The recently enacted U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act mandated 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022. Good luck with that. Purchasing.com reports that soaring corn prices, a go-go ethanol industry and so-so E85 sales have turned the current bio-fuels boom into a damp squib. "Late last year, about 5.6 billion annual gallons of new or expanded fermentation ethanol capacity was due for completion in 2008, reports Nathan Schaffer, a fuels analyst with PFC Energy in Houston. Of that, he says, about a quarter has been 'put on hold or taken off the boards' since the start of the fourth quarter of 2007." Maybe that's because America already has an eight billion gal/year ethanol production capacity, relative to six billion gallons worth of domestic consumption. As R. Jeffrey DeReamer, president of EthanolMarket.com puts it "Supply is not going to be an issue for [ethanol] buyers this year." Ya think? Oh, and "domestically produced ethanol will be supplemented by imports of the commodity from Brazil and the Caribbean this summer." If the ethanol industry is going to stand on its own two feet (i.e. stop sucking on the government tit), consumers and retailers better fall in love with E85 STAT.
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Did Congress at least mandate E10 or E25 be sold and that cars be made to take it? Or did they just assume all the ethanol would magically be sold – kinda like they assume Americans will magically accept 35mpg cars that are smaller and slower that whats made today just because that what’s sitting on the lot. Good luck.
The Democrats have no clue how America works
Politicians in general don’t, for that matter. But that’s nothing new under the sun, and is true on both sides of the aisle.
I’m certainly glad that consumers are not falling for the great ethanol scam, that this website among others, exposes for what it is.
Let’s not forget, dwford, that the Energy Policy Act that mandated all that ethanol production was Republican-driven, had more Republican support than Democratic, and was signed into law by Bush.
You can also thank Bush for signing the recent CAFE increase into law.
As a Democrat, I think that biofuels, as they are being implemented in the US now, are an economic and environmental disaster. Corn will never be a good source of energy.
Like any act of our government, they initial concept was good. But of course, after the idiots in D.C. got done with the bill it sucked.
Good thing sites like this don’t blinding follow the masses in chanting for biofuel change.
Corn juice aint my thing but if it takes some demand off of gas I’m all for it since that’ll (hopefully?) slow down the price of gas for me.
E85 = An ideal for the truly ignorant.
Ha, 2 years ago all the message board geeks were berating their fellow Americans as idiots for not adopting ethanol fast enough and for letting a 3rd world country like Brazil get ahead of us.
Now all the message board geeks are berating Americans for using ethanol at all.
Well I’m a contrarian so I’ll just say that it still looks like if they can commercialize the cellulosic ethanol instead of the corn ethanol (and possibly even just use sugar ethanol imported from the Caribbean) it could be pretty good stuff
If so, then we’ll want to have built up as much infrastructure for it as possible. If not this is all a waste of money. Place your bets.
But obviously it’s a political boondoggle.
Biofuels will be practical at some point in the not so distant future but for now I’d be happier with a good variety of vehicles that could simply go farther on less fuel. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not all excited about making huge vehicles go a little further with hybrid systems. I don’t need a huge vehicle and paying $50,000 for the privilege isn’t something I’m inclined to do (if I ever intend to put my sons through college).
I think we need to decide what we want:
A: freedom from foreign oil
B: a clean environment
C: both?
D: pol pleasing subsidies that solve nothing
seems we want D so far
Personally, I think biofuels are feasible, just not with corn. Biomass gasification (not celluosic ethanol) doesn’t quite reach positive net energy, but it at least gives us liquid fuel from any source of carbon, even trash. As these processing plants scale up, they could bring down the price of ethanol to make E85 a more attractive alternative.
Exactly, kph!
You may be interested in catalytic hydrothermal (i.e. wet) gasification. Seems like there might be some good coming from the federal government, even if it’s more by accident than design…
Well I’m a contrarian so I’ll just say that it still looks like if they can commercialize the cellulosic ethanol instead of the corn ethanol (and possibly even just use sugar ethanol imported from the Caribbean) it could be pretty good stuff
The trouble is that ethanol sucks as a fuel (great for internal consumption) due to its properties. And no amount of research or political interference are going to change those.
Bottom line: Biofuels: YES! Ethanol: NO!
Ethanol particularly sucks as a fuel in cars designed to run on gasoline, since those engines don’t take advantage of ethanol’s high octane rating.