costly to tax payers. This is also a huge distortion. I will quote from your own source: "Brazil currently devotes to sugarcane production amount to only about one-half of one percent of its total land area of some 8.5 million km². In addition, the country has more unused potential cropland than any other nation." A univesity study has shown that not one tree of rain forest needs to be chopped down - they are being cut down for the export of timber, the spoiled land is often not even used for new agriculture land, unless some local man tries to keep his cows there. Contrast this to US where there is essentially no agriculture land not already in use. Brazil has enormous areas in pasture (has long been the world's leader in tons of beef exported and recent has passed Australia in value of beef exports to claim #1 by that measure also.) The price of corn on CBT is already at all time high. The tax payers of US will (and to some extent already are) pay more for their food as land in food crops is converted to fuel crops. Pay higher taxes to support growing corn (the largest of all farm subsides). Pay a gift to the rich of $0.54 for each gallon of alcohol produced. Loss current exports of corn, weakening the dollar more. Not reduce oil consumption (according to all studies not supported by "corn money") and perhaps slightly increase it. (GWB never does anything that will hurt his main source of campaign funds. - He is dumb, but not that dumb. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! )
It's true that there's room to expand, but we were talking about America replacing gasoline with imported ethanol. Brazil currently produces about 11 million gallons of ethanol a day, while America consumes 400 million gallons of gas per day. Supposing everyone in America switched to pure-alcohol cars (with appropriate compression ratios so that mileage was the same), Brazil would have to increase its currently production by a factor of almost 40 to keep up. Since 4.5% of cropland in Brazil is currently dedicated to ethanol, it would require a 50% increase in Brazil's farmland, with all of it dedicated to ethanol production, just to supply the US (let alone Europe, Japan, China, etc.). This would be 20% of the land area of Brazil. That might be possible if some of the wilder estimates of potential cropland in Brazil pan out, but even then it's a long way from enough to replace gasoline on a worldwide basis. Another point that's missing here is the effect of nationalism. The drive to move away from oil has as much to do with reducing dependence on foreign sources of energy as with environmental concerns. Switching from Venezuelan oil to Brazilian alcohol may make sense from an environmental point of view, but would do nothing to improve American energy self-sufficiency. Which is why no policy-maker will ever call for such a move, no matter how much better a feedstock tropical sugarcane is than temperate corn. I strongly suspect that Brazilians would feel much less enthusiasm about alcohol fuel if they didn't happen to have a good domestic source. Indeed, rain forest land isn't really good for anything else, and the Brazilian policies that continue to promote deforestation are some of the most infuriatingly short-sighted and irresponsible actions in recent history. Brazil's efforts in bioethanol are a good first step at making up for collectively shooting mankind in the foot, although getting serious about preserving the Amazon would go a lot further. Although, as has been pointed out by you, much of it is used unproductively for subsidy and tariff supported activities. While there's not a lot of *unused* farmland, there is plenty of farmland as such (more than twice as much as Brazil currently has) that could be converted to more productive uses. At any rate, Americans are never going to get behind any alternative plan that doesn't involve a healthy dose of domestic energy production. So unless you've got some way to include that in your vision for an alcohol fuel economy, it's a non-starter. Of course, America is the #1 overall producer of beef (and exports nearly as much as Brazil). Also, American beef tastes better.
Clearly Brazil alone is not going to supply a world converted to only alcohol as the fuel for all vehicles. (Why I always try to say "alcohol from the tropics." ) Even more certain is the more than half of world's vehicles will still be fueled by oil derivatives for at least two decades. In less than one decade, it is highly probable that "cellulose alcohol" will be in commercial production. (A few pilot plant scale units are producing now, but need more advances, mainly in biology, to be economically feasible.) Perhaps then with as much local production as possible, (recycled newspapers, saw dust, leaves, etc.), Brazil alone could supply all of the US and EU needs, if all of the pasture now producing beef were growing sugar cane or bio-diesel plants. These facts combine to make a "crash push" to alcohol very desirable as land available will not be the limitation on the "critical path" of this highly desirable transformation of vehicle fuel system. Perhaps this is essential to avoid a self-accelerating (via ocean-floor and polar-land methane-hydrate decomposition) global heating that converts Earth into a colder version of Venus. That may exterminate all humans in less than a millennium. That is not fair. Brazil seldom sends rich people to jail (almost never if they are politically well connected or politicians), but has sent a few to jail for illegal logging. Areas larger than California are totally "off limits" to loggers. Because of the large profits possible by stealing trees, and the wide spread corruption, and size of the rain forest, compared to the law enforcement resources available, etc. some of rain forest is being lost each year. If you want to do something about that, do not buy any furniture etc that has Mahogany in it or help some organization that is buying up rain forest land or promoting "eco-tours" in it via boats that keep the people on board. Probably true. At least half (fortunately you are not among them) do not understand that "free trade" is a benefit to all practicing it (especially when there are dozens of different nations in the tropics that will compete to supply alcohol to US at less than half the cost of producing it from corn in Iowa). They would stupidly prefer to have higher cost food, taxes and fuel for their cars and run the risk of human extinction by delaying the conversion to alcohol. You are intelligent - join me it my education effort. - The stakes are high, possibly very high.
Okay, but where else in the tropics is there enough spare land to make a significant contribution? Indonesia and the Phillipines don't seem big enough, and South/Southeast Asia seem to be using pretty much all of their farmland. Which leaves Subsaharan Africa, which has plenty of problems of its own... Without a good method for production in temperate climates (USA, Europe, Central Asia), it's hard for me to envision alcohol fuel being the decisive factor. Well, to be fair, there are some legitimate reasons that people value energy independence. When you're dependent on others for your energy, you have much less ability to regulate the costs (or, more specifically, price volatility) and side-effects, environmental and otherwise, of your energy source. While it would probably be better to split the foreign dependence between multiple sources (oil and ethanol, say), it's better still to boost domestic energy sources. Biodiesel has the potential to be a big deal in America. The biggest thing, at least in the short term, for improving the CO2 situation is to clean up coal-fired power plants. America, as well and China and India, are going to be getting a lot of their energy from coal over the next decades, so if clean coal doesn't get up and running, it won't really matter what we run our cars on in 2020. Coal technology is also something Americans can get behind, since we have so much of it.
There is no need to limit yourself to the tropics. An important crop in Europe is the sugar beet. From it you can make biofuels. See for instance this http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-06-20-butanol_x.htm?csp=34
Yes, better than corn, I think in terms of energy out as alcohol compared to enery in as fossil fuel, but still sugar cane is better, and cheaper from the tropics instead of southern France etc.. BTW your ref is about butanol being better that ethanol. I mention this in my post 65, now edited to include your ref. - thanks. I did not read your Ref, but hope it mentioned the fact that being less hydroscopic, butanol can be stored to smooth out growing season yield variations and also sent thru pipelines - both big advantages for butanol, which may well win the contest for vehicle fuel in the end, but is way behind ethanol now.
Sweet, my town was founded on sugar beets. Just too bad lots of the agriculture (prime area) is going away to build tons of expensive houses since this is a coastal city. Kinda hard to balance the two here. - N
Using sugar beets for biofuels could also have another unexpected benefit. Now they are mainly used for making...sugar. And the sugar industry is pushing its sugar everywhere as a cheap food additive. An unhealthy one. If there would be a worthwhile market for biofuels from sugarbeets I would expect that the focus will switch. Sugar becomes more expensive. Sugar isn't so easily used anymore as a food additive. well...the above is just hope. Not based on any economical assessment, because I have no skills for doing so.
It's possible. One of concerns with scaling up biofuel usage is the amount of farm land it requires then isn't available for food production, driving up the price of ALL foods.
I think that there are options. I'm not too negative about it. In Europe farmers actually can get paid NOT to farm their land. That's because there is overcapacity. So I speculate that at least within Europe there is still some leeway to switch to biofuels. Maybe Europe is actually the best region to start an experiment on this besides Brazil. There is already a rich history of taxing fuels heavily and why not make it more alluring to produce biofuels by minimizing tax on biofuels, subsidize biofuel crops and even higher tax on non-biofuels. And of course there could be a low tax on biofueled cars, and increase in tax on normal cars. It's nothing Europeans haven't seen yet. Nowadays it is possible in many European nations to choose if you pay for electricity made from environmental friendly energy generators or the standard ones. It costs a bit more of course, but many people are willing to do so. I for instance am using the higher cost/more environmental friendly electricity. I'm sure Europeans would be willing to switch if the incentive was there.
