Biofuels flunk their own stress test

Time notes that corn-based ethanol, etc., were getting their own stress tests at the same time as banks. And, doing just as badly, if not worse.

Big Ag now has government handwriting on the wall that ethanol, in particular, is carbon-negative compared to gasoline, and biodiesel isn’t very much carbon-positive compared to petroleum diesel.

And, this doesn’t count land-use issues.

Dick Cheney famously, or infamously, disparaged conservation.

The Obama Administration hasn’t done that, but it has yet to issue an explicit statement in favor of energy conservation. Solar and wind for electricity are good, as are alt-fuels if carbon positive, but they can’t do all the lifting. Americans need to do more to use less electricity and less fuel. It’s that simple.

The corny Barack Obama

And no, we’re not talking bad jokes, we’re talking his love for ethanol.

Here, John McCain is doubly right. Get rid of the U.S. ethanol subsidy, and stop putting the surcharge of 54 cents a gallon on Brazilian sugar-produced ethanol. It’s not only a free trade issue, it’s an energy return issue. Corn-based ethanol at best breaks even on energy return for energy investment, while sugarcane ethanol is well into the positive side, as high as 8 to 1. The times credits corn-based ethanol at 2-1, but that’s using a narrow calculation of EROEI; in reality, it’s laughable.

On the free trade side, it’s arguably a tariff that’s illegal under World Trade Organization rules, too.

And, although Obama won’t take money from lobbyists, he’ll cozy up to ex-Senators of both parties who do, on this issue.
The corny Barack Obama

Bullshit from USDA won’t help grow crops

Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said government mandates of, and subsidies for, corn-based ethanol don’t have a major effect on food prices.

Right. And the economy really did grow in the first quarter.

As for the Grocery Manufacturers’ Association’s claims that the ethanol mandate, and subsidy, keep its members from producing cheap food, what Kraft Crap produces is not food but ‘food-like substances.” Instead of stuffing America full of white flour, high-fructose corn syrup, and soybeans run through pork bellies, why not give us some real food?

If I hear the phrase ‘miracle crop’ one more time …

I’m going to punch a credulous reporter right in the nose. I see sorghum is now the miracle crop du jour, now that the bloom has worn off ethanol and has never yet affixed itself to cellulostic ethanol, algae blooms, or hard copies of minutes from Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force.

Yes, sorghum is versatile. And yes, Texas grows a fair amount of it.

BUT. … just a few caveats about this “miracle crop.”

First, it has to face the same competition for acreage as the four grains more commonly grown than it.

Second, sorghum as ethanol needs energy return on energy investment, or EROEI, research, something famously NOT done on corn for ethanol 30 years ago.

The story claims sorghum for ethanol has an EROEI four times better than corn and in the neighborhood of sugarcane. We’ll see. The same paragraph mistakenly or uninformedly imputs an EROEI of 2 to corn, when 1 is the correct answer.

Then, you have this line of gibberish:

Unlike corn, sweet sorghum is not in high demand in the global food market, so its use in biofuel production would have little impact on food prices and food security, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics said.

Well, it IS used as livestock feed. No, there’s no sorghum flour to hit more than a buck a pound at the supermarket, but there is beef to get more expensive. And, if sorghum for ethanol pushes aside corn, then it stays pricey.

And, per Wiki, here’s another problem: Commercial-grade sorghum uses a lot of nitrogen.

Hell, for that matter, Johnson grass is a member of the sorghum genus. There’s plenty of that here in Texas. Why bother with grain sorghum for fuel?

Ethanol havoc reaches far

Corn-based ethanol, at least. The proof? Just how much it has affected Iowa farmers, and the defenses people throw out for it.

U.S. farmers investing in Brazilian soybeans because they’re planting former soybean areas with corn.

U.S. farmers giving soil conservationists nightmares and migranes by repeated tilling of their fields.

U.S. farmers pulling more land out of the Conservation Reserve Program. (That also affects wildlife, especially migratory birds, but also other critters.)

U.S. meat-addicted consumers refusing to adjust their dietary practices, so far.

U.S. ranchers refusing to address their grain-feeding of beef, so far.

And, Big Ethanol getting in bed, or in line at least, with Big Ag:

Don Endres, the chief executive of VeraSun and owner of 20 percent of its shares, grew up on a farm in Watertown, S.D., where his father and grandfather raised corn. His brothers are still farmers.

Endres says ethanol plants aren’t to blame for high corn or food prices. He notes that the corn used to make ethanol isn't the kind that people eat anyway. Moreover, he says, ethanol plants like VeraSun's extract the starch in corn for fermentation while producing a dry feed that contains protein and nutrients. Piles of it are collected from industrial dryers at the plant. VeraSun then sells that feed, known as dried distillers grain, back to farmers who raise animals. Much of it goes to Texas, Mexico and China; it accounts for about 15 percent of VeraSun's revenue. When the grain is mixed with inexpensive starch, such as alfalfa, farmers can save money, Endres says.

Finally, he says, yields on corn will continue to increase so that the current acreage will be able to meet both food and fuel demands. His grandfather got 40 bushels to an acre, his father got 80, and his brothers get 160. Someday, Endres says, farms will get 300 bushels an acre.

First, that last graf is ridiculous, and emblematic of the heads-in-the-sand “salvific technologism” (the more wonky phrase for the belief that “technology will always bail out America”).

Second, while beef may out the distillers’ grain, chicken farmers say their birds can only take it in limited quantities.

And, even beef, you can’t feed straight grain for too long; it ulcerates their rumens.

Third, the only way you got to 160 bushels was through massive use of fertilizers, which produce runoff, estrogen mimics among frogs, dead zones down south of New Orleans, etc. It’s environmentally irresponsible to think you can grow 300 bushels of corn an acre, as well as highly unlikely.

Fourth, your fertilizers are made from natural gas, as are many of your pesticides. U.S natural gas production peaked at the start of this decade; production for all of North America peaked a couple of years ago.

But, that doesn’t stop more nuttery, including from an agriculture professor:

“From Washington where Lester Brown is sitting, agriculture can’t do enough to satisfy the nation's energy needs and meet all the demands put on it for food and feed,” says Matt Liebman, an agronomist at Iowa State University. “But from agriculture's point of view, (ethanol) enhances market opportunities. So it really depends on your perspective.”

Ahh, the old GOP answer — the market. That’s the result of the Iowa caucuses.

And, that’s setting aside the fact that corn-based ethanol is no better than carbon neutral and increasingly appears to be carbon-negative. It also appears to have a negative energy return on energy investment.

Which means? Given our current government, ethanol is the perfect symbolic fuel.

Beyond that, we can’t afford ethanol.

Preznit hypocrisy alert – Dirty energy will stimulate economy

That’s the big message from today’s press conference by President Bush.

Bush said we need to burn more coal to help us out of the current economic “situation,” which he still refuses to call a recession.

After that came the litany of other Big Oil and Big Coal goodies — drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, more oil refineries, heading the list. But, as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pointed out, ANWR’s oil reserves would lower our oil costs by about a penny.

Rhetorical question: If the economy is not in a recession, Mr. Preznit, then why are you so worried about it?

That said, he’s right that the farm bill could use yet more tweaking. But, when Bush is talking about cutting payments to millionaire farmers, I know there’s a catch somewhere; I just haven’t figured it out yet.

Where dirty energy intersects the farm bill, Bush defended the use of ethanol, despite plenty of information that corn-based ethanol may actually be a net energy loser, is a big cause of the soaring food prices he decried, and is environmentally unfriendly as well, between the fertilizers and pesticides of Big Ag on the one hand and the refining process on the other.

Yet, the farm bill has at least a token 6-cent cut in ethanol subsidies, much of which winds up in the hands of folks like Cargill or ADM and not individual farmers. But, Bush supports ethanol.

Besides the word “recession,” the word “conservation” was also missing from Bush’s lips.

In a sidebar, Bush backed off earlier State Department criticism of former President Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas. Why? He knows Carter has State dead to rights, especially after Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas protested about Bush doing nothing to speed the peace process.

Green news – Germany drops ethanol push and more

The German government has bowed to the obvious in dropping a push to get more than 1 million cars to use ethanol-enhanced gasoline.

But, the German government did not cite developing-nation environmental destructiveness or other green issues. Rather, it was that ethanol is more corrosive to engine parts than traditional gasoline.

Meanwhile, world governments have agreed to include ships and planes in the latest round of climate talks. The two transport/travel sectors account for about 3 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, but were not covered under Kyoto, due to their international nature.

And, parts of Catalonia are having the worst drought in almost a century. When Barcelona officials talk about importing fresh water from “nearby” Marseilles, France (since when did 250 miles become “nearby,” anyway), you know it’s serious.

Ethanol and junk food hit new roadblock in corn prices

It’s called $6/bushel corn.

Even though gas prices continue to rise, corn prices like this will push corn-based ethanol even higber. And, those Twinkies, Pop-Tarts and doorknob knows what else that are filled with high-fructose corn syrup, “regular” corn syrup, and various corn-derived gums, fillers and binders, just got a little more expensive.

This would be the IDEAL time to end the economic embargo of Cuba and get some more real sugar in America.

(It would also be the ideal time for about 200 million Americans to stop eating so freaking much junk food.)

But, that’s not all. Since corn-fed beef, pork and chicken fuel our Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations livestock agriculture, your Big Mac, Whopper or Chick-fil-A sandwich is going to get more and more expensive too.

(That said, it would also be the ideal time for about 200 million Americans to stop eating so much fast food.)

Environmental news roundup – corn killing Gulf, Canada banning dirty coal

More ethanol fuel could increase Gulf of Mexico dead zone

The “why” is simple. More corn means more fertilizer washing down the Mississippi, increasing a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Simon Donner says that would spell “environmental disaster” for the Gulf.

Donner, a geographer at the University of British Columbia in western Canada, and Chris Kucharik of the University of Wisconsin used computer models to conclude that growing enough corn to meet US biofuel goals set for 2022 would cause a boost of 10 to 34 percent in nitrogen pollution in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers, which run into the Gulf of Mexico. …

The authors predict the only way nitrate pollution could be controlled and ethanol targets met would be if American farmers stop raising meat animals on corn and dramatically change agricultural management techniques.

Well, ANY president leading the charge on that is about as real as any president leading the charge on global warming.

Canada plans carbon capture and dirty coal ban

Looks like Ottawa is ahead of us. Both plans go into effect in 2012. But the plan has loopholes:

For example, while oil companies will be required to cap carbon emission per barrel of oil, the number of barrels of oil produced will not be limited, leading to a spike in overall CO2 emissions, if production continues to rise, (enivironmentalists) say.

That is a loophole, indeed, especially depending on how much of the process on oil sands gets included in the cap.

Why ethanol is NOT the answer

We can’t annex half a dozen United States for the energy needs of one

As the Sierra Club reports.:

If every vehicle in the United States were powered by ethanol, only one of eight would be driveable. Already, 20 percent of the nation's corn goes to ethanol production. Replacing just one-eighth of U.S. gasoline consumption would require the country's entire corn crop.

Corn-based ethanol's contribution to fighting global warming is marginal at best. A debate is raging, in fact, over whether ethanol takes more energy to produce than it provides. Ethanol burns cleaner than gasoline, but its production relies heavily on diesel-chugging tractors and petroleum-derived fertilizers, to the tune of some 140 gallons of oil per acre. Distilling corn into ethanol is also energy intensive, and while some forward-thinking producers are processing it with methane, biomass, and other alternative fuels, most of the 190 ethanol plants now in the works will be powered by coal.

All touting ethanol does is “enables” GM to feel good about itself, which fattening the pockets of Archer Daniels Midland.