Sorry to get all serious on you guys, but I feel really strongly about this and have really looked into it. I am really really concerned about the future of our North American society.

The simplistic belief that E85 is a good solution that will allow us to keep our present lifestyle is soooo wrong. I just got back from a food industry trade show in LA and everyone there felt that we are on the edge of a cliff with E85 and its destruction of the food industry. All grain and bean prices have just exploded. Our raw material costs are going up by 15 to 25% right now with a second wave of increases expected by early summer. Wheat is at historical highs and further substantial price increases are expected, same with corn, soy, canola, etc...... Expect meat prices to explode along with baked goods, bread is expected to double in cost before the end of the year.

The U.S. government is subsidizing the costs of manufacturing fuel alcohol and also paying the farmers more for crops used in making E85. The farmers (trust me when I say that the farmers tend to be companies like Cargill, DuPont and Monsanto rather than Ol' Mac Donald) love this as they can use as much fertilizer, herbacides and pesticides as possible to grow the highest yielding fields. There is no worry about GMO issues are natural or organic quality. The field wash off is poisoning rivers and streams, killing fish, bugs (maybe its the cause of the bee decimation) and ultimately animals. It makes no economic sense except in enriching some farmers and farming companies pockets. E85 support was drafted and supported by a Senator from the farming states as a way to support formers being hurt by low cost off shore (Brazilian, Canadian and Australian wheat/corn/soy) crops. It made little economice sense then and it makes little sense now. There is only so much land for growing crops and having a highly subsidized competitor to food crops is starting to impact strongly and will only get worse in the next few years.

The present corn processing uses more energy than the fuel provides,so it is a net loss. Growing corn uses far more water than wheat or soy and is contributing to the drought conditions in the Mid West US. The exhaust emissions are higher in known carcinogens than dino based fuel, while lower in others. Net/net it seems to be a wash. Second generation fuels based on cellulose products revert from using corn to using wheat as a primary source. 3rd generation fuels use waste plant matter and to supply the U.S. requirements would almost require a denuding of the land.

I go crazy with all of the marketing behind E85 and the superficial way people are waving the flag and standing behind it as a way to have a "renewable" fuel source that will reduce the North American demand for oil that enriches those people who wish to do harm to the US.

E85 is not an economical, better lifestyle solution and it is worse for the environment than petroleum based fuels. If we want to reduce our demands for oil, its simple, USE LESS. It is that simple. E85 is a poor bandaid and at best in its 3rd generation form may be part of a solution along with hydrogen, coal and nuclear. Your choices are simple, E85 or food.

Now don't get me started about electric cars...............GHHHAAAAAHHHHHHRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!! And now back to funny stories in my next threads.

Eric Nummelin

 

I've heard about what the increase in corn production has started to do to the Mississipi river and the so-called dead zone around the area where that river empties into the ocean. I also watched a video in my SPC class about the decline... or should I say, the disappearance in the bee population. This is scary stuff and I share the same concern.

I wonder why you really only see US car companies pushing E85 by means of their "Flexfuel" vehicles. Probably because the European and Asian brands realize that it's pointless and would rather put forth efforts to produce vehicles that still use oil, but use LESS oil, like you said. Rather then focusing their efforts on making a 6000lb hybrid SUV that still gets <20mpg, they are making sensible vehicles like the Camry, in hybrid form. I wonder why we haven't seen a hybrid small car from GM or Ford yet... only mini-SUVs and full size SUVs.

So what do you think we should do?

 

Hmmm thats interesting Eric, I never really thought of it that way before.

Being born and raised on a farm I have first hand experience knowing that all the farmers in my families area soaking their crops in pestisides trying to get a better yeild are wasting money and time.
My dad is a certified organic farmer, a process that takes over 5 years to do. He gets about the same yeild from his soybeans that grow naturally than from his neighbour who spends thousands on pestisides.
The kicker is that my dads organic soybeans are worth more than double the regular beans, but the cost to produce the organic beans is way less....

 

Joe, thats fantastic and thumbs up to your dad. It is a real effort to become "certified" and I respect the thought and work that he has gone through. Back in 2000 the company I was working for, bought as much of the Ontario crop as possible to supply non-GMO soybean products after the U.S. went "Round-Up" crops with little notice and we couldn't supply Europe. We paid a huge surcharge and the whole Ontario white bean crop we could get, ran our plants in the U.S. for about 2 days. I am glad to see that your Dad has received more money for his crop. Specialize and profit.

I don't know if it is widely known, but I sell food ingredients for a living and have been either the General Manager or now the distributor of soy based raw materials to the Canadian food industry for over 15 years. If the product you are eating has soy in it, there is a 50% chance I have been involved in selling it in one form or another. I work with many types of food companies across Canada and this si a huge looming issue. Food costs can be expected to go through the roof during the rest of this year.

I am no environmentalist, but the decimation that is taking place (on many levels) by the illogical rush towards E85 is like taking food from your table and sticking it into your car. There is only so many farm fields and every field that converts to corn raises the cost of your food.

 

Ive said this before and so do other people, You spend so much more energy in making E85 than it gives. So that there is enough for it not to be POSITIVE.

But as you state price 0 corn since early 2000s has gone up 5 fold and is supposed to go up even more as it will be country supported. So this in turn yields higher prices goods.

So ya lets get ******* moving quick on self charging cars , hybrids or 2 cylender cars for the masses ( ill take one gladly )

 

I think its all about putting the focus on other aspects.

Sure E85 has drawbacks and negatives about it, but the fact that we're developing alternatives to gasoline is a good thing. I read about a company who was developing a strain of bacteria that will actually excrete ethyl based chemicals to turn into fuel while breaking down organic matter....basically a natural composte with more useable (in terms of creating fuels) by products. So even now there are other possibly better alternatives branching from the E85 tree.

But its a difficult nut to crack. The fuel crunch isn't a new thing, and if we shoot possible alternatives in the foot before they mature we can't expect to get anywhere. Not saying its a good idea, but I'm saying that bad ideas have to be had before we can find an ultimate solution.

 

Joe, I am not talking about a fuel crunch, I think that it can be managed. I am talking about a cheap food crunch. The following is a report given by a major multi-national regarding this situation:

The U.S. government mandates have driven increased ethanol production. The production capacity for ethanol started ramping up until we see the net effects in 2007-2008 timeframe. Clearly a step change.

Just to get you grounded in ethanol production the US uses around 150 billion gallons of fuel today and ethanol makes up about 6.4 billion gallons or 4.3%. Ethanol capacity in the ground or under construction would get us to 13.4 billion gallons or 8-9% of the current US fuel usage. Approximately 17.5% of the domestic corn crop is used in the production of ethanol. Also as a net result the price for a bushel of corn has gone from an average of $2.34 bushel to today’s $5 bushel. As we will see later this has tremendous ramifications on the balance of the farm economy. In addition, if the U.S. meets the government-mandated alternative fuels goal of 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol by 2022, we would almost 40% of the US corn crop to accomplish the goal.

The U.S. is projected to hit 15 billion gallons of ethanol in 2009.

WTF!!!!! 40% of the U.S. corn crop being diverted for fuel in 2 years!!!!!!!!

That goes from almost zero 4 years ago, to 17.5% this year, to 40% in 2 years. Where will we get the replacement food crops from. The U.S. is one of a few countries in the world with a food crop surplus. Soy has gone up 44% in 6 months. Wheat has gone up 25% in 3 months. Guys, cows and pigs eat these crops for food, we eat them. You can expect a minimum increase in grain based food costs of 25% by the summer. I suggest buying bread now and freezing it, LOL.

Seriously there is little as consumers that we can do other than ignoring E85 programs or talking to any politician stupid enough to promote food crop based fuels and letting him or her know that this is not even part of the solution with your votes. Gas and oil are getting in short supply, E85 and even 3rd gen cellulose waste based fuels should be only a small band aid for the short term.

Don't want to scare people, but I believe every one of those New Age Sexy Flex Fuel vehicles should be pulled off the road and converted back to gas only. Those cars/trucks are taking food from your table and it is happening faster than Governments have the will to act.

 

E85 is this year's hydrogen. The hydrogen hype started drying up in late 2006 as people realized how much of a dead end it is. So E85 was drafted to replace it.

The reason we are seening so many "FlexFuel" vehicles around recently is apparently because the auto makers get mileage credits for them.

And regardless of what anyone says, the future is electric. Electricity can be a dirty or as clean as you want to make it. And it's orders of magnitude more efficient then any other choice.

 

It's totally wrong to say that big farming companies just want to spray as much as possible. That costs money for the people, the equipment, the chemicals and so on, so there's a natural incentive not to do so. My dad used to work as the head plant health guy for a farming company and later worked as a consultant and helped them optimize their spraying to get the biggest benefits without wasting anything, reducing consumption overall.

Food based ethanol is stupid, at best it's no better than gas. Although it does lead towards cellulosic ethanol which can be made from things like the waste wood from logging, the waste from sawmills, pulp mills, food processing wastes and such that doesn't necessarily impact food production (ie using the husks and stalks from wheat, leaving the grain for eating). Even that will have long term concequences due to that material not renewing the soil like it would normally when it's left in place to bio-degrade. It would seem that it's a dead end, but it may be able to be used as a stop gap effort before better, more sustainable options are develloped.

 

If E85 (ethanol) were a viable, economic alternative to the use of gasoline as a motor vehicle fuel, it wouldn't have to be subsidised.

 

I'm extensively involved in biofuel research (as part of my PhD thesis) and I couldn't agree more about the production of ethanol from corn (completely useless in my opinion). However, corn based E85 is only being used as a bridge until the proper technology (i.e. cheap) is developed for the commercialization of cellulosic ethanol. This does have good potential from several perspectives (political, environmental etc, economic, etc) though I don't see it happening for at least another 10 years.

 

Its the whole food vs. fuel debate, the biggest issue there is to ethanol. It works in some places, like Brazil who have been using it since the oil crisis, produced from sugarcane (better yield than corn). However, its not going to work in North America, simply because we just don't have enough farmland to support both food and fuel.

As Eric said, the push for farmers to move towards corn is just driving up the price of everything else due to the lack of land to grow it. When I was working at Canada Bread late last year, the biggest concern was the price of wheat that had doubled since April 07. Without a full implementation, its already affecting the food industry.

It is good that theres a move toward alternative fuels, but using farmland isn't the key. As classicauto said, there are some bacterial strains being researched to convert other organic matter into ethanol, but honestly it hasn't gone anywhere near viable yet as the ethanol ends up poisoning the bacteria in high concentrations, and the extraction processes are energy intensive and the total ethanol yields haven't been all that impressive.

There IS another solution that is being researched, thats the production of oil through microalgae (bacteria that live off light and carbon dioxide). It can be harvested from sewer drains, grown in bioreactors, or even right from oceans and lakes (ecological effect unknown as of yet). But, using the photobioreactor methods, they can be placed in arid, non useful land, or out on water, the bacteria fix CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it into lipids within their cells. The lipid oil can be extracted from dried out cells and then esterified into diesel, or fermented into ethanol (through a more intensive process). Theres a company in South Africa who has begun a full scale production of bioreactors, expecting a HUGE yield of diesel fuel from a relatively small amount of land. Everyone in bioethanol research is holding their breath for this one to see if it actually runs as good as it looks on paper. If it does prove viable, the real answer might be diesel, again will be a difficult move for North America, but its in the right direction. Its in the right direction since it uses carbon dioxide emissions, and can actually have factory and powerplant emission smokestacks channeled right through these bioreactors.

Edit-

I pulled up some numbers

1 Acre of corn produces between 600-1,400 litres of ethanol
1 Acre of sugarcane produces ~ 2,500 litres of ethanol (Brazil average)
1 Acre of microalgae bioreactors are expected to produce 92,000 litres of biodiesel (and on unsuitable farming land at that!)

 

Yeah. The problem is not E85. E85 is the solution.

The problem is E85 from corn. I'm all for banning that, sure. Or at least, minimizing it.

There's a company from chicago that's figured out how to make ethanol from garbage, wood, whatever. It's the future.

 

Conspiracy time
Its an American plan to reduce the world food supply at the same time
reduce the dependency for oil which reduces funding unstable parts of the world (Middle East).
At first its not a problem but when the populations of the Middle East (and other countries)
start to be impacted by a reduction of income and (larger issue) a shortage of food
they might find that selling oil at a lower price for food might be a good idea as apposed to starving.
now I am not sure if it will come to this, but I am sure that there are little minds in
the states who think that this might just be possible, which it may, but there are
many other people in the world that will starve long before the areas that might be the
target of this kind of thinking.
If a recession is in the works in America the cosst of food will only help it along.

 

The problem is that it's not the foreigners with the oil that are suffering from the higher food prices, since we're getting the raw materials for the ethanol from North America, so that conspiracy theory is either wrong, or the conspirators are idiots.

 

Plus india pumping out brand new cars for $ 2500, and planning on building a million a year ( and not keeping up with demand ) means We wont be the only oil hungry people.

Soon enough there will be somewhere else buying that oil, so that food consipiricy doesnt really work there.

 

north america exports more food product that you think.
just the reduction in food export will = real problems as time goes on.

 

Mr. Fusion!

B

 

Buy stock in TATA now.

 

Charn, I already have a soon to be XJR R1 Tata sitting in the driveway. I hope they keep the Jaguar brand going, but it may be fun to tell people I was outside rubbing my wife's Tata, LOL.

Buy stock for sure, I need the source for warranty parts.

Eric

 

A little while ago ethanol fuel from corn became economically viable in part due to subsidies and in part due to the price of oil. The ridiculously low price of corn has now increased, so I'm not exactly sure where ethanol would sit relative to oil if the subsidies were taken away. I read that cellulous based ethanol cost something like 50% more to produce than corn based ethanol. One would think that as the price of corn and oil increases, cellulous based ethanol becomes closer to ready for prime time.

As for the energy use arguement: Oil converted to gasoline is a net loss of energy (more energy to produce than it contains). Gasoline is an energy medium (think like a battery). Corn based ethanol also shares this flaw. The degree of this flaw relative to oil is the only thing up for debate. It seems tough to get a straight answer because most of those who produce such figures have an interest in biasing the results one way or another. Oil from the tar sands requires more energy just to convert it to oil than the end product gasoline will contain. Under the "energy independance" plan, ethanol and the tar sands and now mild conservation with the new US fuel economy standards are really the only components.

I can't fathom how the emissions of ethanol could be a wash with gasoline. It's a much simplier chemical and it is well established that it is cleaner burning when it comes to the traditional emissions tests.

As for flex fuel vehicles, auto manufacturers are given extra credit towards their fuel economy fleet averages when they produce these vehicles. It's also great marketing - for very little money a manufacturer is able to make environmental claims.

Commodity prices: Part of the problem is that subsidies are the reason that corn was at $2/bushel. Crop prices have been had historic lows. I think raising the price of commodities to a sane level makes sense when there was already a demand. I'm not proposing that 3x increases are good. I am in favour of some degree of increase if corn or cellulose based ethanol resulted in increases in prices to a level that allowed reasonably efficient farm businesses to be sustainable.

I think ethanol fuel is a good thing, but I agree that the way it is being approached has some negatives.

 

You do get net energy from oil, otherwise why bother and where is all this energy to get it coming from?

As for the emissions, you need to burn a lot more ethanol to get the same amount of energy that you get out of a given amount of gasoline.

Also, with ethanol there's the associated emissions with the farming, harvesting and transportation of the crops to the processing plant. With the tar sands you do need to mine it and bring it to the processing plant, but that's close by, and they refine it elsewhere, closer to the end destination, reducing transit emissions. It gets shipped to the refineries in pipes, so that part is very efficient, whereas the ethanol will be trucked everywhere (maybe put on trains), which are much less efficient, giving off more emissions there.

From what I've seen of the analysis, they take all that stuff into account to get a "well to wheel" emissions value for the life cycle emissions, and many say that it's about the same as gasoline, at least the corn based stuff is. The cellulosic is supposed to be about half of gas or so.

 

I'm SO glad that sports car enthusiasts are also some of the most IN TOUCH people with what the truth behind matters is. There are so many people that just blindly go with the crowd and do NO research. "I saw it on TV so it must be true." YIKES. At least we're talking about it. The crop produced E85 is a total crock and I'm glad to see you all realize it. I will not support E85 or other superficial fuel sources until they are properly managed and produced.

 

Oil is an energy source, but gasoline for our cars is not. Make sense?

 

In Manitoba we now have 10% ethanol in our gasoline, it's the law. There is an ethanol plant in nearby Minnedosa which is using corn right now but will be using wheat later this year. The first thing I noticed is my gas mileage took a turn for the worst when I started to use the new fuel in my Jeep Cherokee. I will change the plugs and install a new air filter and run the numbers again, but for years that Jeep averaged 28 miles to the gallon. 10km/litre, now on a long run last week I got 20 miles to the gallon. So I am paying through the nose for the fuel and getting less miles to the gallon, no wonder the Manitoba Government likes gasohol, it's a money-spinner. Anyone else notice a drop in gas mileage with an ethanol blend?
Mike