The ethanol scam

On Thu, 19 Jul 2007 08:31:40 -0700, Jay Honeck
wrote:

As gas -- and corn -- prices creep ever higher, everyone in my great
State of Iowa is all ablush with talk of riches pouring in, thanks to
ethanol production. They can barely contain their glee at this
remarkable turn of economic fortune. (Remember, just a few years ago
farmers here had one foot in the grave, and the other on a banana
peel...)

Thus, I feel like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, trying to get a
word in edgewise about the absurdity of it all. Of course, since
subsidized ethanol production is the single greatest farm subsidy
program in US history -- and since Iowa remains largely an
agricultural society -- facing facts is not a popular passtime here.

But it must be done, or our country is being led down the primrose
path to perdition. The fact remains that converting corn into
ethanol, for the purpose of fueling automobiles, is simply absurd.

Here is a quote that sums it up nicely, IMHO:

"Overall (farming, distillation), it takes 129,600 BTU to produce a
gallon of EtOH (ethanol), but the energy value of a gallon of EtOH is
only 76,000 BTU. In SI units [conversions in footnote 3]: it takes
45.7 MJ to produce a kilogram of EtOH, but the energy value of that
kilogram of EtOH is 26.8 MJ."

Although I share your views on using Ethanol from corn, that has to be
old information. The current net energy gain for corn based alcohol
is about 50%. IOW you get back 3 gallons for every two gallons
invested. That includes the entire chain from the farmer growing and
harvesting the crop through fermentation and distillation processes.
That is still not good and it also makes it expensive.

"There is thus a net energy loss of about 54,000 Btu for every gallon
(18.9 MJ for every kilogram) of EtOH produced. Unlike the old joke
about the tailor who claims he loses money on every suit, but stays in
business by 'making up for it in quantity', there is no deception
here. It's a losing proposition."

and the information is outdated. The article is dated and copywrite
1997, but some of the references are 1998 which seems a bit strange.
Last I knew you can not post date a copyright.

It was around 10 years ago they passed the beak even point with corn
grown ethanol.

HOWEVER "corn is probably one of the least efficient sources of
alcohol." It helps they can now also use the corn stalks and bacteria
to produce ethanol but it still leaves corn at, or close to the bottom
of the rankings for efficient production. Also that alcohol is
expensive enough to make today's gas prices seem almost tolerable.

In addition, using corn for ethanol production has a dramatic impact
on both the availability of other foods and their prices. The price
of beef is already climbing steadily due to the increased cost of
grain.

OTOH our government, or rather some of our conservative politicians
have a mental block against using the word "hemp" for any crop. Of
course hemp is one of the more efficient sources of ethanol in our
climate and that of Canada as well. Apparently Canada has no
reservations about using hemp for producing alcohol.

The one saving grace about this is the public will only stand for so
much before complaining about food prices. The cost of the corn based
alcohol will have much more of an impact on the cost of living than
any of the recent gas price peaks.As I said above, it not only costs
more, it will cause the availability to go down and price to go up
for many foods


You can read the whole article he
http://www.energyadvocate.com/etohscam.htm

You need up-to-date information which still does not make corn look
all that good and it's useable information.


Write your Congress Critters. The politicians are leading us down
this path for purely political purposes, and it's up to us to stop it.