September 07, 2026
by Marc J. Rauch (Auto Channel (Originally Published June 13, 2013)) A Book That's Aptly Named for What It Is -- ... But in my personal research of ethanol, which includes purchasing a non-flex fuel vehicle so that I could experiment with using various blend levels of ethanol-gasoline, I can tell you that the problems you write about are false.
“In addition, your apparent recitation of issues related to using corn for the production of ethanol lacks basic business acumen. Perhaps business has not been a focus for you, and therefore the principles of production have not been apparent. But if you're going to attack the use of corn you should make an attempt at understanding the business side.”
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Happily, I received a rather quick response to my email; sometimes I never get any responses to my emails. Robert Bryce wrote:
“I am fundamentally opposed to use of food to make motor fuel. Further, my opposition to biofuels is based on simple math and basic physics. The power density of biofuels is too low to have it make any sense from a public policy standpoint. I have never been given any "information points" by PR firms on ethanol. My work on ethanol is my own.”
“… Further, I suggest you read my third book, GUSHER OF LIES, of which about 20 percent is devoted to the ethanol scam.”
So based upon his suggestion that I read his third book, GUSHER OF LIES, I plunked my ten bucks down on Amazon for the Kindle version, and this project got under way.
Going in, I had to say that there’s a lot that Robert Bryce and I seem to share. His personal bio indicates that he leans towards libertarianism; I consider myself to be a conservative libertarian. He doesn’t believe in the man-made global warming alarms, and neither do I. And he “believes wholeheartedly in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” just like me.
But then we take divergent paths. In the “Author’s Note” section of the book after the Praise Pages, Bryce talks about his change in perspective from thinking there should be major government involvement in energy to now believing that the government should “quit meddling in the energy market.”
As a conservative libertarian I would normally eschew all government involvement in any enterprise. However, to now call off government involvement – and its built-in political attachments – after all the government and political tutelage that made the petroleum oil industry so dominant and petroleum oil-based fuels our primary engine fuels, is either terribly naïve or horribly disingenuous. Gasoline didn’t become so prominent because it was the best fuel; it became the primary fuel because of intentional (or unintentional-that-became-intentional) government intrusion with alcohol in the form of onerous taxation, followed by protection from alcohol in the form of national prohibition for 14 years. These 14 years were perhaps the most critical years in the development and growth of the automobile industry, which became and remains the largest and most important industry in the world.
For Bryce or anyone arguing the anti-alternative fuel position to now declare that the government should back off from providing help that would allow domestically produced alternative fuel solutions to compete on the very lopsided field that government involvement created to favor the oil industry, is comically dishonest.
It’s not only comically-dishonest, it’s comically-unrealistic. Does Bryce really expect that politicians who have watered at the money trough of the oil industry for so many years will willingly go cold-turkey? It’s completely unlikely.
There’s an often used analogy for why certain government controls and intervention is necessary, and it’s an analogy that even the most strident libertarians have trouble arguing with. The analogy is the necessity for traffic stop lights. It goes like this, if it wasn’t for the orderly control of any thoroughfare there would be mass confusion and the free-flow of traffic would come to a grinding halt because of accidents blocking the road. It is only by applying certain controls that we can insure a generally freer traveling experience.
The need for some governmental controls and oversights in the energy arena certainly can benefit from this analogy.
However, in the discussion of gasoline versus alternative fuels, I like to use a different analogy of why we need government’s involvement and how it should be applied. This analogy is horse racing. In order to make a horse race fair, there are strict regulations concerning the breed of horse running, the weight that the horses must carry, and the implements and substances that can be used to affect the horses’ performance.
The oil and gasoline industry received enormous benefits from government intervention over the past 150 years. For example, there was the previously mentioned $2+ per gallon tax imposed on alcohol production during the Civil War, which was never rescinded until more than 40 years later. Then there was the imposition of prohibition that made all alcohol production illegal for 14 years. And there have been the billions and billions of dollars in continuous subsidies, allotments, allowances, and tax incentives that continue to this very day, even though the oil industry is hugely profitable. The Big Oil lobby likes to complain about and overdramatize the subsidies given to various alternative energy and fuel sources, and then deny or ignore the fact that they have been the biggest recipient of government subsidies.
There’s also another incredible financial break that the oil industry gets from the American people and our government: a free security service in the form of the U.S. military.
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Yes, it’s correct that most filling stations are independently owned and operated, but most are under contractual obligations to their gasoline provider to not sell any type of fuel product that they don’t produce or distribute. So if a particular oil distributor doesn’t offer an ethanol blend, such as E85 or E15, then in most instances the independent owner-operator cannot accept another distributor’s ethanol product without the filling station owner paying a burdensome fee to do so. This is not a free and open marketplace.
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Not surprising is that these anti-ethanol points are the basic anti-ethanol points used in GUSHER OF LIES. Yes, Bryce does add in subsidy issues and the issue of “power density.” But these extra issues are not new or unique anti-ethanol points that were discovered by Bryce; they just were not included in that particular Edelman message. The ethanol subsidy issue and the power density issue are typically included in oil industry sponsored anti-ethanol messages and reports created by others such as David Pimentel, Tim Searchinger, and the aforementioned Jerry Taylor.
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As Robert Rapier confirmed to me in a phone conversation I had with him last Fall, he used to receive informational messages like this from the Big Oil propaganda machine, and that if he was to write an article that contained the information, and get it published, that there would be some financial remuneration for doing so. I believe that there is a great likelihood that Bryce has received anti-ethanol information points from the oil lobby, even though he says he hasn’t. Frankly, it’s irrelevant because the truthful and factual responses to the anti-ethanol points are the same either way.
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Hey, everybody it’s okay that we’re enslaved to oil that comes from people who hate us because it’s the new cool thing to do! READ MORE
Related articles
- GUSHER OF LIES - Review and Reply to Robert Bryce Pt. 2 (Auto Channel)
- GUSHER OF LIES - Book Review and Reply to Robert Bryce Pt 3 (Auto Channel)
- GUSHER OF LIES - Book Review and Reply to Robert Bryce Pt 4 (Auto Channel)
- GUSHER OF LIES - Book Review and Reply to Robert Bryce Pt 5 (Auto Channel)
- GUSHER OF LIES - Book Review and Reply to Robert Bryce Pt. Pt 6 (Auto Channel)
- The History of the Standard Oil Company (MClure's/Ida Tarbell)
Excerpt from Auto Channel (Part 2): What this would do is take the $400 billion (approx) per year that we don’t have to send out of the country and cycle it around several times in the process of buying American goods that make more money available to Americans to buy more American-produced items that are built by Americans, etc., etc.., etc. It would give us an annual stimulus of a few trillion dollars. If the $800 billion TARP stimulus program in 2008 was supposed to be good for our economy, just imagine what an annual $3 trillion stimulus would do every year for 5 years, 10 years, 25 years?
So, to me, instead of all the time that Bryce devotes in his book to using arcane figures and charts to show us how gasoline is cheaper today than 100 years ago, I think this process is a far better direction for America. And I think that if you are an American libertarian who believes in the United States Constitution and the United States Bill of Rights that this is the only way to go.
By the way, I hope you’ve noted that I didn’t even figure in how much we would be saving by not using our military to defend the world’s oil…Did I say “the world’s oil,” and not just American oil? Yes I did. We’re even protecting the oil of countries that hate us.
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I don’t think that Pimentell has had any business experience. I don’t think that Taylor or Searchinger or Rahn or David Fridley from Lawrence-Livermore Labs ever had any business experience. They may have studied business for a time in school, ....
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By the way, again, I hope you’ve still noticed that I haven’t even included in the cost for our military to defend the world’s oil, and I haven’t calculated in the incalculable cost of the lives of our military service personnel and American civilians.
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He doesn’t shilly-shally about why we were “there,” wherever the “there” had been. We were “there” for the oil.
However, he concludes the topic by writing:
“The point is clear: Oil related terror attacks will continue…But even if the U.S. were somehow free of imported oil, American consumers would still be buying oil at the global price and would therefore not be immune from the price spikes caused by…(terrorist) attacks.”
“Why? Well, because the price of oil is set globally, American oil traders are not going to sell their domestically produced crude in the U.S. if they can get a substantially higher price (elsewhere)…Thus the U.S. cannot isolate itself from the rest of the global oil market.”
In other words, Bryce is telling us to just lie back and continue to accept the screwing we’ve been getting, because the screwing will continue.
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What most people don’t understand, and what the oil lobby desperately doesn’t want you to know, is that regardless of how much more drilling for oil is done in America, regardless of how much fracking goes on, regardless of how many pipelines are built from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, America will never be free from dependence on foreign oil. Control of our primary engine fuel, the fuel that has been dictating our buying and driving decisions, is in the control of foreign regimes. For as long as it continues we will never have gasoline prices that are truly cheap; the best we will ever be able to say is, “Well, it’s not so bad, remember last year when it was over $___ a gallon.”
By Robert Bryce’s own words, and based upon….what, - a fabulous trip he took to Dubai and his intentional ignorance of fossil fuel alternatives - we will never be free from oil-sponsored terrorism. We will never have energy independence, ever.
I agree with Bryce that we will never, ever have energy independence; our military will never abandon the Middle East… for as long as we use gasoline as our primary engine fuel. The solution, therefore, is to change the paradigm. The solution is to make a non-fossil fuel our primary fuel, and that fuel is ethanol.
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I have no interest in discussing the subjects of Peak Oil and Climate Change. I feel they are irrelevant to energy independence. That may be disappointing to some, but here’s why: First, if we had a viable solution(s) to fossil-fuel fuels it doesn’t matter if or when the world runs out of oil or if production capability is maxed-out. Second, I never believed that the world would run out of oil. I didn’t believe it in the 1970’s when it was very fashionable to do so, and I don’t believe it now; certainly not after learning about huge fossil fuel deposits discovered off the coast of Brazil, in the Gulf Mexico, in the Mediterranean off the coast of Israel and Lebanon, and so on.
Interestingly, the fear of eventual global oil depletion goes back more than 100 years (Bryce references this fact, too). There were many responsible people who have been alarmed at various times about the possibility, not just some luddites, but the answer was always rather simple: just invent new methods to detect and get at the deposits. They did, and so they did.
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Vehicles that run on gasoline and diesel definitely cause pollution, whether the result will be the end of mankind or not. Because I am a great lover of clean skies and clean water, lowering the amount of pollution that spews from our internal combustion engines is a worthy goal.
I have always disagreed with combining the issues of energy independence and global warming, and I have counseled global warming believers to do the same. Ending our dependence on foreign oil has sufficient justification without having to rely on something that even the most ardent GW alarmists are not quite certain about. If, and I believe when, the theory of global warming is finally disproven, it will shut down whatever alternative energy efforts were begun simply because of the alarm. That would be very unfortunate for alternate fuels. The battle for the use of ethanol as a viable alternative to oil should be fought on it own merits; and as you will read, it is fully armed to do so.
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More to the point, Bob (Gordon) has written extensively that electric cars are just a diversion sponsored and used by the oil industry as a divide-and-conquer tactic. As long as the public can be dazzled and bamboozled by the glitz of electric wizardry, our minds will be taken off the deployment of existing non-fossil fuel alternatives. I completely agree with Bob on this point ....
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... Bryce is ‘Mr. I Hate Subsidies.’ ... The entire modern electric car movement has been about government subsidies, unproven technologies, insufficient production capabilities, unrealistic purchase prices; everything that Bryce rails against when considering non-fossil fuels. Suddenly, he is optimistic. All the subsidies that the government has given to this particular non-fossil fuel alternative is good; he now understands why a government subsidy can be a good thing to encourage innovation and to provide a little bit of leveling of the playing field.
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In 2008, around the same time that Robert Bryce published GUSHER OF LIES, I wrote another very long article that was published on The Auto Channel website (owning a media outlet really comes in handy when you have a lot of opinions). This article was titled “NO NEW GASOLINE-POWERED VEHICLES IN THE U.S. BY 2014...Can It Be Done?” Naturally it’s still available on TheAutoChannel.com if you choose to read it.
The article suggested a plan whereby the U.S. would become free from foreign oil in a rather short period of time. I didn’t fantasize the flipping of a switch at midnight and then expect a complete and total change by dawn the next morning. It called for a gradual, but aggressive switch to alternative fuels. It also didn’t call for the prohibition of all domestic oil production – unlike the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which stopped all legal distillation of alcohol.
My plan understood the need to keep existing domestic oil and gasoline jobs fully functioning, the need for petroleum-based fuels for older vehicles, as well as for the myriad other products that require petroleum-based chemicals. I reviewed and commented on the various possibilities, from compressed air to algae to propane and CNG to ethanol.
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If there had been in 2008 a national imperative to make an alternative fuel our primary fuel – and if Barack Obama had been serious when he gave his August 4th Energy Policy speech, I have no doubt that the technology used today, just 5 short years later would have shown considerable improvement over the technology that was used in 2008 to produce which ever of the alternatives was selected.
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In GUSHER OF LIES, Robert Bryce never anticipated technological improvement in the production of alternative non-oil based fuels – except to expressly discount its possibility. He locked himself into a by-gone era, as if he was Amish. He repeats and presents data that was based on information that was out-of-date probably from the day it was created. To make matters worse, some of the information was never correct even when it was created, and the passage of time didn’t magically make it accurate.
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The people he thanks in the acknowledgement section of the book seem to all be homers for Big Oil. I sent a follow up email to Bryce asking if he had spoken with any specific ethanol proponents. So far, he hasn’t replied.
BRYCE’S SHELL GAME
The five primary lies told about ethanol relate to:
1. Energy content and MPG of gasoline vs. ethanol
2. Ethanol causes engine damage
3. Corn ethanol deprives starving people of food & causes food prices to increase
4. Producing ethanol requires more energy to make than it puts out (EROEI)
5. Government Subsidies
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At the heart of the energy content lie are BTUs (British Thermal Units). Gasoline has a rating of about 116,000 BTUs, and ethanol has a rating of about 76,000 BTUs. As a simple mathematical calculation will show you, this means that ethanol has about 33% fewer BTUs than gasoline, or another way to look at it is that the energy content of ethanol is about a third (33%) less than gasoline.
Bryce uses this difference in energy content in three ways. First, he says that 1 gallon of ethanol equals only 0.66 gallons of gasoline. Second, that because of the lower energy content that ethanol will deliver fewer miles per gallon (MPG) than gasoline. And third, he uses the lower BTUs to compute how many bushels of corn will be required to produce the ethanol needed to replace gasoline. When combined with incorrect data about available land, water requirements, CO2 emissions, and overall energy needed to grow the crops, he assumes his sleight-of-hand technique is undetectable.
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The so-called energy content of ethanol and gasoline is irrelevant when it comes to internal combustion engines. The law of physics, in this case, is out of its jurisdiction.
BTU measurement is used to explain and calculate how much energy is required to heat water. If we were discussing a steam powered engine, heating water is a significant issue. But internal combustion engines are not dependent on heating water.
Using ethanol in a typical gasoline-powered engine will produce fewer miles than gasoline because the engine is optimized to run on gasoline, not because there is a difference in BTUs. Using ethanol in a similar engine that is optimized to run on ethanol will deliver at least the same mileage along with greater horse power. This principle has been known and understood for more than a century.
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Also in 1906, the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted experiments with ethanol and gasoline and concluded that the power from ethanol is materially higher than gasoline.
In 1907 and 1908, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Geological Service jointly conducted 2,000 tests on ethanol and gasoline and concluded: “While gasoline carries about one-third more energy than an equal amount of alcohol, the higher engine compression ratios allowed by the latter made the two fuels highly comparable.”
In 1906, the Edison Electric Testing Laboratory and Columbia University began testing ethanol. Elihu Thomson, who worked with Thomas Edision and was a co-founder of General Electric, reported that despite a smaller heat or B.T.U. value, “a gallon of alcohol will develop substantially the same power in an internal combustion engine as a gallon of gasoline. This is owing to the superior efficiency of operation.” Thompson became acting president of MIT in the early 1920’s.
Studies and trials comparing gasoline-optimized engines to ethanol-optimized engines continue to take place during current times, such as the Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions conducted by Argonne National Laboratories. In 1998, the U.S. Department of Energy, General Motors, and Natural Resources Canada sponsored the 1998 ETHANOL VEHICLE CHALLENGE, a technology competition that involved engineering students from 14 American and Canada universities and colleges. The goal was to convert Chevrolet Malibu sedans into an optimized vehicles fueled solely by E85. Results of the competition showed that the optimized Malibus were 13%-15% more efficient than stock Malibus.
The 1999 and 2000 versions of the ETHANOL VEHICLE CHALLENGE used Chevrolet Silverado trucks instead of Malibu sedans. Ethanol optimized vehicles were again more efficient than the stock gasoline-optimized Silverados.
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Diesel, which is also produced from petroleum oil, is rated at about 129,000 BTUs (higher than gasoline’s 116,000 BTUs). Using Bryce’s “basic physics” logic it would stand to reason that diesel if used in a gasoline optimized engine, should produce about 10% more miles per gallon. However, if you fill your gasoline vehicle’s tank with diesel you get less miles per gallon, much less miles per gallon…like none - the engine won’t run. Conversely, if you fill a diesel-powered vehicle with gasoline, you don’t just get 10% fewer miles, you’ll probably get zero miles, assuming the vehicle even starts. So regardless of BTU rating, the key is engine optimization.
For those readers who don’t know, there are three things different between a gasoline-optimized internal combustion engine (ICE) and an ethanol-optimized internal combustion engine, they are: Spark timing, distance of piston stroke, and the quantity of fuel dispersed by the fuel injectors. Incidentally, building internal combustion engines that are optimized to run on ethanol would require no more assembly time and there would be no difference in costs (there can be a slight difference in costs to produce current flex-fuel engines, but that’s largely because of the low volume of flex-fuel engine production).
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Moreover, the difference in MPG is typically offset by the lower cost of ethanol, even with the pump subsidies having been removed since Bryce wrote GUSHER OF LIES. Consequently there is a net gain when ethanol (E85 typically) is used in place of regular gasoline (E10 or gasoline without any ethanol, if you can find it).
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In 1936, William J. Hale, Ph.D, published a book titled "PROSPERITY BECKONS - Dawn of the Alcohol Era." Hale was a leading chemical engineer of his day. He was Director of the DOW CHEMICAL Organic Research Laboratory, Chairman of Division Chemistry and Chemical Technology, National Research Council, Washington, D.C., consultant to the Chemical Warfare Service, visiting Professor of Chemurgy at Connecticut and President of the National Agrol Company.
In his book, Dr. Hale writes that the inefficiency of burning gasoline in a gasoline-optimized internal combustion engine loses 25% of it's energy value, whereas alcohol (ethanol) "enters into complete combustion" in the engine. Therefore, instead of comparing gasoline's 116,000 BTUs to ethanol's 76,000 BTUs (and advancing the idea that ethanol has 33% less energy than gasoline, as the oil industry lays out their story), you should deduct one-fourth of the gasoline BTUs. This the makes the comparison 87,000 BTUs for gasoline versus 76,000 for ethanol, presumably giving ethanol 12% less BTUs, not 33% less. "Thus," Hale writes, "the custom of comparing fuels on their potentially available British Thermal Units becomes at once obsolete."
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In 2007, Bruce Dale, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at Michigan State University, put together a Power Point presentation that he used to explain the misuse of "net energy" and to rebut the bogus claims made by David Pimentel and Tad Patzek. This presentation can be viewed by CLICKING HERE. It provides the same substantially lower energy-content information that William Hale wrote about.
I think it’s unconscionable for anyone, particularly someone who is called an “energy expert,” to use the BTU argument to denigrate ethanol. READ MORE; includes VIDEO
Excerpt from Auto Channel (Part 3): In the early 1920’s, the world’s largest automobile maker, General Motors, invented a formula that added tetraethyl lead to gasoline, thereby emulating one of the best qualities of ethanol. Tetraethyl lead, while deadly to humans, was able to quiet the knock that prohibited the use of gasoline in high compression, high performance spark induced internal combustion engines. This was the birth of leaded gasoline.
GM was able to file for and get a patent on this process. GM combined that patent with a similar patent owned by the world’s largest oil company, Standard Oil. DuPont, one of the world’s largest chemical companies, and a large share holder in GM, joined the group. John Rockefeller and his company Standard Oil had become fabulously wealthy because of America’s need for a cheap fuel to be used for indoor lighting and heating. The previous most popular liquid fuel for indoor lighting and heating was alcohol, but because of a huge tax placed on alcohol production during the Civil War the public had no choice but to accept smelly, dirty kerosene that could be sold for just a fraction of the price of alcohol.
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GM, realizing that they would make billions of dollars during the life of the patents just from their share of leaded gasoline royalties alone, ceased any further efforts to use an ethanol-gasoline blend and concentrated on building engines that were optimized for leaded gasoline. Standard Oil also recognized the importance of leaded fuel in allowing all automakers to be able to design and build high compression, higher performing engines. Having a lock on leaded gasoline, Standard was able to insure that their service stations, and the service stations that were owned by Rockefeller’s other oil companies were able to remain the dominant filling stations in every geographic market.
Consequently, the world’s largest companies in the automobile business and automobile fuel business had the exclusive on the only product of its kind. This came at a time when alcohol production and consumption was illegal throughout America, so the other oil companies couldn’t easily develop a gasoline blended fuel that could be used in the new high compression engines. And because America happened to have more cars and more paved roads then anywhere else in the world, this made an extremely rich and powerful Standard Oil even more rich and powerful.
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The ethanol of today is the same ethanol of the 19th century. Ethanol can power the biggest, fastest automobile engines without needing a poison additive like tetraethyl lead.
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I contend that a sane person would take the position that any money given to those who sponsor terrorism is too much. I believe that any person with a working brain would say “We must do everything to reduce our dependence on the product that keeps these murderers in business. We must become energy independent.
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Bryce states that we shouldn’t worry about the really evil oil producing nations since we can refuse to buy their oil. This is an absurd point because as Bryce acknowledges elsewhere, the oil industry is a global industry. If we choose to not import oil from Iran, for example, it doesn’t mean that we don’t need the oil. So the oil has to come from somewhere else. Then another country that doesn’t have the same problem with Iran simply fills in their need with Iranian oil. And since it is all priced according to a global market, not local, the Iranians still get the same price for their oil whether we like it or not. They are not harmed.
To make matters worse, we are using Iranian oil regardless of what our leaders tell us. Some will get shipped to a middle-man country before us, relabeled, and then shipped to America. Some of this oil even comes to us as if it was “North American” oil from Canada.
Regardless of whether a particular act of terrorism was funded for $1 million or $1 thousand, if we got rid of relying on “global oil” we wouldn’t have to put on a happy face and turn our heads away from holding the right people responsible.
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Today's report means that, once again, no lives were lost, no U.S. combat troops were dispatched, no naval assets were deployed, no Tomahawk missiles were fired, no helicopters were shot down, and no drones were needed to go behind enemy lines in order to protect any ethanol production facilities or the flow of ethanol to American service stations.
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Then there was a story published on May 1, 2013 by NADA (National Automobile Dealers Association) that revealed that fuel economy ranks as the #1 factor in all new car and truck purchases.
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(I)f it’s horsepower you want then you want ethanol.
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Three years ago this month, TheAutoChannel.com published a story titled, “Switzer Builds e85-capable 900 hp Nissan GT-R.” The story was written by Switzer’s PR guy Jo Borras and it relates how a client wasn’t satisfied with Switzer’s “run of the mill” customization of a Nissan R35 GT-R that only put out 800 hp. This client wanted more, he wanted 900 hp. (Reminds me of the classic funny bit in “Spinal Tap” when Nigel Tufnel talks about his amplifier that has knobs that go to 11.)
Switzer re-customized the already customized car by adding a new transmission and making clutch adjustments. But they still had the horsepower wall to climb and the barrier was gasoline. This is what Jo reported:
“We didn’t want to just deliver a race-gas package that tethered the client to a fuel drum in his garage, but we wanted to be able to turn up the boost, also.” The solution? Readily-available E85…”
“…In the end we had a fuel that gave us everything we needed to crank up the boost on this car and deliver over 900 hp. The E85 delivered other benefits as well: it is significantly “greener” than the pump-gas and race-gas versions of the GTR. “With most high-horsepower cars, you can barely breathe after just a few dyno runs. With the E85, we were able to run pull after pull to dial in the tune without feeling any effects of the usual emissions. It’s hardly scientific, but there was a noticeable improvement in the air quality in the shop compared to race gas.”
Jo Borras did say that some adjustments were made to make the engine ethanol optimized, as I wrote about earlier.
In a phone interview that I conducted with Jo at the time, I asked him why they would use ethanol (he was not aware of The Auto Channel’s position on ethanol), his response was, “Why in God's name would you not use ethanol? It’s cheaper, cleaner and gives the car more power."
My follow-up question was, “So why don’t you use E100”? His answer was, “We would if we could, but it’s not available to us on a ready basis. It’s easy to find E85.” READ MORE; includes VIDEO
Excerpt from Auto Channel (Part 4): ... he (Bryce) and the oil lobby have no problem with the subsidies given to electric car development because they know that electric cars are not a threat to the oil industry. “All subsidies are equal, but some are more equal than others. Subsidies for electric is good; subsidies for ethanol is bad.” You can almost hear George Orwell’s Animal Farm pig making that statement; it’s doublespeak at its finest. (Orwell’s next book, 1984, coined the terms “newspeak” and “doublethink.” These are considered the predecessors to “doublespeak.”)
Let me be frank about the subsidies situation: It is absurd to think that an under-funded fuel/energy alternative of any kind could compete with gasoline without significant government assistance. The benefits of developing a domestic alt-fuel industry that causes less pollution and frees us from external forces makes the effort worthwhile, even if it is no more economical than petroleum-based fuels. In order for private investors to produce ethanol in the quantity that it needs to retire gasoline, the investors and the alt-fuel industry need the same government assistance and intervention that was used to make oil/gasoline our primary fuel. The playing field must be leveled.
The oil industry has benefitted from a staggering amount of government subsidies, which are “paid” out in many forms. Government assistance to the oil and gasoline industries continue to this very day even though oil-related companies have recorded astronomically huge profits year after year. And we continue to wage war and use our military to defend the oil industry as if our military was the oil industry’s own private security force.
Worst of all, hundreds of thousands of American service men and women have lost their lives in oil-induced wars and military engagements. This is the incalculable cost that I referred to earlier. What value do we put on the life of an American soldier, sailor, airman or marine? Why should we discount their lives just so that some Arab sheiks and Third World dictators can drive their million dollar Ferraris in the Desert?
I am not against war; I’m not philosophically opposed to it. I understand the reasons and need to go to war. Often I think we have not gone to war quickly enough. I am, however, against long drawn out wars where our quick victories are turned into defeat just to secure an oil position or to protect a bunch of misogynist racists who pretend that they rule by divine right.
We overpay for gasoline and diesel at the pump, we overpay for them via taxes, and we overpay with human lives.
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A study released by the Environmental Law Institute in September 2009, covering the years 2002 to 2008 revealed that:
The federal government provided substantially larger subsidies to fossil fuels than to renewables. Subsidies to fossil fuels—a mature, developed industry that has enjoyed government support for many years—totaled approximately $72 billion over the study period, representing a direct cost to taxpayers (this figure did not include the cost of our military involvement anywhere in the world; or the funds provided to clean up oil spills; or for water infrastructure improvements in ports, harbors, or waterways that are used to accommodate oil tankers).
Subsidies for renewable fuels, a relatively young and developing industry, totaled $29 billion over the same period.
Most of the largest subsidies to fossil fuels were written into the U.S. Tax Code as permanent provisions. By comparison, many subsidies for renewables are time-limited initiatives implemented through energy bills, with expiration dates that limit their usefulness to the renewables industry.
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In his encyclopedic book “Alcohol Can Be A Gas,” David Blume writes “Between 1968 and 2000, oil companies received subsidies of $149.6 billion, compared to ethanol’s paltry $116.6 million.”
On September 23, 2012, Kevin Begos, reporting for Associated Press, wrote a pro-oil story titled, “Decades of federal dollars helped fuel gas boom.”
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At just about the time that the paperback edition of GUSHER OF LIES was published ExxonMobil declared a fourth quarter profit of more than $40 billion. That’s just ExxonMobil not the entire gasoline industry, and it was just for one quarter, and it came on top of all the subsidies and tax breaks that they received. Archer Daniels Midland reported their fiscal fourth quarter profit of $372 million. Although $372 million is nothing to sneeze at, it’s less than 1% of ExxonMobil’s profit.
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More than 90% of all the corn grown in America is not fit for human consumption. Can it be grown for human consumption? Sure, but then what about the animals? Farmers and ranchers need to feed the animals to make them grow so that the animals can get big and fat and provide us with meat. Did we suddenly give up eating meat?
There’s still another problem, most of our corn is genetically engineered to help the corn grow big and abundant. Most countries have regulations against importing food that has been genetically engineered. If we don’t continue using this process then our abundant crops might not be so abundant. So lower crop yield could result in not enough corn for the starving people who don’t eat corn, which results in higher prices or more subsidies that have to get paid to the farmers, which then raises other prices.
Here’s the amazing part: much of the corn that is used to feed animals is not used as you or I eat corn, it’s first converted to “distillers grains.” The process breaks down the corn so that the starch is removed and only the best parts (in terms of feedstock for cattle) remains. It’s rich in nutrients, providing about 4 times more protein to the animal than straight corn.
As the name “distillers grains” suggests, the process is conducted by creating a mash and then distilling the mash to get rid of the liquid. This liquid is ethanol. This ethanol is the ethanol that can be used to fuel an internal combustion engine. If the liquid wasn’t used it would be discarded. Why waste something that provides so much nutrient benefits that can be used in virtually every gasoline-powered engine and makes a profit? The above is only part of the story. American farmers grow as much corn as they do because they know how to grow corn, they have the soil and climate conditions that allow for corn to be grown, and mostly because they have a marketplace for the corn.
The image that the oil industry wants to create in this situation is one where just as the farmer is going to deliver his delicious corn into the mouths of starving people the greedy ethanol producers swoop in and buy up all the corn. This isn’t the way a manufacturing business is conducted.
Farming is just another manufacturing industry, with a few more concerns that are related to weather conditions. But it follows the same rudiments of manufacturing that is used for automobiles, clothing, appliances and a thousand other items.
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If there wasn’t a known demand for the corn (demand equals money) the farmers would not grow it, or at least not nearly so much of it. They would grow something else, or they just wouldn’t grow anything. If the farmers don’t grow anything they would be unemployed. So then the farmers would get some kind of public assistance, which in itself is a subsidy. If the farmers chose to grow something else it could cause a glut on the market, causing prices to fall, which would hurt even more farmers. The government may still have to step in with some financial assistance or pay the farmers to not grow anything (which has happened many times in the past). This is a subsidy. If you don’t like subsidies, why would this subsidy be more acceptable?
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The solution for the starving people is to teach them how to grow corn or wheat or cucumbers themselves. And this has been tried, of course. However, a peculiar thing has happened. In the effort to get some of our surplus produce in the hands of people in third world countries, the lower price (and often no-price) of the items winds up under-cutting similar locally grown produce. This makes it unprofitable for the local farmer to continue in business, and it drives him out.
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Sorghum can also be used to make distillers grains too, so we’ll still get a crop that can feed animals and produce fuel. It’ll be fun to see what argument the oil industry comes up with then.
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According to David Blume, who's probably the single most experienced and knowledgeable guy in the world on ethanol and ethanol production:
“Of its nearly half a billion acres of prime cropland, the U.S. uses only 72.1 million acres for corn in an average year. The land used for corn takes up only 16.6% of our prime cropland, and only 7.45% of our total agricultural land. Even if, for alcohol production, we used only what the USDA considers prime flat cropland, we would still have to produce only 368.5 gallons of alcohol per acre to meet 100% of the demand for transportation fuel at today’s (2007) levels. Corn could easily produce this level—and a wide variety of standard crops yield up to triple this.”
Therefore, as compared to Bryce’s calculations that would never compute out, there is a vastly different side to the story. And, as Blume points out, if corn is replaced by a higher yielding crop then calculations become dramatically more favorable.
Furthermore, Blume’s figures pertain to 100% replacement of gasoline and diesel. As I pointed out regarding Bryce’s immediate jump from 0% to 100%, I’d say the same is true for Blume’s comments (and I’m sure David would agree); let’s first make sure we get E15 into national acceptance – which is just a tiny increase in America’s current use of ethanol. Then we can move onto E20, E30, E50, etc., etc. Even my very aggressive plan for cutting out the production of all new gasoline-powered vehicles takes place in five years and it never fully eliminates the use of gasoline as an engine fuel until the vast majority of gasoline powered vehicles are retired and off the road – that would probably be at least 15-20 years later.
Since improvements are regularly being made on crop yields, water requirements, and enzyme technology, the numbers will only get more favorable for ethanol. Remember what happened to the teleconferencing video guy who insisted that Internet connectivity would never be faster than 28.8k. READ MORE; includes VIDEO
Excerpt from Auto Channel (Part 5): In 2008, when Bryce wrote GUSHER OF LIES, a $4 retail box of corn flakes cereal contained about 6 cents worth of corn. So if corn prices rose 50% there would be about 9 cents worth of corn. If the price of corn rose 100% there would be about 12 cents worth of corn. Hmm, 6 cents, 4 dollars, 6 cents, 4 dollars. Even if the supermarket made 100% profit, which they don’t, there would be the big difference between 6 cents and 4 dollars. No, the price of food did not rise because ethanol pushed the price of corn up too high.
Food prices increased during the time that Bryce refers to in his book because of “transportation costs.” Not because corn ethanol was being used by the delivery trucks and freight trains, but because of higher gasoline and diesel costs. The transportation costs, which were unrelated to rising corn prices and/or ethanol production, was the culprit.
Food costs also increased because of marketing costs which are related to packaging cost increases. One of the reasons for packaging cost increases is the higher printing costs due to inks costing more. The inks are manufactured from petroleum oil.
In the time period during which Bryce wrote GUSHER OF LIES oil prices were at all time highs. Gasoline and diesel prices were also at their highest levels.
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The World Bank was wrong and in the summer of 2010, a couple of years after they told Robert Bryce and all the other good little oil industry toadies that corn prices rose because of ethanol production, they issued a retraction.
The rise in corn prices, according to the revised report from THE WORLD BANK was due to investor speculation, not ethanol producers pushing the prices up just so they could take all the corn-on-the-cobs out of the mouths of starving people. Here’s come excerpts from the report:
PLACING THE 2006/08 COMMODITY PRICE BOOM INTO PERSPECTIVE
John Baffes - THE WORLD BANK
Tassos Haniotis EUROPEAN COMISSION
“The 2006‐08 commodity boom was one of the longest and broadest of the post WWII period. The boom - and especially the 2008 rally, when crude oil prices peaked at US$ 133/barrel (up 94 percent from a year earlier) and rice prices doubled within just five months - has renewed interest in the long-term behavior and determinants of commodity prices, and raised questions about whether commodity prices have reversed the downward course that most of them followed during most of the past century. It has also produced numerous calls for coordinated policy actions at the national and international level to address food availability and food security concerns.”
“The increasing interaction between the price movements of energy and nonenergy commodities during the boom focused attention on the impact of growing demand for biofuels, including for maize - based ethanol (mainly in the US) and oilseed - based biodiesel production (mainly in Europe). During the boom, maize and crude oil prices moved in tandem, pointing to an emerging new and fixed relationship between them. Obviously, maize and its use for ethanol moved into the picture as significant factors affecting price developments. But how much impact was there, and was there a similar one in oilseeds, resulting from their use for biodiesel?”
“Concluding Remarks - Numerous factors have contributed to the recent commodity boom, and have been analyzed extensively in the literature. Yet their relative weight continues to be an area of contention. In this paper we examined three key factors whose role has been somewhat controversial: speculation, the growth of demand for food commodities by emerging economies and the role of biofuels. We conjecture that index fund activity (one type of “speculative” activity among the many that the literature refers to) played a key role during the 2008 price spike. Biofuels played some role too, but much less than initially thought.”
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A new report from The World Bank, which was just issued last month in May 2013 confirms that the primary driver in rising food prices is the cost of crude oil.
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Energy Returned On Energy Invested. This is sort of the equivalent to the financial community’s ROI, Return On Investment. Ultimately, both EROEI and ROI are used to tell you if you’re wasting your time.
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As I implied a bit earlier, the Pimentel-Patzek studies were hatchet jobs because they calculated in extraneous materials, they under-estimated crop yields, they over-estimated other aspects of farming (either intentionally or because the information they used was out-of-date), they exaggerated possible worst case agricultural scenarios, they created deceptive algorithms to calculate and compare statistics, and they purposely ignored certain other aspects of oil refining and gasoline production that make gasoline EROEI horribly negative.
Perhaps the most shocking item that Pimentel and Patzek left out in their gasoline EROEI calculations are the hundreds of thousands of American military personnel (past and future) who were killed or wounded to protect and defend the oil industry’s status quo. I’m sure they never calculated in the cost of continually treating those service personnel who sustained long-term and life long injuries. Then there are the accidental deaths of oil industry workers (past and future). Then there’s the destruction of beaches, and the loss of employment for those non-oil industry workers who live near the oil disasters, and then – as in the case of the Gulf of Mexico fiasco – the destruction of millions(?) of birds and fish.
Then you’d have to figure in all the energy expended in making every bullet, every gun, every tank and cannon and jet and ship and pair of shoes worn by our men and women who are being used to protect the oil industry. These are all a part of the cost of doing business oil-style.
Okay, okay, I’m not playing fair; I’m using tragically true but typically side-line aspects of oil EROEI. Of course, I don’t know how you can overlook the deaths of thousands of Americans, but the oil industry does. I should be comparing apples with apples, even though Pimentell and Patzek used bad information and irrelevant factors, such as farming equipment that is un-necessary.
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Here’s what I mean; they started with a zero–based budget as if America had no farmers. They even calculated into the energy equation the energy required to build some of the equipment that’s used in farming. Not only were the tractors they selected unsuitable for the job because they were too large and cumbersome, but they ignored the fact that almost all corn farmers already own the equipment necessary to grow corn or other products ....
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Consider some examples of studies that studied the Pimentel-Patzek studies. The first of which comes from Tad Patzek’s own school, UC Berkeley. It was a study completed in 2006 after the Pimentell-Patzek studies and it was conducted by UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group. Here’s some highlights of the results:
Ethanol can replace gasoline with significant energy savings, comparable impact on greenhouse gases
“The analysis, appearing in this week's issue of Science, attempts to settle the ongoing debate over whether ethanol is a good substitute for gasoline and thus can help lessen the country's reliance on foreign oil and support farmers in the bargain.”
“Dan Kammen and Alex Farrell of the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley, with their students Rich Plevin, Brian Turner and Andy Jones along with Michael O'Hare, a professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy, deconstructed six separate high-profile studies of ethanol. They assessed the studies' assumptions and then reanalyzed each after correcting errors, inconsistencies and outdated information regarding the amount of energy used to grow corn and make ethanol, and the energy output in the form of fuel and corn byproducts.”
“Kammen estimates that ethanol could replace 20 to 30 percent of fuel usage in this country with little effort in just a few years. In the long term, the United States may be able to match Sweden, which recently committed to an oil-free future based on ethanol from forests and solar energy. Kammen last year published a paper, also in Science, arguing that even Africa could exploit its biomass to build a biofuel industry that could meet energy needs for the poor and develop a sustainable local fuel supply, a future much better than using fossil fuels.”
“The goal of the UC Berkeley analysis was to understand how six studies of fuel ethanol could come to such different conclusions about the overall energy balance in its production and use. Farrell, Kammen and their UC Berkeley colleagues dissected each study and recreated its analysis in a spreadsheet where they could be compared side-by-side. The team said it found numerous "errors, inconsistencies and omissions" among the studies, such as not considering the value of co-products of ethanol production - dried distillers grains, corn gluten feed and corn oil - that boost the net energy gain from ethanol production. Other studies overestimated the energy used by farm machinery.”
"The assumptions made by some of the authors were not based on the best data, or were just a little bit too convenient, and had a strong impact on the results," Kammen said.”
Included in the UC Berkeley review were the following:
Thermodynamics of the Corn-Ethanol Biofuel Cycle Patzek, T.W., Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences 23(6), 519-567 (2004).
Ethanol Production Using Corn, Switchgrass, and Wood; Biodiesel Production Using Soybean and Sunflower David Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek, Natural Resource Research, 14(1), 65-76 (2005).
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Another study, conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture, was presented in 2007 at UC Berkeley – what a coincidence - by Roger Conway, Office of Energy Policy and New Uses at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The report showed huge discrepancies in the figures that Pimentel and Patzek used to arrive at their conclusions versus the figures used by USDA’s efforts to conduct their own studies on ethanol vs. gasoline EROEI. The USDA studies were significantly more favorable towards ethanol production.
A Michigan State University study conducted by Bruce Dale, Professor of Chemical Engineering, found that the Pimentel-Patzek methodology is flawed. The measurements of BTU are irrelevant and that the net energy of ethanol is actually higher than gasoline (in other words, EROEI for ethanol is positive, while the EROEI of gasoline is more negative).
In 2005, Bruce Dale participated in a C-SPAN televisied debate against David Pimentel and Tad Patzek. Speaking on Dale's side was John Sheehan, Senior Engineer, National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The debate was supposed to center on the issue of net energy balance. One of the most important points illuminated in the debate was that even if Pimentel-Patzek's finding that corn ethanol production results in a negative net energy equation that gasoline production is far worse and electric energy is horrendously bad compared to both ethanol and gasoline. After watching the video of the debate it's hard to believe that anyone has taken Pimentel-Patzek seriously, unless all other opposing information is kept from the viewer. The entire video can be watched by CLICKING HERE
Another report critical of Pimentel-Patzek was published in 2006 by Justus Wesseler, an agricultural economist and professor of Agricultural Economics and Rural Policy at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He called the Pimentel-Patzek work "flawed" and "misleading." This report can be found at the Elsevier Energy Policy website.
Also in 2006, the spring edition of The New Atlantis (Journal of Technology & Society) had this to say about Pimentel and Patzek’s studies: "Professors Pimentel and Patzek have published several studies on this subject, and these have been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked in the scientific literature, in government reports from the Department of Energy and Department of Agriculture, in congressional testimony, and elsewhere…Reputable scientists have publicly called the work of Pimentel and Patzek “shoddy,” “unconvincing,” and lacking in basic scientific transparency. The most recent dissection of their claims, appearing in the journal Science in January 2006, found that their results depended upon “some input data that are old and unrepresentative of current [ethanol-production] processes, or so poorly documented that their quality cannot be evaluated.” The complete editorial from The New Atlantis can be found by CLICKING HERE
In October 2009, David Blume traveled to Cornell University to conduct a workshop on permaculture. While there he paid a call on David Pimentel and was able to record the conversation. In the more than 20-minute long conversation Pimentel agrees and acknowledges that many of the conclusions that were drawn in the studies he conducted are now incorrect, or could be rendered incorrect given advances in farming and ethanol production – advances that already had been proven by the time of this conversation in 2009, which was just a year or so after Bryce wrote GUSHER OF LIES. These were also advances that had largely taken place since the publication of the Pimentel-Patzek study just 4 years prior. Bryce’s book and his later work, such as the article that appeared in The Daily Beast towards the end of 2012, make no allowance for the possibility of improvements that could affect the conclusions of the Pimentel-Patzek study, and Bryce seems to have not permitted any bothersome details about improvements to have interfered with the conclusions that his book set in stone.
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In 2011, Forrest Jehlik, Research Engineer, Argonne National Laboratory responded to what he felt are the 5 most prevalent myths about ethanol. He said that ethanol does not take more energy to make than it yields, “Argonne National Laboratory research has shown that corn ethanol delivers a positive energy balance of 8.8 megajoules per liter. The energy balance from second-generation biofuels using cellulosic sources is up to six times better…”
In 2012, the U.S. Department of Energy concluded a report on LIFECYCLE ENERGY BALANCE by stating "...corn-based ethanol shows a clear benefit over gasoline." You can read this report by CLICKING HERE.
(UPDATE: In 2016, The U.S. Department of Agriculture released an updated (2015) report that verified corn ethanol's positive EROEI and stated that additional gains had been made since 2008. This report can be found by CLICKING HERE.
And in 2018, DOE issued another updated positive Energy Balance report. Read this report by CLICKING HERE.)
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When the gasoline industry was finally faced with the mandate that they clean up their act – to get the lead out, figuratively and literally, they had two choices: The first was to go back to the original formulation that cured the ills of low octane gasoline, which was to blend in ethanol. The second choice was to pick another poison (they had such good luck for than half a century with tetraethyl lead), so MTBE was it.
Bryce writes, “…due to some leaking underground storage tanks, MTBE-BLENDED gasoline was also causing some groundwater problems. And those leaks led to lawsuits over the refiners’ use of the additive.” Some? Some groundwater problems, as if it was a couple of isolated incidents. Well, those very few number of spills is still with us today. Fresh water lakes and ponds and reservoirs that were contaminated with MTBEs still have MTBE’s in them years after outlawing its use in gasoline.
Some estimates are that it has taken $30 billion to clean up the more egregious MTBE damage. Guess who gets to pay for that? You and me. Sounds like another subsidy to the oil industry that they get to ignore..
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Interestingly, the Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, located near Bonn, Germany, describes MTBE as “very highly volatile, with a boiling point of 55 degrees centigrade.” The same institute labels ethanol as “highly volatile with a boiling point of 78 degrees centigrade.” Consequently, it looks like MTBE would evaporate more quickly than ethanol. Therefore if the problem for the refiners was that ethanol was too volatile, then they should have considered MTBE as too, too volatile.
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If there’s a large ethanol spill, clean up is relatively simple. In addition, the ethanol fumes are not explosive. On the other hand, large gasoline spills often require specialized clean-up assistance and the lingering fumes can explode even after the liquid is removed.
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Incidentally, for those of you keeping score, methanol rates at about 57,000 BTUs and isobutylene rates as about 95,000 BTUs. If you combine them and average it out it is 76,000 BTUs. If you recall from the earlier discussion on the irrelevancy of BTUs that ethanol rates at 76,000 BTUs. Now I’m not saying that the mere combining of methanol and isobutylene is how you manufacture MTBE, but isn’t it strangely coincidental that the oil industry would go to all that bother to make something that rates no more BTUs than ethanol?
So if a chemical reaction in the combining of methanol and isobutylene was so attractive to oil refiners as the secret ingredient in gasoline that reduced engine knock and increased octane, then why not just cut out all the BS and go straight to methanol, or ethanol?
I believe the answer is that the oil industry didn’t want to share any of the glory with the ethanol industry; that’s glory spelled: P R O F I T. Because in the manufacture of MTBE the methanol that is used comes from CNG (compressed natural gas), which is an oil refining by-product, instead of making the methanol from biomass, agricultural and timber waste, or solid municipal waste.
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In the rush for profits (profits are okay) and to choose anything that would work, except ethanol, the oil refiners chose a carcinogenic substance. Thank you very much, oil industry for your continued “concern” for the public’s health. READ MORE
Excerpt from Auto Channel (Part 6): At the time that Bryce wrote GUSHER OF LIES there was a Federal subsidy in place that allowed the price of E85 to be priced lower than regular gasoline (usually E10). The subsidy, which supposedly showed up as about a 60 cents reduction per gallon, permitted Bryce and others to use the subsidy as an example of how ethanol actually costs more at the pump (if you added the 50 cents to the price of E85 the price would be just about even with regular gasoline). Then if you calculate the supposed difference in MPG between regular gasoline and E85 according to the BTU nonsense discussed earlier, it shows that E85 (ethanol) cost more at the pump.
However, the reason why E85 costs about the same as regular gasoline is because it is ultimately formulated and distributed by the oil industry, and they just won’t sell something that could hurt their normal pricing and profit structure for their oil products. Of course, different states have different regulations and taxes and so the 50 cents I’m referring to may not be the same everywhere. I’m using California as my reference.
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At the beginning of 2012 the subsidy ended and anti-ethanol people predicted that E85’s price would rise to be at or higher than regular gasoline. The prices didn’t really change; Even without the subsidy I’m still buying E85 at 50 to 60 cents cheaper than regular and 75 to 90 cents cheaper than premium. When you factor in the real difference in MPG between using gasoline in a gasoline optimized engine and using ethanol in a gasoline-optimized engine - not the theoretical 33% difference, the difference is usually enough to provide a net savings when using the E85.
In other situations, such as those I described earlier in this review, independent service stations who wish to bring in ethanol-gasoline blends other than E10 and E85, like E15, are often blocked by their gasoline vendors from doing it although the vendor doesn’t offer E15 themselves. The reason is, of course, that the vendor doesn’t want to lose sales of their products to another vendor.
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The premise is this: Ethanol requires water, not just in the actual distillation process, but in the growing of the crops that are used to make the mash that gets fermented and then distilled. It’s true; water is required for these tasks. Bryce cites various studies that reveal the enormous amount of water required.
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“The first plant that POET purchased took in 17 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol in 1987. Today, POET averages less than 3 gallons of water, an 80 percent reduction from where it started. But we're not done yet.
POET believes that water is a precious resource and is committed to using as little of it as possible in our ethanol production process. So we have set a goal, to be attained by 2014, of decreasing the overall annual water intake at our plants 22% by targeting an average usage rate of 2.33 gallons of water taken in per gallon of ethanol produced. This will reduce our total annual water use by one billion gallons based on POET's 2009 production capacity of 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol.
POET engineers have invented a new way for its facilities to use water which results in a decreased intake with a reasonable economic payback. Named Total Water Recovery, it ensures that our facilities don't have to choose between profit and planet. As of December 2011, 18 POET plants had installed Total Water Recovery.
Most of the lifecycle water used in ethanol production is for growing the feedstock. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, almost all of that is from rainfall as less than 5 percent of corn used for ethanol production is irrigated. Still, water requirements of the feedstock represent the vast majority of the total lifecycle water use for ethanol production. POET is working with our feedstock producers to understand the amount of irrigated corn coming into our facilities in order to identify opportunities to collaborate for additional water conservation.
With many parts of the world facing water shortages, water conservation has become a global priority. That's why POET chose reducing our water usage at the first Ingreenuity™ goal. As of December 2011, we had cut water use by approximately 770 million gallons.”
To support Poet’s comments, consider these comments made in 2011 by Forrest Jehlik, Research Engineer at Argonne National Laboratory:
The amount of water used to make ethanol has declined dramatically. Today, producing one gallon of ethanol requires about 3.5 gallons of water. That’s a little more than it takes to process a gallon of gasoline. Much of the criticism about ethanol’s water requirements stem from the need to irrigate feedstock crops in drier climates. But most ethanol is produced from rain-fed crops grown in the Midwest.
In addition, ethanol is not carcinogenic and doesn’t poison groundwater or the ocean. Ethanol rapidly biodegrades. Concerns over ethanol spills are muted by ethanol’s low toxicity. In fact, you’ll find ethanol in beer, bourbon and other happy-hour beverages you’ve probably consumed.
Water advancements are possible, they have been made, and they will undoubtedly continue. However, the key item I would like to point out to you in Mr. Jehlik’s comments is the part, “Today, producing one gallon of ethanol requires about 3.5 gallons of water. That’s a little more than it takes to process a gallon of gasoline.” Yes, it also requires lots of water to make gasoline, but Bryce would never think of telling that to his readers.
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The issue over (Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) energy content is wrong (BTUs is just as irrelevant with CNG as with ethanol). An engine optimized to run on CNG will get the same mileage as if it was gasoline-optimized and using gasoline. So my van gets virtually the same MPG it would if I had purchased the gasoline-powered version. The price of a “gallon” of CNG can be considerably less than gasoline; in some facilities the CNG cost a bit more than half the price of gasoline. The CNG keeps the engine cleaner and the emissions are cleaner than those that would come from gasoline.
CNG does not damage engines any more than ethanol does, and both of them are better for an internal combustion engine than gasoline. CNG, like ethanol does not cause engine knocking.
There is however one great big glaring problem with CNG (there are a few “small” ones too, which I’ll address shortly). This big problem is that CNG is controlled by the oil industry.
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Well, fracking also requires huge amounts of water, and some of the fracking is taking place in areas where water is particularly scarce. Of course Bryce never mentions this; ....
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There are people who are not going on job interviews because they can’t afford the gasoline. There are people who are turning down educational opportunities because they can’t afford the gasoline to travel to schools. The freedom that the automobile gave us is now limited by a rather insignificant element controlled by regimes who don’t even respect their own fellow countrymen and coreligionists; how will they ever respect us?
The great truth that the oil industry and people like Robert Bryce have been desperately working to squelch is that there is another fuel that can do the job. Another fuel that can cost less, that is more environmentally friendly, and can be produced within our borders by our own citizens. And it is available right now. That fuel is ethanol.
Moreover, the great preponderance of the passenger vehicles on our roads can use high quantities of ethanol immediately without any conversions or adjustments done to its engines.
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But you can put ethanol in your gasoline engine and it will work, and it will perform almost as if it was gasoline. The only real difference is that the ethanol will cost less and be better for the environment. Oh yeah, and then we won’t have the need to fight quite so many wars.
Even if ethanol was not as economical, and even if ethanol in any blend level did create engine damage, the answer is not to abandon ethanol; the answer is to immediately mandate that all applicable new passenger vehicles and light trucks to be sold in America be built with engines that are optimized to run on ethanol (not gasoline).
Fortunately, ethanol is at least as economical as gasoline and it doesn’t cause the mechanical problems alleged by the oil industry and its shills, so there’s no reason to not make it our primary engine fuel. When and if electric passenger vehicles are finally ready to play their part as a viable alternative to internal combustion powered vehicles we (or our grandchildren) should welcome them. But until then we must be free from the yoke of foreign fossil fuels, which means all fossil fuels.
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This is also true for all other nations; not because it’s “the American thing to do,” but because they need their own economic security. Ethanol can be made anywhere by anybody from a very wide variety of raw materials. It is the freedom fuel. READ MORE
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