[HN Gopher] U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than g...
___________________________________________________________________
U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study
finds
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 359 points
Date : 2023-02-24 17:41 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| mcv wrote:
| A big problem with agriculture-based bio-fuels, is that growing
| crops with modern technology uses a lot of fuel. Tractors and
| other machinery, fertilizer, and a million other things all take
| energy, which often comes in the form of fossil fuels.
|
| My brother-in-law has a farm, and claims that if you look at the
| amount of energy used and produced by farms, agriculture hasn't
| been economically viable for more than half a century. We pump
| fuel out of the ground, have farms turn it into food, and we eat
| that. It works because the energy from fossil fuels is already
| there, and eating is important. But if farms turn fuel into more
| fuel, those farms need to be a lot more efficient, or we're just
| burning fuel for nothing.
| fetus8 wrote:
| And it generally gets much worse MPG compared to regular
| gasoline!
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I wonder if this doesn't need to be the case. With the higher
| octane rating couldn't you in theory run a much more efficient
| and higher compression engine?
| deeviant wrote:
| It's a simple case of it's energy density. The energy content
| of ethanol is about 33% less than pure gasoline. Higher
| octane doesn't even necessary equate to higher gas mileage.
| As soon as octane is high enough for your engine tuning,
| there's no mileage benefit.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > As soon as octane is high enough for your engine tuning,
| there's no mileage benefit.
|
| That's exactly my point. Would it be possible to design an
| engine from the ground up for very high octane fuels?
| mywittyname wrote:
| Yeah, this is how most E85 engines generally work. They
| have a E15 engine map, and an E85 and map. And use
| sensors to figure out which fuel is in the tank and which
| map to use.
|
| Stock cars generally don't take full advantage of the
| octane benefits of E85 because they will blow up if
| someone fills the tank with E15. But in the aftermarket
| world, "corn powered" cars make substantially more power,
| especially turbocharged ones. They have the benefit of
| owners that understand to manually switch maps when
| changing fuels.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| They don't have to manually switch maps, modern ECUs can
| figure out the blend and compensate.
| pton_xd wrote:
| Agreed, there are several aftermarket ethanol content
| analyzer sensors available, easily installable onto the
| fuel line of any car. These supply an ethanol % reading
| to the ECU and allow for aftermarket tunes to adjust
| timings based on the current fuel blend. No manual
| swapping necessary.
| jgust wrote:
| That is the theory behind "flex fuel" vehicles. In practice,
| the optimizations don't materialize in real world usage. This
| is likely because of safety factors built into the ECM
| preventing the engine from running enough timing advance to
| take advantage of the octane of a blended fuel.
| bluGill wrote:
| The total amount you can get from changing the timing isn't
| very much. Even if you put in a whole new camshaft. Not to
| mention timing effects emissions as well.
|
| The more typical way to do this is have a turbocharger
| (supercharger... I can never remember the difference and
| which you want when). You and run more boost which
| increases the compression ratio. However this requires an
| expensive turbo and so isn't a popular option.
|
| I'm not sure why turbo cars have not made these
| modifications though. There are probably other trade offs
| I'm not aware of.
| jgust wrote:
| Exactly. More ICE cars are coming standard with
| turbochargers which would enable more to take advantage
| of the extra octane, but it's an optimization problem
| with constraints: fuel efficiency, reliability, drive-
| ability, emissions to name a few.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This is probably a fudged statistic, because you have to add
| oxygenates to what's called 'pure gasoline' to get it to burn
| cleanly and efficiently, which bulks out the volume
| considerably. (These kinds of arguments were also trotted out
| in favor of tetra-ethyl-lead to provide the 'oxygenate' which
| only needs to be added at 1% or IIRC, compared to 10% ethanol
| blend or similar usually).
|
| Fuel blending for optimal combustion characteristics is a
| complicated business, most of what people claim about this
| issue is not very reliable.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I've been tracking my flex-fuel usage - mostly E85 fillips -
| for a while now, tracking price and MPG. At least with the
| prices I've been getting, I typically get around 15% less MPG,
| but the price is between 10-15% cheaper. My 'cents per mile'
| price has generally remained the same over the last year or so
| I've been tracking (been tracking longer than a year, but have
| been using E85 more regularly in the last year).
|
| Now... I've got a small car/engine. The MPG might be markedly
| worse on a bigger car. Don't know. But at least in my case,
| cents/mile is about the same.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Can't edit now, so I'll add.
|
| With my typical city/town driving, I get 32-35 mpg with 87
| octane, and typically 26-30 with E85.
|
| Regular 87 octane is $3.12 around me here, and E85 is $2.71.
| E85 works out around 12% cheaper.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| So then do you fill up with E0 or E10 so you can fill up less
| frequently?
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Last... year or so I've been getting E85 when
| possible/convenient, and defaulting to regular 87 octane
| when E85 isn't available. Those tend to be the only
| reliably available options - haven't seen E10 around here.
| Last 6 months have been about 80% E85 and 20% 87 regular.
| boomchinolo78 wrote:
| It was never done for climate reasons. Purely economic and
| geopolitic
| strawhatguy wrote:
| Not too surprising, almost inevitable: the government demanded it
| to help the corn lobby, the excuse was it was greener.
|
| Bet we can't get rid of those regulations for years to come too,
| especially since new regs seem to be heading in the direction of
| banning all new gas cars. So probably after that, if at all.
| [deleted]
| programmarchy wrote:
| Doesn't it also wear down engines more quickly?
| ravenstine wrote:
| No, it does not. This myth will not die hard.
|
| It's not a total myth per se, because it once was and sometimes
| still can be true for engine components that are simply not
| designed to handle ethanol.
|
| Such is not the case for pretty much every car built after the
| year 2000, roughly speaking. Every soft component in modern
| cars is designed to handle at least 10% ethanol, and
| effectively handle 100% ethanol.
|
| Corrosion is not really an issue either. The E85 you get from a
| pump is anhydrous, and the only way you'll get things like
| phase separation is if water is added deliberately. Ethanol
| doesn't pull water into gasoline. That's a myth. It's not a
| dessicant. This topic has been studied and it's simply not
| worth worrying about.
|
| Most cars on the road today, including those that aren't Flex
| Fuel, can run somewhere between E30 and E50 with no problems
| whatsoever. They can even run on E85 or E100 with either a
| software update or a piggyback device between the ECU and the
| fuel injectors, everything else remaining OEM.
|
| A car running on ethanol won't rust, fall apart, or blow up. If
| anything, ethanol can be better for engines given that it burns
| cooler and leaves way less carbon deposits.
|
| If a small engine today has seal failures or other issues, it's
| more likely to be the BTX (benzene, toluene, xylene) in
| gasoline and not the ethanol component.
|
| By the way, I'm speaking from direct experience. Not only have
| I converted small engines to run on ethanol, but I converted my
| 2013 Hyundai to be a flex fuel vehicle.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| The truth is it's complicated, because modern ICEs are
| complicated.
|
| > Most cars on the road today, including those that aren't
| Flex Fuel, can run somewhere between E30 and E50 with no
| problems whatsoever.
|
| That's straight up not true if we define "run" as "run as
| well as on E10" (granted I wish it was so I could save money
| on having to upgrade fueling for my cars).
|
| With the huge focus on MPG manufacturers generally aren't
| overbuilding their fueling systems: My 4 series will "run" on
| E30 with a stock tune, but logging AFRs and fuel rail
| pressure will show it's a dangerous game where the ECU is
| pulling a ton of timing as the fuel system struggles to keep
| up.
|
| Even with a tune, E20 is the maximum the fueling system can
| maintain without straight up running out of fueling and going
| into limp mode under heavy load
|
| -
|
| The more balanced truth is: ethanol for vehicles is a
| complicated topic, because modern ICEs are complicated
| beasts.
|
| Cars are designed to not break down on E10, but you will find
| some people argue (imo validly) that part of why car
| reliability dipped around the turn of the century was all the
| changes needed to support that kind of flexibility. Materials
| changed, engine management got more complicated (the fact
| that a car will run at all on E30 while clearly exceeding its
| fueling limits is a testament to that), etc.
|
| Ethanol can be better for sure, my car is a million times
| more enjoyable on a simple E20 blend than California's awful
| 91 blend, but at the end of the day, ethanol fuel is a bit of
| a farce (and again, I'm someone who'd have a terrible day if
| we actually stopped producing it).
|
| We're having the public pay to prop up our energy
| independence, and producing more emissions along the way. E85
| prices don't reflect the difference in energy content, and
| the cost at the production side to make E10 blends. Gas would
| be cheaper for most people if we didn't have that
| requirement, hence why in times of economic need we've
| suspended the requirement.
|
| Ironically the people who I personally see benefit most from
| E85 are people who are well off enough to use it for a
| performance boost, or businesses taking advantage of how much
| _artificially_ cheaper E85 is. Average people get the short
| end of the stick and few to none of the benefits.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > That's straight up not true if we define "run" as "run as
| well as on E10" (granted I wish it was so I could save
| money on having to upgrade fueling for my cars).
|
| Variances between vehicles will always be a factor. This
| doesn't mean that _most_ of them won 't run sufficiently or
| even _well_ with a higher ethanol ratio. Your experience
| with your 4 Series is interesting, and you seem to know a
| lot about ICEs, but all the research I conducted before I
| even considered trying E20 convinced me that the
| possibility of engine failure or damage is extremely
| remote.
|
| I'll have to find them when I get home, but there were at
| least 2 studies I came across where researchers tested (I
| think) E20 on several vehicles from different years and
| manufacturers to see what would happen. The only issues the
| vehicles encountered were ones that had nothing to do with
| the fuel system.
|
| In any case, it _is_ a nuanced topic, though I struggle to
| say it 's quite as complicated as your perspective.
|
| > Even with a tune, E20 is the maximum the fueling system
| can maintain without straight up running out of fueling and
| going into limp mode under heavy load
|
| That's very interesting. With my vehicle, it ran almost
| identically to E10 on E50 (yes I made sure that was roughly
| the ratio present in the tank), and on E60 it started to
| run rough and showed a lean condition code but was still
| perfectly driveable.
|
| > Ethanol can be better for sure, my car is a million times
| more enjoyable on a simple E20 blend than California's
| awful 91 blend, but at the end of the day, ethanol fuel is
| a bit of a farce (and again, I'm someone who'd have a
| terrible day if we actually stopped producing it).
|
| In any case, I find it an amazing fuel. Although my vehicle
| isn't optimized for the higher octane rating of ethanol, I
| experienced an obvious performance improvement on even E20
| in terms of power. My bias was low in that case because at
| the time I was certain I _wouldn 't_ see greater power.
|
| > Ironically the people who I personally see benefit most
| from E85 are people who are well off enough to use it for a
| performance boost, or businesses taking advantage of how
| much artificially cheaper E85 is. Average people get the
| short end of the stick and few to none of the benefits.
|
| Do you think that's a limitation based on the availability
| of Flex Fuel vehicles, or the price of the fuel itself?
| Even when adjusting for the energy-per-volume using the
| most pessimistic calculation, E85 shouldn't be more
| expensive than gasoline. At current prices, E85 should be
| ~$0.50 less per gallon than regular gas when adjusted. At
| least that's how it is for the fuel prices near me.
|
| But let's say that E85 and gasoline cost exactly the same
| per joule. All that would mean is that E85 has less range.
| If EVs have taught us anything, it's that many people don't
| mind having less range.
| danaris wrote:
| Cars are not the only engines that use gasoline. Lawnmowers,
| weedwhackers (with added oil), and snowblowers, just to name
| three things in my garage that get E85 gas[1], all have some
| degree of problems with it.
|
| [1] Because that's what's available around me, not because
| that's what they _should_ be getting.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Are any of your small engines designed or specifically
| converted to run on E85? Or are you using some lower ratio
| of ethanol to gas? In any case, small engines like those in
| lawnmowers are more of an effort to get running properly
| because, unless something's changed, they're not using an
| ECU or lambda sensors that would allow them to change the
| fuel trim (I'm probably speaking the obvious here so
| forgive me). They usually have to be re-jetted and maybe
| have their timing manually advanced.
| SteveGerencser wrote:
| Ethanol is hard on all the soft bits in an engine. Rubber
| seals, diaphrams and so on. This is most dramatically seen in
| small engines that still use carburetors vs fuel injection.
| bluGill wrote:
| That isn't the ethanol, that is the bad gasoline they mix in
| with the ethanol. When you buy E0 you get a better grade of
| gasoline that doesn't degrade the seals as much.
| humaniania wrote:
| Who paid for the study and have there been other studies on the
| topic?
| igravious wrote:
| We can't build out tried and tested nuclear reactors but we can
| and will continue to do this. I am so done with the "green"
| movement.
| titaniumtown wrote:
| Yes, the corn lobby's pressure is totally comparable to the
| entire push for green energy /s
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Any movement will get partially coopted by entrenched business
| interests
| Avshalom wrote:
| weird thing to call the iowa corn lobby.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Corn farmers are generally more Ducks Unlimited type
| environmentalists than Greenpeace type environmentalists.
| nerdo wrote:
| Still better for the climate than burning the corn after
| harvesting it: https://www.farmcollector.com/farm-life/u-s-
| farmers-during-g...
| Mattasher wrote:
| FWIW if you live in place with boating and you might be able to
| find REC-90 for sale, which is Ethanol free.
| cashsterling wrote:
| As others mentioned, this is not a new finding. There is a lot of
| academic and industrial/economic analysis on this subject.
| Ethanol from corn was never a good idea economically for anyone
| other than corn farmers. It is also bad environmentally and
| places additional competitive demand on our food supply (choice
| and competition between corn going into food or fuel supply).
|
| Similar analysis has been done on other crop feed-stocks (switch
| grass, etc.) and none of the analysis has shown that crop derived
| ethanol is a good idea.
|
| I'm not a leading expert on this subject by any means, but I am a
| PhD chemical engineer and did a lot of research into alternative
| fuels science and economics about ten years ago. I'm not up on
| the latest research and analysis but the fundamental
| thermodynamics and carbon cycles of crop-based ethanol have not
| changed much in the past ten years or so.
| jfengel wrote:
| Corn farmers from Iowa. Where they hold the first caucus of the
| interminable election season.
|
| No American politician or political party can afford to offend
| corn farmers. We should count ourselves lucky that our gasoline
| is only 10% corn.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Correction: W did this to give more power to agribusinesses
| and large-scale farmers who were drifting towards democratic
| socialism.
|
| The market price is destabilized and undercut by government
| subsidies who put most farmers in the unenviable position of
| taking corporate welfare in order to make a living.
|
| If the government got out of the business of picking winners
| and losers, and deciding who to rain money on and who to
| starve, the corn would be more expensive and sugar cane would
| be cheaper.
| stolenmerch wrote:
| That is commonly cited but there is evidence to suggest it
| isn't the whole picture. Ted Cruz was a vocal opponent of
| Ethanol subsidies and won Iowa.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| It isn't just Iowa[1], the Corn Belt across the upper Mid
| West is the Saudi Arabia of Corn.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_Unit
| ed_...
| labrador wrote:
| which is why the Democratic Party changed it under cover of
| starting with "a more diverse state"
|
| _Iowa no longer first; Democrats reorder the presidential
| primary calendar for 2024_
|
| https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2022/1.
| ..
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > which is why the Democratic Party changed it
|
| I think that has more to do with getting away from Iowa and
| New Hampshire since those states have shown a surprising
| level of support for candidates outside of the preferred
| establishment picks.
| koolba wrote:
| > which is why the Democratic Party changed it under cover
| of starting with "a more diverse state"
|
| It wasn't because they care about offending farmers or
| removing ethanol subsidies, it was so that Biden can lock
| down some early primary wins in 2024 with States with a
| higher percentage of black voters.
| labrador wrote:
| Are you sure that's all that it's about? I'd say it's
| about a lot of things since Democrats have been unhappy
| about starting in Iowa for a long time.
| fsckboy wrote:
| everybody is jumping down GP's throat here by focusing on
| the word "Biden".
|
| him saying they're doing it to lock in Biden (their
| mainstream/establishment frontrunner) in large early
| primaries in 2024 (the next election) is not really
| different from saying they're doing it to lock in their
| mainstream/establishment frontrunner in large early
| primaries in future elections to avoid the kind of "self
| destructive" internecine primary battles with fringe
| candidates like Bernie Sanders--yes, he was very popular,
| but his views are to one side of the Democratic party
| which is to one side of the Republican party which makes
| his views part of the fringe in the uniform tapestry of
| views--which have taken place for many years.
|
| Not saying it's right or wrong, just saying GP's analysis
| holds together as part of the larger analysis everybody
| here seems to be basing their thinking on.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > him saying they're doing it to lock in Biden (their
| mainstream/establishment frontrunner) in large early
| primaries in 2024 (the next election) is not really
| different from saying they're doing it to lock in their
| mainstream/establishment frontrunner in large early
| primaries in future elections
|
| Yes, it is.
|
| Because it refers to specific geographic strengths that
| Biden had as a candidate, not strengths that are
| uniformly typical of establishment-preferred Democratic
| candidates.
|
| (Now if, instead of referring to Biden's particular and
| unique strengths that correlate with the change, they had
| said that it was to lock in estanlishment candidates by
| moving some larger, more expensive states to campaign in
| forward, and that that establishment support was more key
| in campaigning in those states - a weak but at least
| superficially plausible argument - that would be
| different. But "states with a higner percentage of black
| voters" are...a different thing.
| fsckboy wrote:
| oh my sweet summer child, The Democrats have been trying
| to reduce/eliminate the influence of Iowa and New
| Hampshire for many years. The reason it's not likely that
| primaries seasons would be changed solely for a
| particular candidate is that a party will need to "live
| with" the result for some time to come, they're not going
| to be able to rearrange it every election.
|
| South Carolina Democrats, black and white, are much more
| toward the center of the overall electorate, which is
| where the national campaigns shift their focus after
| running left and right in their respective D and R
| primaries. It is not Biden's specific strength that
| matters, because it was also the reason "Super Tuesday"
| was created many years ago to benefit the establishment
| candidate (Walter Mondale at the time)* https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Super_Tuesday#1984:_Beginnings...
|
| And black voters are (or have been) reliably Democrat,
| which benefits all Democrat candidates, not particular to
| do with Biden (or Bill Clinton) though they did enjoy
| outsized black support. Saying the first primary is being
| moved "to make the electorate look like America" is
| designed to shut up the Left, who would scream bloody
| murder if they said "putting this state first is an
| establishment move because SC is not so left wing" It
| takes an "establishment move" to change the primaries
| because the state parties have to change it in the local
| places with cooperation or opposition from the other
| party in those states.
|
| * a much younger Biden was a candidate back then too but
| when, as an English coalminer's great-grandson, Biden's
| support was centered in the UK so nobody in the US was
| doing him huge political favors)**
|
| **this is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Biden
| plagiarizing Niel Kinnock's speech which knocked him out
| of the 1992 race https://archive.ph/idkaA
| [deleted]
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| If Biden runs he won't be challenged in the primary.
| There's no reason for him to fix it.
| lapcat wrote:
| > it was so that Biden can lock down some early primary
| wins in 2024
|
| Biden is unlikely to face a primary challenge if he runs.
| Bernie already said he won't.
| https://www.axios.com/2022/06/14/bernie-
| sanders-2024-primary...
|
| Don't forget that the 2020 Iowa caucus was a complete
| mess, totally botched, and the chair of the Iowa
| Democratic Party had to resign soon afterward.
| mjevans wrote:
| If absolute fairness were the reason for change ALL
| parties that primary would do so by some algorithm that's
| transparent.
|
| E.G. 5 Primary waves (Tuesdays/weeks/months) sorted by
| the 10 states with the least population to the most
| population.
|
| Why? It's a better rough approximation for a
| representative sample over an increasingly large window
| of voters than the current process, and still keeps any
| benefit of ramping up from smaller to larger populations
| to narrow overall selection in the field. Plus the
| algorithm is so simple that it can be outlined in a
| sentence.
| koolba wrote:
| There's some logistical issues as some States run the
| elections so the individual parties can't pick their own
| primary dates (unless they pay for themselves which I
| think they're loathe to do).
|
| Assuming parties could pick the primary border, I think
| it'd be most advantageous to pick the States sorted by
| the absolute value of the win/loss percentage for a given
| state. That way highly contested States get an earlier
| say in the process and presumably a candidate that is
| more favorable in those markets comes out ahead earlier
| in the process.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| I don't understand. If you're going to change it, why
| don't do the primary on the same day like any other
| country?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If you're going to change it, why don't do the primary
| on the same day like any other country?
|
| It is not true that "every other country" has parties
| select their presidential (or nearest equivalent, whether
| as head of state or head of government, other countries
| frequently divorcing those roles) candidate by
| simultaneous national elections. Sometimes, they don't
| even (in a legal sense) choose a candidate _at all_ ,
| though the party may have its own process of deciding and
| announcing who its members responsible for the leadership
| election (e.g., MPs in Westminster-style system) will
| vote for should they secure the necessary majority to
| decide the outcome on their own.
|
| In fact, I couldn't off the top of my head name even a
| single country that uses a national simultaneous primary
| to select party nominees for election head of government
| or head of state, can you?
| philistine wrote:
| You're on to something there. Keep digging. Perhaps
| you'll come to the truth of the matter that the USA's
| political system is undemocratic to no end.
| LBJsPNS wrote:
| Nah.
|
| It was payback to Jim Clyburn for the stunt he pulled in
| 2020 re: Bernie.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The 2024 changes, inasmuch as they are about specific
| elections and not the general long-term arc of the party,
| are about 2028 more than 2024. No one is expecting a
| significantly contested nominating contest when the party
| has an incumbent President seeking reelection.
| georgyo wrote:
| Incumbents do have an advantage, but I wouldn't say they
| aren't expecting a significant contested election. Trump
| was the incumbent, and it was a pretty aggressively
| contested.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Incumbents do have an advantage, but I wouldn't say
| they aren't expecting a significant contested election
|
| I've clarified the grandparent: I was referring to the
| nominating contest (the aggregate of primary elections
| and caucuses that are addressed by the schedule change
| being discussed), not the general election.
| Name_Chawps wrote:
| The prediction markets on PredictIt have the Democrats
| winning at 52 cents, and the Republicans at 50 cents. You
| should expect the election to be quite close.
| RobAtticus wrote:
| dragonwriter was talking about the Democratic primary.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Meh, if you look at the Candle for 90d you can see the
| high/low for Nov3,4th of the 2020 election [1]. There's
| so much volatility in that data its hard it's hard to
| consider this an accurate predicator for 2024.
|
| The volume for 2024 is also so low compared to 2020 so I
| don't think you can use the current 2024 predictions as
| evidence.
|
| [1]: https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3698/Who-
| will-win-t...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| I'm talking about the Demcoratic nomination contest, not
| the general election, but even in the latter case I would
| expect prediction markets odds of victory more than a
| year out to have very weak, if any correlation, to
| _margin_ of victory. Heck, I don't know of any research
| showing that prediction markets far from elections are
| even good at predicting odds.
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| why not both?
| westurner wrote:
| Can Ethanol be sustainably produced from corn?
|
| Which other crops have sufficient margin given commodity
| prices?
|
| Can solar and goats and wind and IDK algae+co2 make up the
| difference?
|
| Is solar laser weeding a more sustainable approach?
|
| What rotations improve the compost and soil situation?
| [deleted]
| gowld wrote:
| Up to 83% or 85%:
| https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/flextech.shtml
|
| Really fun to pull into a gas station and accidentally fill
| your tank with gas it can't handle.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Democrats have said South Carolina is kicking off their
| primaries now.
| parineum wrote:
| We subsidize corn for the same reason we subsidize oil and
| are starting to subsidize the semiconductor industry.
|
| If we didn't subsidize food, we'd be importing a lot of food.
| In the event of war, famine, plague, etc, we don't want to be
| without a supply of food, fuel and now electronics.
| retrac wrote:
| It is surprising how much politics and law can affect what is
| grown where. The US-Canada border cuts right across the
| prairies. Conditions are pretty much identical in northern
| North Dakota and southern Manitoba. Yet the border is clearly
| visible on some maps of agricultural yield:
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OatsYield.png
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RyeYield.png
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Though lots of ethanol in Canadian gasoline too. Hard to
| find any without 10% ethanol, even in jurisdictions with
| limited corn growing.
|
| What caused that?
|
| Or do the US subsidies on corn make it cost effective for
| Canadians to burn ethanol? If so, where's my cheap E85? I'd
| run it in my old Corolla and see what happens.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Here, let me Google that for you :)
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/taxpayers-ontario-
| can...
|
| Go ahead: your old Corolla will become a dead Corolla.
|
| https://blog.raleighclassic.com/is-it-safe-to-use-
| ethanol-in...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| That's another uninformative anti-E85 link based solely
| on theory and no evidence. Internet is full of such
| "facts" where the question hasn't been answered beyond
| rehashing the owner's manual.
|
| Most of the issues it mentions would have been
| experienced with E10. Largely it talks about classics
| engineered in an ethanol-less era, which we haven't been
| in for a while, but I'm sure most are being run on E10
| anyway.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Do you really think they would have put those "flex fuel"
| badges on cars if they all could run E85 without
| problems?
|
| From my interwebs knowledge you need a fuel sensor (to
| tell the percentage of ethanol) and an ECU that can take
| advantage of the different fuel blendings.
|
| So, yeah, maybe not a dead car but definitely not an
| efficient one.
| Hello71 wrote:
| yes, I do think car vendors would affix stickers implying
| that existing features are actually new additions (worth
| paying extra for). I don't know if that's true in this
| case, but I don't think it's an argument either way.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Whatever, pal. If you don't have anything of concrete
| value to contribute, then don't complain about free. :)
|
| I have one of those "classics" and have to hunt for low
| ethanol fuel constantly.
|
| It's a huge PITA to retrofit to modern fuel rails when
| custom NLA injectors are $$$$.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| There are several factors in addition to ethanol, right? US
| livestock feed is primarily maize, but is that true in
| Canada? And the US has nearly 10x as many cattle. It seems
| like regulations are the primary driver in the border
| split, but not all of the regulations are about ethanol
| (also, Canada uses corn to make ethanol, too, in some
| areas).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Scoundreller wrote:
| The prime Canadian corn growing regions are also oil
| producing jurisdictions, so I could see their lack of
| interest in oil alternatives.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > politics and law
|
| Money and corruption to be more precise.
| duped wrote:
| Just because it was a plot point on the West Wing in 2006
| doesn't make it reality. Iowa is not a kingmaker, and it's
| not even the first state in the primary season for Democrats
| anymore.
|
| It's really just more mundane: BigAg is powerful and our
| representatives take their money.
| LanceH wrote:
| I think the democratic party is upset that everyone wasn't
| going along with the superdelegates who really have the
| first votes. They want to choose their candidate and go
| through the motions of a primary.
| duped wrote:
| It's been speculated the reason they shifted to SC was to
| favor President Biden's
|
| The one thing the Iowa caucus did was make it easier for
| grassroots candidates. If they hadn't bungled the caucus
| so badly in 2020 for example, Pete Buttigieg would have
| had a better shot at it like Obama in '08 (he won the
| caucus, but we didn't find out for weeks!).
| rapind wrote:
| It's not enough that we already subsidize them...
| specialp wrote:
| There is competitive demand with food supply but that is the
| point. If we did not have surplus corn produced, the USA would
| be very vulnerable to food disruptions. Because as we saw
| during COVID, business supply chains are only optimized to
| current demand without disaster. So if there is another channel
| to purchase corn it creates more demand and keeps excess
| production going at a price that is still possible to produce
| at.
|
| If the USA suddenly had a food crisis, the ethanol production
| could be stopped.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > If the USA suddenly had a food crisis, the ethanol
| production could be stopped.
|
| Could it? 99% of corn grown (including that used for ethanol)
| isn't the sweet corn for eatin. Would take a while to switch
| and I'm guessing there isn't much excess capacity for turning
| it all into corn syrup and such.
|
| COVID couldn't even figure out how to redirect institutional
| toilet paper into consumer toilet paper. And that's the same
| product!
|
| The real buffer for a "food crisis" (whatever that is) is the
| amount of crop fed to livestock and food exported, not
| ethanol.
| gruez wrote:
| >COVID couldn't even figure out how to redirect
| institutional toilet paper into consumer toilet paper. And
| that's the same product!
|
| Did the TP "shortage" actually get bad enough that a non-
| negligible portion of the population had nothing to wipe
| their bums with? Regardless, starving is much more dire
| than having nothing to wipe with. If people were actually
| starving, I'm sure they would have no issues eating field
| corn intended for animal consumption.
| DennisP wrote:
| Wasn't ethanol added to replace MTBE, due to pollution concerns
| after MTBE replaced lead? What should we use in place of
| ethanol?
| hatsunearu wrote:
| Ethanol also is used as an octane booster. I'd rather take
| Ethanol than MTBE or TEL.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| This should be the highest rated response to the parent
| because it's overwhelmingly used as a low octane fuel booster
| additive, not a fuel.
|
| If you have 85 gasoline and need to get it to 87, you blend
| it with an appropriate quantity of ethanol (octane rating
| 108.6, thanks for the correction).
|
| Reference:
| https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/ethanol_fuel_basics.html
| fabianbumberger wrote:
| Yeah, gas producers like it as cheap octane booster.
| fsckboy wrote:
| pure ethanol according to wikipedia has an octane rating of
| 108 on the scale that's normally referred to. 100 is the
| octane of a particular isomer of the hydrocarbon C8H18
| which is called... octane!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_rating#Examples
|
| and for people not familiar with the subject, the purpose
| of an octane booster is to make your fuel _less_ explosive
| (even though the point of your fuel is to be exploded to
| release it 's energy) The problem with low octane fuels is
| not that they have lower energy, but that when you compress
| them they can explode prematurely (before you're ready to
| collect the energy) and compressing them is a way to get
| more energy out of an engine. Ethanol is less explodey, and
| so is tetraethyl lead.
| gruez wrote:
| That's a poor justification for the current regulatory regime
| in which ethanol in gas is _mandated_. If MTBE or TEL then
| they should be banned. If regular gasoline doesn 't have
| enough octane, it should be up to the market to figure out
| which octane booster should be used, rather than the
| government enforcing use of ethanol by decree.
| FinalBriefing wrote:
| That's also how we ended up with leaded gasoline.
| gruez wrote:
| The fact that the current regulatory regime hasn't forced
| the use of an octane booster that is acutely toxic is
| more of a case of a broken clock being right twice a day
| than it being good policy. I would even argue that in
| this case, the broken clock isn't even "right". As the OP
| points out, use of ethanol has negative consequences as
| well, and the fact that its use is mandated basically
| gets rid of any incentive to come up with a better octane
| booster.
| tstrimple wrote:
| > places additional competitive demand on our food supply
| (choice and competition between corn going into food or fuel
| supply).
|
| I'm not sure this is the case. The vast majority of corn is
| field corn grown for silage anyway. The ethanol extraction
| process leaves a mash which is then fed to cows. Given the soil
| conditions, corn and soybeans will likely remain the most
| profitable cash crops so unless subsidies are created for other
| crop types not much would change. My perspective from living in
| Iowa for 2/3rds of my life.
| _greim_ wrote:
| > The ethanol extraction process leaves a mash which is then
| fed to cows.
|
| Do analyses typically factor this sort of thing in, or do
| they assume corn is grown solely for the purpose of ethanol
| extraction?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It does have one plausible benefit which is managing crop
| overproduction (supply demand mismatches) because if the market
| is glutted, converting some of the production in ethanol or
| similar long-lasting products is not a bad idea.
|
| As the basis of a fuel supply, it's a very poor idea.
| benp84 wrote:
| I was under the impression that corn ethanol was effectively
| solar energy because corn turns sunlight and carbon into
| biomass then we burn the biomass back to atmospheric carbon.
| Isn't that the fundamentals? Is there a big, basic reason it
| doesn't work or is it lots of little side effects? Thanks for
| weighing in.
| marktangotango wrote:
| The fundamental reason is producing ethanol from corn
| requires quite a lot of energy; for cooking the mash and
| distilling the final product. If the cycle was entirely
| ethanol "all the way down" it could be carbon nuetral
| although using ethanol for production would detract from the
| "total efficiency". Invariably other fuels are used in
| production.
|
| I went through the math a few years ago from the perspective
| of "micro power plants" for powering BTC mining. Coal is the
| winner from a cost perspective; but terribly dirty obviously.
| And capital intensive. Burning corn as fuel to a high
| efficiency boiler is actually more efficient than ethanol.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| One other big, basic reason from early school Biology you are
| missing is the Nitrogen Cycle. Earth crops are _not_
| particularly efficient at fixating Carbon into biomass and
| generally need plenty of other mineral inputs such as
| potassium and phosphorous and zinc and especially Nitrogen.
| Nitrogen alone is an interesting problematic "inefficiency"
| because Nitrogen wants to be a gas at Earth
| pressures/temperatures (like Carbon) and so also needs to be
| fixated and plants very rarely have evolved that sort of
| fixation directly, instead relying on "the Nitrogen Cycle" to
| (eventually) fixate it into soils.
|
| One of the things humanity has done as it has industrialized
| agriculture (to deal with the time issue of that
| "eventually") is that it has industrialized "the Nitrogen
| Cycle" as much as it can, and in so doing added a lot of
| additional Carbon inefficiencies to how we fixate Nitrogen
| for use by our crops. Modern crops couldn't grow at the same
| industrial scales without modern fertilizers, but modern
| fertilizers generally don't exist without massive carbon
| subsidies.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_cycle
| [deleted]
| colechristensen wrote:
| It's not so much corn farmers as the operators of the ethanol
| plants who benefit. Lots of funds and support and mandates for
| their products to be bought.
|
| Various things will always be done to prop up commodity prices
| for American farmers, if not ethanol then something else.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Ethanol is great for gas stations too. Your tank doesn't go as
| far so you need to visit them more often.
|
| Dunno how the complaints about ethanol = bad because it's
| hygroscopic really are. Yeah, 100% ethanol will pull in
| atmospheric h2o, but in a gasoline+ethanol mix?
|
| If anything, a small bit of ethanol helps "break the phase" and
| at least runs any moisture through your engine instead of a
| separate layer which is surely worse. Dunno if any unscrupulous
| gas stations/suppliers deliberately water down their ethanol
| laden gas just to earn some extra margin.
| greedo wrote:
| Ethanol gas is terrible for most car engines and fuel
| systems.
| staringback wrote:
| source: trust me bro
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Now, let me tell you about the harms of seed oils on your
| engine
| Scoundreller wrote:
| You saying the manufacturers haven't adapted anything for
| cars to run on E10 in the first place?
| titaniumtown wrote:
| Is there other crops that can be turned into ethanol that would
| be beneficial for the environment? Can't seem to find information
| on that.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Sure. As far as I know, corn is only used in the US, for fairly
| obvious reasons. Where I'm from it's made from carb-rich waste
| and sidestreams from various sources. Of course, the yields do
| pale in comparison to the corn megaindustry of the US, which
| produces more fuel ethanol than the rest of the world combined.
|
| Sugar cane is good, and used quite successfully in Brazil, but
| of course only grows in sub/tropical climates. Sugar beet is
| used in Europe to some extent, as well as staple crops like
| wheat and rye - not sure how they compare to corn.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel
| trollerator23 wrote:
| There is potatoes. In WW2 the potato production in Nazi
| Germany basically determined the launch rate of the V2
| rocket, which used Ethanol derived from potatoes as fuel.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Yes, including sugar beets, sorghum, and even cattails.
|
| As far as whether we will or should use other crops, I doubt
| it. The whole thing with corn mostly came from the US having a
| large surplus of corn and needing something to do with it.
| Since we're operating on the false belief that the carbon cycle
| itself is a bad thing, and because we're trying to move to
| electric (theoretically), I don't think society is going to
| invest itself into more ethanol.
| fIREpOK wrote:
| I thought that corn-based ethanol exists solely for the purpose
| of taking advantages of government subversives and had nothing to
| do with climate or the environment...
| bilsbie wrote:
| It's unreal how much ethanol lowers your gas milage too!
|
| Experienced my local station switch to 10% and saw my milage go
| from 28 to 24. Pretty positive no other factors changed.
| tristan957 wrote:
| This site might help you.
|
| https://www.pure-gas.org/
| dragontamer wrote:
| Of course its Dr. Lark again. He's been contradicting USDA for
| years.
|
| There's something like 12+ PH.ds who are working in this field
| and create papers consistently. 11 of them agree, and then Dr.
| Lark comes out and disagrees.
|
| Every couple of years, Dr. Lark comes out with a new set of
| studies that contradicts everyone else. And then the news
| organizations / hacker news around here focuses on what Dr. Lark
| says rather than what the other 11 guys say.
|
| ----------
|
| I don't necessarily want to demean Dr. Lark or his work. But
| people need to have context here. This guy is anti-Biofuel, and
| has been since the early 00s (maybe earlier).
|
| I'm not 100% sure what to do about this problem per se.
| Contrarian professors are important parts of the scientific
| process. Someone like Dr. Lark is very important to making sure
| that everyone's i's are dotted and t's are crossed.
|
| But the general "media" picks up on the contrarian, and uses that
| as "Entire field is wrong, everybody is wrong" and shouts it from
| the rooftops. Rather than... you know... rightfully pointing out
| that they're focused on the contrarian.
|
| --------------
|
| We need contrarians like Dr. Lark. But we don't need media overly
| focusing upon contrarians and highlighting their specific
| research as if its the mainstream in the field.
|
| See yall in 2 years when Dr. Lark publishes another contradictory
| paper, like he always does.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I've seen a lot of these studies and the problem is always the
| same: the real-world spread on the inputs and outputs is always
| so much larger than what the report concludes. Since they're
| comparing ethanol and gasoline, you have two spreads to consider.
| As an example:
|
| Worst-case for standard gasoline vs Best-case for corn ethanol:
|
| A) Gasoline produced from Alberta tar sands syncrude (which has
| to be melted and partially hydrogenated using natural gas piped
| in from Northern Canada/Alaska) shipped by oil tanker (burning
| dirty bunker fuel) to California refineries for conversion to
| gasoline by distillation/cracking (with high CO2 emissions
| related to use of fuel to drive the require heating of the heavy
| crude oil);
|
| B) Ethanol produced from corn grown with ammonia fertilizer made
| by splitting water with sun/wind energy, planted and harvested
| with renewable-powered electric equipment, and fermented and
| distilled into 95% pure ethanol (the eutectic limit of
| distillation) using only solar and wind power and in facilities
| right next to the farmer's fields;
|
| And, conversely, the best case for gasoline and the worst case
| for ethanol:
|
| C) Gasoline produced from regionally-produced light sweet crude
| with a minimal need for transport, hydrogenation or extensive
| processing, meaning much lower emissions from transportation and
| refining (we could even have electrolytic hydrogenation from
| water using sunlight to produce the hydrogen);
|
| D) Corn produced in Kansas with large amounts of natural-gas-
| manufactured ammonia fertilizer, lots of natural-gas-derived
| synthetic pesticides and herbicides, planted and managed with
| diesel-powered equipment, then shipped overseas to China for
| fermentation and conversion to ethanol in a coal-fired ethanol
| distillery.
|
| So if you break those spreads down you get a ridiculously wide
| range of estimates. Hence any specific number presented ('at
| least 25%' in this case) doesn't really tell you that much, other
| than if you dig through the specific methods used (which are
| generally hard to find, sometimes they'll put the methods in
| _another_ paper hidden behind a paywall) you can tell what
| interest was backing this particular study. Some will even
| include things like the carbon emissions needed to feed the
| workers who grow the crops, or who work in the refinery, and so
| on, which is just nonsense. (The emissions of the restaurant
| workers who feed the oil refinery workers and the field hands
| have to be accounted for...?)
|
| Personally, I think artificial photosynthesis is the vastly
| superior solution relative to either corn ethanol or crude oil
| gasoline, as you could plausibly run it anywhere with access to
| seawater and sunlight, saving agricultural land for food
| production (and conserving ever-scarcer potable water as well).
| It does however make sense to be able to convert excess
| agricultural production into useful products, although just
| composting it back into the soil might be wiser in the long run.
| jeffwask wrote:
| This is nothing more than a back door farming subsidy which is
| also why it's so hard to kill.
| Laaas wrote:
| Intuitively this seems wrong. The explanation in the article
| doesn't seem convincing. Any form of synthetic fuel that doesn't
| take more carbon out of the Earth should be better, no?
| hammock wrote:
| More energy in the form of diesel and fossil fuel derived
| fertilizer went into corn ethanol than you get out in usable
| fuel
| randomdata wrote:
| Compared to the alternative, though? The corn will be grown
| either way.
|
| It's not hard to see 100 bushel per acre swings in corn yield
| between growing years even within normal growing parameters,
| never mind times of crop catastrophes. While everyone hopes
| for a good year every year, you can't plan for a good year.
| As such, there will always be times where there is way more
| corn than we can handle.
|
| Which is what happened in 2006. A lot of corn, having busted
| the bins and having no home, was left out to rot. Ethanol
| subsidies were introduced in 2007 to build out more ethanol
| plants to provide a greater buffer in excess times when the
| regular corn market can't absorb it all so that we aren't
| _both_ burning gasoline and letting the corn rot away to
| nothing.
|
| I don't recall ethanol ever being considered better for the
| climate in a vacuum. It was only ever thought to be when you
| take reality into account.
| hammock wrote:
| >The corn will be grown either way.
|
| Citation needed
| bluGill wrote:
| When your turn corn into ethanol there is a byproduct
| "distiller grains" that is fed to animals. This is feed
| we would have to grow in some form anyway.
| [deleted]
| randomdata wrote:
| That was not a quote. No citation is possible. Is there a
| reason for this bad faith participation?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _That was not a quote. No citation is possible_
|
| (The expression is not to be read literally. 'Citation
| needed', widespread after Wikipedia, rhetorically points
| to that idea in a generalized intention including
| "foundation needed". I.e.: "You need grounds to write
| that".)
| [deleted]
| todd8 wrote:
| I am not the poster you are replying to but calling that
| post "bad faith participation" surprised me. Stopping
| ethanol production will lower demand for corn so it is
| conceivable that this would reduce the marginal value in
| producing corn and cause some amount of corn production
| to become worth less than the alternatives (like planting
| different crops or less intense farming of corn field,
| etc.)
|
| To me at least, not being an agricultural economist, the
| statement that the corn would be grown anyway wasn't
| obvious on the surface; I too would have liked to have
| seen some further justification for the claim.
| randomdata wrote:
| See, your comment comes in good faith. You clearly put
| thought into and offer something that allows continuation
| of the conversation.
|
| "Citation needed" is a purposeful attempt to dead end a
| conversation. It fundamentally cannot be replied to in a
| reasonable way. What would even be cited? There was no
| quote in which to cite. _Maybe_ if I scour Google hard
| enough I 'll find someone else saying the same thing and
| then I can pretend that I quoted it instead of using my
| own words, but what would that gain?
|
| The ethanol situation is an interesting topic that is
| worthy of continued discussion, I agree. It's unfortunate
| that the bad actor steered discussion away from it. Oh
| well.
| tstrimple wrote:
| It doesn't seem to be bad faith. They are asking for your
| evidence for the claim that corn will be grown anyway. I
| agree that corn will continue to be grown anyway, but at
| this point it's nothing but our opinions without
| supporting evidence.
| randomdata wrote:
| They asked for a citation, not evidence. A citation that
| cannot be provided as there was no quote in which to
| cite.
|
| Furthermore, good faith participation seeks to provide
| equal value to the participants. "Citation needed" offers
| nothing to other parties.
|
| Apparently, according to another comment, "Citation
| needed" is some kind of Wikipedia slang, but a website
| that attempts to document knowledge is _very_ different
| to a casual conversation and to try and conflate them,
| again, can only be done so in bad faith.
| thrill wrote:
| Saying "the corn will be grown anyway" is not done in
| good faith. The corn is grown because it is profitable to
| do so. Remove subsidies and the corn will not be grown -
| something else that is profitable will be grown.
| randomdata wrote:
| Of course it is profitable to do so. There is a large
| market for it, from animal feed, to sugar, to tortillas,
| to many things in between.
|
| The trouble is that it's unpredictable how big the crop
| will be before planting. As mentioned before, yields can
| vary quite significantly from year to year. As such, you
| will have periods of excess where we don't have enough
| storage for it all. Ethanol was promoted as a way to
| clean up those excesses before they turn to waste,
| recapturing some of fuel that was put into its growth
| initially.
| kraussvonespy wrote:
| When ~45% of US corn is used for ethanol production[1],
| I'd say we can stop considering that "periods of excess"
| and call it what it really is: grift.
|
| [1] - https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-
| other-feed-gr...
| randomdata wrote:
| On the other hand, US soybean acres have grown by
| essentially the same amount over the same period (63.78M
| in 1983, 87.45M in 2022). It is well understood that
| soybeans and corn are kept in the same rotation for a lot
| of practical and ecological reasons, so how are you
| establishing that it isn't excess as a byproduct of
| producing other crops? None of this happens in a vacuum.
| Laaas wrote:
| This feels like the arguments against electric cars saying
| the electricity is generated by fossil fuels anyway.
| l33t233372 wrote:
| I think that the post was saying that it doesn't require us
| to take carbon out from deep within earth and put it into the
| atmosphere.
| uoaei wrote:
| It's an irrelevant point. Carbon emissions include
| logistics and manufacturing operations.
| sbradford26 wrote:
| The issues is that it does. Using tractors to farm and
| harvest it all, all the industrial processes to create
| fertilizer all require carbon to be taken from within the
| earth. If you only look at the corn to fuel yes it doesn't
| produce as much additional carbon, but once you include all
| the externalities you have more carbon emitting processes.
| frankreyes wrote:
| Because farming equipment runs on gasoline.
| bluGill wrote:
| Not since the mid 1960s at the latest. Sometimes hobby farms
| have gasoline tractors. Many farms still have a working tractor
| from the 1950s they use for small tasks. There is some random
| lawnmower sized equipment with a gas engine. Overall though
| diesel is much cheaper to run in the real world and so no "real
| farm" uses gasoline for much farming.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Depends on the farm. My farm ran on all diesel.
| silverwasthere wrote:
| I thought corn ethanol was for fuel diversity, not green energy.
| milsorgen wrote:
| It was positioned as both at one point. Really they just threw
| out every imagined or perceived benefit and ran with it
| irrespective of what the data was or is indicating.
| Proven wrote:
| [dead]
| cess11 wrote:
| "Corn is not a _food_. Corn is a _platform_."
|
| https://twunroll.com/article/1074810043495796736
| Supermancho wrote:
| The silly way they connect corn to bananas annoys me, which you
| could do for literally anything, corn -> fuel -> lights -> you
| ate near a light ergo CORN!
|
| I don't see how this is anything but good. Having a single crop
| for so many things, makes the replicator go brrr. Yes it's a
| single point of failure, but it's efficient to use food
| production to scale everything else and it's not a dead-end if
| corn were to have problems (ie Interstellar)
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Corn has been the platform for civilization(s) in the Americas
| since agriculture was invented in Mesoamerica.
| cess11 wrote:
| Arguably civilisation and market are orthogonal so the
| marketisation and commodification under capitalism means
| there's very little civilisation as well.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I have know idea what this string of words means in
| context. Agricultural products, especially staple grains
| are all commodities, definitionally: "a raw material or
| primary agricultural product that can be bought and sold,
| such as copper or coffee." In the Inca store house system
| for example, potatoes were the central commodity, and all
| types of foods stuffs were made from the freeze dried
| potatoes. In MesoAmerica corn was used for food, drink,
| animal feed, and so on.
| mouse_ wrote:
| Great read. Starting a corn religion bbl.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Given a perspective emerging from many posts, I would note:
|
| behind the search for alternative fuels, there is the notion that
| reserves for fossil fuels may deplete.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > The research, which was funded in part by the National Wildlife
| Federation and U.S. Department of Energy
|
| Can't imagine there's any conflict of interest there.
|
| > ethanol is likely at least 24% more carbon-intensive than
| gasoline due to emissions resulting from land use changes to grow
| corn, along with processing and combustion.
|
| The nice thing about words like "likely" is that it leaves the
| door open for the other thing. Did the study find that ethanol
| _is_ more carbon-intensive, or is it someone 's opinion that it's
| more intensive?
|
| I don't see how this adds up. As the article mentions, the carbon
| atoms in ethanol came from the atmosphere to which it returns.
| Yet not all of the carbon even makes it back. But the mere
| tilling of the soil puts ethanol somewhere _worse_ than fossil
| fuels?
|
| By that logic, we'd better stop _farming crops_ all together.
|
| > Tilling fields releases carbon stored in soil, while other
| farming activities, like applying nitrogen fertilizers, also
| produce emissions.
|
| And we're to assume that, without the production of fuel ethanol,
| the same land wouldn't be tilled and used for other crops?
|
| What is the nature of the carbon in that soil? Is it carbon that
| is constantly making its way up through the soil and into the
| atmosphere? Does stable isotope testing corroborate that it's a
| meaningful contributor to the global increase in atmospheric CO2?
| retrocat wrote:
| The research article is located here:
| <https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2101084119>; if
| you're interested in what "likely" means in this context, it
| may be beneficial to read through the article. My understanding
| is that the "likely" comes from it being an estimate using
| models, as the research article states.
|
| > Substituting our empirically derived domestic emissions for
| those modeled in the RFS RIA would raise ethanol's projected
| life cycle GHG emissions for 2022 to 115.7 g CO2e MJ-1--a value
| 24% above baseline gasoline (93.1 g CO2e MJ-1). The RIA
| estimate, however, includes improvements in feedstock and
| ethanol production efficiency that were projected to occur by
| 2022, such that the GHG intensity of ethanol produced at
| earlier time periods and over the life of the RFS to date is
| likely much higher [...].
|
| My understanding is that they took the model used in the RFS
| RIA (when the RFS was first introduced), and plugged in what
| they've seen over the past few years to that model. Take that
| with what you will.
|
| > And we're to assume that, without the production of fuel
| ethanol, the same land wouldn't be tilled and used for other
| crops?
|
| With the increase in demand for corn for fuel usage, more
| fields are needed to plant the corn. Because the corn is for
| fuel, not food, food wouldn't have been planted in place of the
| corn had there not been fuel demand.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > With the increase in demand for corn for fuel usage, more
| fields are needed to plant the corn. Because the corn is for
| fuel, not food, food wouldn't have been planted in place of
| the corn had there not been fuel demand.
|
| Spent corn used in ethanol production becomes livestock feed.
| Good quality feed, actually. Even with a surplus of spent
| corn, it can be dried and kept around until needed. Point
| being that it actually _is_ food, just by proxy. More fields
| may be needed to scale for demand, but it wouldn 't be
| linear. For all we know, the scale of corn production has a
| modest relationship with ethanol or is correlative and weakly
| causative.
| cld8483 wrote:
| _> > The research, which was funded in part by the National
| Wildlife Federation and U.S. Department of Energy_
|
| _> Can 't imagine there's any conflict of interest there._
|
| Pro-nuclear bias you figure? Does the DoE have another reason
| to dislike corn?
| neltnerb wrote:
| It is worse than you probably think because of the fertilizer,
| transportation of crops (and operating farm machinery), drying
| of crops, fermentation to ethanol, and (perhaps most brutally)
| distillation to high enough grade to mix with hydrophobic
| gasoline.
|
| I was doing reviews of at least a half dozen studies of this
| that dated back to the mid '00s, back then the most optimistic
| studies were around 1.3 joules of ethanol for 1 joule for
| extraction (which excludes the sunlight). Meaning you're
| burning 1 joule of gasoline to farm and transport and
| manufacture 1.3 joules of ethanol. But the pessimistic
| estimates from then were also below 1, meaning that you
| literally use more petrochemicals to support growing the crop
| than the crop produces in finished fuel.
|
| Whether it's breakeven, a little positive, or a little negative
| we've known for a long time that it's marginal at best, thus
| the interest in cellulosic ethanol. Whether it's 0.7 joules out
| or 1.3 joules out per joule in depends on assumptions like how
| far you need to transport things and how dry the crops start.
| There's no way to avoid that uncertainty.
|
| That whether it's positive, unity, or negative is sensitive to
| these variables is a statement of just how marginal it is. It
| should just be positive, always, or what are we doing?
| Confusingly, some _oil wells_ are barely breakeven because they
| use so much energy to build the well and process the fuel.
|
| You can follow the citations inside this article, but, for
| instance:
|
| > Resulting EROI is typically around 1.4-1.5 [for shale oil].
|
| So every 1.4-1.5 joules of shale oil you burn required 1 joule
| of other energy to extract. Net it produces only 0.4-0.5 joules
| of free energy after extraction, and that's... well, arguably
| not actually enough to operate a civilization but let's not go
| there.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#Sh...
|
| Corn ethanol has been a scam and known to be one for a very
| long time. Shale oil is marginally less of a scam, but is truly
| hard to justify compared to PV solar or wind which both easily
| exceed 4 and 34 depending on the details.
|
| But no, variation in the estimated EROEI is entirely normal and
| expected because different sites have different details.
| bluGill wrote:
| Plowing the soil is a terrible thing to do. Which is why no
| farmer has done it since around 1980. Modern tilling is much
| better for the soil, and doesn't release as much carbon form
| the soil (it needs more power from the tractor, and thus more
| CO2 from fuel, but still a lot less carbon total because the
| soil is saved.
|
| The above is also why GMO crops are so great for the
| environment: by using a little roundup (just a little - not
| only is it a mist sprayed, but that mist is mostly water) much
| less fuel is used vs cultivating (think mechanical hoe).
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| >Plowing the soil is a terrible thing to do. Which is why no
| farmer has done it since around 1980.
|
| Thats just not true. Plenty of farmers still plough. There
| has been some movement to lower disturbance low-till/
| minimum-till systems for commodity crops, but we're still
| seeing soil carbon losses in agricultural soils in general.
| Number isn't going up and to the right, its still going down
| and to the left. I appreciate the importance of these kinds
| of systems, but I also appreciate that its not nearly as well
| adopted as one would think based on a survey of youtube
| videos. There is a very real departure from the Internets
| vision of farming and real-life farming in terms of practice.
|
| I do agree however that carbon in the soils is the answer to
| most problems. The closest thing I came to witnessing a fist
| fight at work was between two 50+ yo scientists regarding
| aluminium/ alumina ions and their relationship with soil
| carbon. If geriatric scientsits are willing to raise
| fisticuffs over it, you should wonder why they care so much.
| bluGill wrote:
| Plouging is a specific subset of tilling. Many farmers
| till, but it is a very different type of tool that is a lot
| better for the soil. No-till and limited till are very
| common as well, and there are government programs
| encouraging them.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| So "oil and water don't mix", as is often said. Oil/ gas with
| corn based additives DO mix with water, so it cannot be piped
| through a pipeline, thus making it be carried totally by truck,
| and making it's carbon footprint even worse.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I kind of doubt any of it is transported by truck but most
| likely by train.
| bluGill wrote:
| It cannot be put in existing pipelines. You can build a whole
| new pipeline that will carry ethanol. Nobody wants to invest
| that much money.
| culopatin wrote:
| For 10% replacement? Not worth it.
| thinkthink wrote:
| There is more to Ethanol than just fuel. Fuel does not make up
| most of the production of these ethanol plants. Also, it would be
| important to note that Reuters and this journalist have had to
| retract an article on this very topic due "because of its flawed
| interpretation of data on ethanol-plant pollution and fuel-
| production capacity".
| https://ethanolproducer.com/articles/19634/reuters-retracts-...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > There is more to Ethanol than just fuel.
|
| But mostly fuel. The amount of fuel burned by the average
| person directly and indirectly is wayyyyyyy more than their
| distilled beverage and hand sanitizer consumption.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Is this article based on the same paper as the retracted
| article?
|
| Timeline seems to match up.
| bennysonething wrote:
| I still don't understand why we're still doing bio fuels. We've
| known for decades that they are a disaster. Am I missing
| something, is there evidence to the contrary?
|
| For now I can't see how we can just stop fossil fuels without
| starving half the world (as we need them for fertilizer
| production). Never mind cement, plastics and steel.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Unfortunately policy decisions seem to rarely be made based on
| evidence. It's a handout to farmers (and the entire ethanol
| industry) which politicians don't want to touch.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| We're doing it to pump corn prices. Also energy independence
| from pre fracking days.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Which pumps agricultural land values. Great news for retiring
| farmers.
|
| Cutting corn/food prices would bankrupt some overextended
| corporate/new entrant farmers (and their lenders), but it's
| not like the fields would become unharvested.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Not surprising; that's been the common wisdom for quite some time
| now.
| rr888 wrote:
| Gasoline unlocks carbon that was buried underground. If we can
| avoid that surely its better?
| kccqzy wrote:
| On a first approximation, food production (including corn) is
| just channeling natural gas into fertilizers through Haber-
| Bosch.
|
| If the produced food isn't actually being eaten, it's just a
| highly inefficient energy conversion Rube Goldberg machine.
|
| Now to answer your question, food production unlocks plenty of
| carbon underground through natural gas.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Not to mention all of the fuel used to move around the
| fertilizer, tractors, finished corn, the energy used to
| grid/heat/ferment/distill into ethanol, and then to truck
| around the ethanol. It's actually almost hilariously indirect
| and inefficient when you think about it.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Well all the final products (contextually, material fuels
| or just energy) have a production history: to call one of
| them inefficient you need to compare production processes.
| Diesel fuel does not come ready from "diesel springs".
| ch4s3 wrote:
| What I mean is that to turn fuel into fuel with corn as
| an intermediary is inherently inefficient vs using the
| original diesel or gasoline directly.
| frankreyes wrote:
| But it doesn't. It's carbon positive, because it takes more
| fuel to produce fuel than to just use that initial fuel as
| fuel.
| hammock wrote:
| More energy in the form of diesel and fossil fuel derived
| fertilizer went into corn ethanol than you get out in usable
| fuel
| ok123456 wrote:
| So that means we're going to start phasing it out?
| bluedino wrote:
| There are only a couple gas stations around that still sell it
| where I live. One grocery store chain and then Speedway.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| No, it's an agricultural subsidy that is important to states
| that appear early in presidential primaries so its pretty well
| locked in for now.
| barathr wrote:
| Iowa is losing that status this coming cycle, so things may
| begin to shift.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| It's _Probably_ losing it 's place in the DNC primary, but
| Michigan which plants 2 million acres of corn will be 5th
| and Iowa still might be on Super Tuesday. If the RNC keeps
| the early caucus it might turn into a more partisan issue
| which might be worse.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's Probably losing it's place in the DNC primary,
|
| The rule has already passed. It can defy the rule and
| keep its early date, but then it will lose half its
| delegates under the rule.
|
| > Michigan which plants 2 million acres of corn will be
| 5th
|
| Fifth isn't second, and two million acres of corn in a
| state with a $473B GDP is not the same significance as
| thirteen million acres in a state with a $180B GDP
|
| > Iowa still might be on Super Tuesday.
|
| Most of the country that isn't on the early calendar is
| on Super Tuesday
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Certainly all true, but I think it's still to be seen
| what kind of influence the Corn Belt will have in the DNC
| primaries, and what will happen with the RNC.
| johncearls wrote:
| A link to the study referenced if you are interested:
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2101084119
| credit_guy wrote:
| Thanks for the link.
|
| As expected, the press distorted the study's conclusions to the
| point of actually lying: "we find that the
| production of corn-based ethanol in the United States has
| failed to meet the policy's own greenhouse gas emissions
| targets and negatively affected water quality, the area of land
| used for conservation, and other ecosystem processes"
|
| It's one thing to "fail to meet" some emissions reductions and
| quite another to actually increase the emissions altogether.
| megaman821 wrote:
| This would be better positioned as a crop surplus and/or crop
| waste to fuel initiative. The government could still encourage
| overproduction of staple crops to guard against food shortages
| while being a reliable buyer of the the surplus to make ethanol
| out of.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I think this has been well established for years. I remember
| seeing some studies circa 2008 showing that more energy in the
| form of diesel and fossil fuel derived fertilizer went into corn
| ethanol than you get out in usable fuel. It has always been an
| agricultural subsidy.
| chasil wrote:
| The ethanol is required as an anti-knock additive.
|
| The past alternative was tetraethyllead, which had catastrophic
| environmental impact.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Antiknock_agent
| kube-system wrote:
| It is used, but not required, as an anti-knock additive.
|
| Unleaded E0 is still available in some places in the US with
| octane numbers on par with E10 and E15 blends
|
| https://stillwaterassociates.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/11/...
|
| https://www.pure-gas.org/
| bluGill wrote:
| Those are not the same gasoline. Ethanol is high octane and
| so you mix it with a much worse grade of gasoline and get
| the same octane. E0 advocates attribute to lack of ethanol
| what is really just the better grade of gas.
| m-ee wrote:
| Ethanol absorbs water which doesn't always play nicely
| with seals and fuel lines, or at least that's the
| commonly held belief.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| That's an issue if you're running E100. Gas+ethanol
| blends will dramatically reduce ethanol's hygroscopicity.
|
| But if water is getting into your fuel (focus on fixing
| that, not your fuel choice), isn't it _better_ if the
| ethanol can carry it through the engine instead of just
| accumulating as a separate layer?
| m-ee wrote:
| Nothing scientific but on motorcycle forums I used to
| frequent people often blamed E15 for seals swelling up
| and no longer working. I can't say if that's the cause
| but I did have a face gasket between the fill neck and
| tank expand. After sitting out for a few days it shrunk
| back to its original shape.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| How old are the motorbikes though? I could see it being
| an issue on bikes built before >=e10 became nearly
| unavoidable.
|
| I wish my gaskets would swell a bit. All of my auto
| seal/gasket problems were on the intake manifold or oil
| system interfaces.
| glitchc wrote:
| I find ethanol actually increases knocking in all of my
| engines. Switched to ethanol free years ago and I recall it
| made a difference in performance and mileage.
| pengaru wrote:
| Just like if you try run a gasoline engine on alcohol
| without adjusting the fueling it'll be too lean and knock
| if it runs at all, you'll be too lean with sufficient
| ethanol in the gasoline without adjustment.
|
| But they're still higher octane fuels. E85 is specifically
| sought out for this purpose in the gearhead scene, so they
| can run high boost getting something alcohol-like at the
| pump.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Lots of anecdata of people running their regular vehicles
| on E85 without issues.
|
| Lots of theoretical concerns "omg, you're not following
| the owner's manual, god is going to blow up your engine
| and kill 4 kittens", but either nobody has blown an
| engine or hasn't admitted to it.
|
| https://youtu.be/scgtGxxgx6M
|
| Plenty of parts of the world where E85 is substantially
| cheaper than E10 (e.g. France where it's ~43% cheaper)
| where I'm sure lots of people are running it or various
| mixes.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It will take time for the computer in the car to detect the
| ethanol and switch to a high ethanol fuel map. In the mean
| time, the engine is going to run pretty lean, since more
| ethanol is required than gasoline for the same volume of
| air. Running too lean usually causes the engine to buck and
| shake pretty badly.
|
| This, of course, assumes that the car is even capable of
| running higher ethanol blends.
|
| The performance benefits are mostly from turbocharged
| engines. Though, Chevy V8s can see solid torque gains over
| 4000 RPMs.
|
| Once you get into the E50+ blends, you should have seen a
| huge mileage reduction. 10-20% for E50 and 25+% on E85.
| There's so much less energy density in ethanol.
| bluedino wrote:
| > Though, Chevy V8s can see solid torque gains over 4000
| RPMs.
|
| The gains will come in well before that
| bluGill wrote:
| Unless your car has a turbocharger or other means to run
| a higher compression ratio and thus take advantage of the
| higher octane of ethanol fuel. I've seen this done in lab
| and garage settings (they typically don't retain the
| ability to run regular gasoline), but I'm not aware of
| any commercially available engine that does. Race
| settings similar things as well, but they are trying to
| get power not fuel efficiency and so you can't get a fair
| fuel efficiency measure.
| lloeki wrote:
| > I'm not aware of any commercially available engine that
| does
|
| Engines with knock sensors and advanced valve timing +
| phasing can do that. Source: mine does, stock '08 K20
| engine, which has a very wide operational RPM range, so
| these things matter.
| bluedino wrote:
| You'll get a solid 20-30lb/ft gain on a GM or Ford V8
| with E85.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| That's such a small difference it could literally just be
| that it's a slightly richer setting because E85 needs a
| higher fuel ratio for Stoichiometric burning.
| bluedino wrote:
| That is not a small difference, and you can't get 30lb/ft
| by "richening things up"
| mywittyname wrote:
| GM cars run separate tuning maps for E85 and E15 with an
| ethanol sensor to help the engine decide which to use.
|
| You're not going to see the insane power gains possible
| on E85 from the factory though because the E85 map needs
| to be conservative enough to no blow up if someone
| suddenly fills up with regular.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| If that's true, why is it required by law? If it was
| necessary, it wouldn't have to be legislated.
| blahyawnblah wrote:
| Octane on its own is an anti-knock additive. And ethanol
| actually makes your mileage go down because it is less energy
| dense.
| rightbyte wrote:
| How can adding octane be an anti-knock additive? Isn't the
| rating normalized too octane, so it can't bring the average
| under 100, ever?
|
| Like, compared to even worse carbon chains than octane?
|
| Edit: Never mind got the scale backwards. I'll keep the
| comment here to shame myself.
| bluGill wrote:
| Octane is a measure of the relatives ratios of the octane
| molecule with some other (I can never remember which).
| 100 octane means the fuel acts in your engine the same as
| fuel made from 100% octane molecule. 0 octane means it
| acts like 100% the other, 90 octane mean it acts like a
| mix of 90% octane and 10% the other.
|
| You can go below 0 or above 100 if you find some other
| molecule/mix that acts worse/better, though how you
| extrapolate beyond the 0-100 range is subject to debate,
| confusion and deception. Ethanol is clearly better than
| pure octane, though how much depends on how you choose to
| extend the scale.
| TylerE wrote:
| There's also the issue of how/what exactly you're
| measuring. There are two different scales that result in
| European readings being several points higher (eg US 93
| is ~ Euro 98)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It's a hand out to Iowa because of how presidential caucusing
| occurs. It should go away as gasoline consumption declines
| and EV uptake ramps.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-iowa-
| biofuel...
| TylerE wrote:
| Not true. We went decades without lead or ethanol. You can
| still get ethanol-free gas if you look hard, and modern
| engines run quite happily on it.
| pengaru wrote:
| It's not like lead-free and eathanol-free gas is devoid of
| anti-knock agents... for much of those decades MTBE was
| used which was part of a groundwater contamination scandal.
|
| Wikipedia has an interesting article on the subject @
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiknock_agent
| milsorgen wrote:
| Yes I remember corn based ethanol, among other alternatives for
| liquid fuel production, were hot topics during the Bush
| Administration. If I recall correctly an issue of
| NatGeo/SciAm/NewSci wrote that it wouldn't achieve it's goals
| or benefits and there better avenues such as algae to explore
| and I believe at least for Brazil, further sugar cane waste
| utilization. It always struck me as odd to see we've stayed the
| course on this approach when even in the beginning the numbers
| weren't adding up.
| hammock wrote:
| The DOE lists three benefits - energy security, jobs and
| offset carbon emissions. If the net carbon one turns out to
| be bogus, the other two benefits remain
|
| https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/ethanol_benefits.html
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Jobs for the jobs god is just the broken window fallacy
| though. If employing people in ethanol production is
| hastening the ruination of our environment, lets just give
| them money not to do that instead.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Mostly it pulls those people away from more economically
| productive activities. What might those farmers otherwise
| plant? What about the associated ag businesses? Surely
| they wouldn't evaporate. And the ethanol processing
| plants could probably make other distilled products for
| industrial use.
| hammock wrote:
| We do that too. It doesn't work:
| https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/29/usda-farmers-
| conser...
| r00fus wrote:
| The only way this gets resolved is when political parties stop
| pretending that Iowa is somehow representative of their voters
| and shift the primary schedule to put it farther behind other
| states.
|
| Democrats especially shouldn't put up with Iowa considering how
| it hasn't voted D anytime recently. Not to mention the completely
| FUBAR 2020 primary.
|
| Make GA or NH first contest.
|
| Then a lot less pressure for this losing ethanol boondoggle.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Make GA or NH first contest.
|
| The DNC already voted to make SC first in 2024 (the early -
| pre-Super Tuesday - order in the new rule being SC => NH & NV
| => GA => MI)
| twiddling wrote:
| But great for votes in corn producing states
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