Don't Sell Any Wheat This Week

[bucket]

Except it's renewable as opposed to the one shot deal with refining a barrel of oil.

You can't put a barrel of oil in the ground and get 172 back like corn. Or 45 for soybeans.

[riders2010]

Furrow, refreshing to read an objective post from someone leaning right on why biofuels did not take off. We are missing such an opportunity in the bio fuel arena which could both take care of or greatly
lessen the environmental concerns while bringing decent returns to us farmers.
We all have to stop blindly supporting the left or the right simply because they are left or right and either support or promote from our own people that will actually represent us farmers.

[chuckChuck]

According to calculations done by Minnesota researchers, 54 percent of the total energy represented by a gallon of ethanol is offset by the energy required to process the fuel; another 24 percent is offset by the energy required to grow the corn. While about 25 percent more energy is squeezed out of the biofuel than is used to produce it, other fuels yield much bigger gains, says Stephen Polasky, a professor of ecological and environmental economics at Minnesota. Making etha*nol is “not a cheap process,” he says. “From my perspective, the biggest problem [with corn ethanol] is just the straight-out economics and the costs. The energy input/output is not very good.”

The high energy requirements of ethanol production mean that using ethanol as fuel isn’t all that much better for the environment than using gasoline. One might think that burning the biofuel would release only the carbon dioxide that corn captures as it grows. But that simplified picture, which has often been conjured up to support the use of ethanol fuel, doesn’t withstand closer scrutiny.

In fact, Polasky says, the fossil fuels needed to raise and harvest corn and produce ethanol are responsible for significant carbon emissions. Not only that, but the cultivation of corn also produces two other potent greenhouse gases: nitrous oxide and methane. Polasky calculates that corn-derived ethanol is responsible for greenhouse-gas emissions about 15 to 20 percent below those associated with gasoline: “The bottom line is that you’re getting a slight saving in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions, but not much.”

[chuckChuck]

Study: Ethanol Worse for Environment Than Gasoline
AP Photo
The Associated Press

by Marita Noon6 Sep 2016973

University of Michigan’s Energy Institute research professor John DeCicco, Ph.D., believes that rising carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming and, therefore, humans must find a way to reduce its levels in the atmosphere. But ethanol is the wrong solution.

According to his just-released study, political support for biofuels, particularly ethanol, exacerbates the problem instead of curing it.

DeCicco and his co-authors assert: “Contrary to popular belief, the heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas emitted when biofuels are burned is not fully balanced by the CO2 uptake that occurs as the plants grow.” The presumption that biofuels emit significantly fewer greenhouse gases (GHG) than gasoline does is, according to DeCicco: “misguided.”

His research has upended the conventional wisdom and angered the alternative fuel lobbyists. The headline-grabbing claim is that biofuels prove worse for the environment than gasoline.

DeCicco has been focused on this topic for nearly a decade. In 2007, when the Energy Independence and Security Act (also known as the expanded ethanol mandate) was in the works, he told me: “I realized that something seemed horribly amiss with a law that established a sweeping mandate which rested on assumptions, not scientific fact, that were unverified and might be quite wrong, even though they were commonly accepted and politically correct (and politically convenient).” He saw that while biofuels sounded good, no one had checked the math.

Previously, based on life cycle analysis, it has been assumed that crop-based biofuels, were not just carbon neutral, but actually offered modest net GHG reductions. This, DeCicco says, is the “premise of most climate related fuel policies promulgated to date, including measures such as the LCFS [California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard] and RFS [the federal Renewable Fuel Standard passed in 2005 and expanded in 2007].”

The DeCicco study, Carbon balance effects of U.S. biofuel production and use, uses Annual Basis Carbon (ABC) accounting—which does not treat biofuels as inherently carbon neutral. Instead, it treats biofuels as “part of a dynamic stock-and-flow system.” Its methodology “tallies CO2 emissions based on the chemistry in the specific locations where they occur.” In May, on my radio program, DeCicco explained: “Life Cycle Analysis is wrong because it fails to actually look at what is going on at the farms.”

The concept behind DeCicco’s premise is that the idea of ethanol being carbon neutral assumes that the ground where the corn is grown was barren dirt (without any plants removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere) before the farmer decided to plant corn for ethanol. If that were the case, then, yes, planting corn on that land, converting that corn to ethanol that is then burned as a vehicle fuel, might come close to being carbon neutral. But the reality is that land already had corn, or some other crop, growing on it—so that land’s use was already absorbing CO2. You can’t count it twice.

DeCicco explains “Growing the corn that becomes ethanol absorbs no more carbon from the air than the corn that goes into cattle feed or corn flakes. Burning the ethanol releases essentially the same amount of CO2 as burning gasoline. No less CO2 went into the air from the tailpipe; no more CO2 was removed from the air at the cornfield. So where’s the climate benefit?”

Much of that farmland was growing corn to feed cattle and chickens—also known as feedstock. The RFS requires an ever-increasing amount of ethanol be blended into the nation’s fuel supply. Since the RFS became law in 2005, the amount of land dedicated to growing corn for ethanol has increased from 12.4 percent of the overall corn crop to 38.6 percent. While the annual supply of corn has increased by 17 percent, the amount going into feedstock has decreased from 57.5 percent to 37.98%.

The rub comes from the fact that we are not eating less. Globally, more food is required, not less. The livestock still needs to be fed. So while the percentage of corn going into feedstock in the U.S. has decreased because of the RFS, that corn is now grown somewhere else. One such place is Brazil where previous pasture land, because it is already flat, has been converted to growing corps. Ranchers have been pushed out to what was forest and deforestation is taking place.

Adding to the biofuels-are-worse-than-gasoline accounting are the effects from producing ethanol. You have to cook it and ferment it—which requires energy. In the process, CO2 bubbles off. By expanding the quantity of corn grown, prairie land is busted up and stored CO2 is released.

DeCicco says: “it is this domino effect that makes ethanol worse.”

How much worse?

The study looks at the period with the highest increase in ethanol production due to the RFS: 2005-2013. The conclusion is that the increased carbon dioxide uptake by the crops was only enough to offset 37 percent of the CO2 emissions due to biofuel combustion.

DeCicco’s research finds, that while further work is needed to examine the research and policy implications going forward, “it makes more sense to soak up CO2 through reforestation and redouble efforts to protect forests rather than producing biofuels, which puts carbon rich lands at risk.”

Regardless of differing views on climate change, we can agree that more trees are a good thing and that “using government mandates and subsidies to promote politically favored fuels is a waste of taxpayers’ money.”

The author of Energy Freedom, Marita Noon serves as the executive director for Energy Makes America Great Inc., and the companion educational organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy (CARE). She hosts a weekly radio program: America’s Voice for Energy—which expands on the content of her weekly column. Follow her @EnergyRabbit.
Read More Stories About:

Big Government, Economics, Environment, CO2 emissions, ethanol, John DeCicco, Low Carbon Fuel Standard, Renewable Fuel Standard

[riders2010]

All that tells me is that there is a problem with their processing that needs to be fixed.

[sumdumguy]

Does anyone read these pages and pages of pasted crap?

[checking]

SDG.

cc. isn't known as carbon copy for nothing. lol

[stonepicker]

Does anyone read these pages and pages of pasted crap?

Nope, garbage in garbage out.

[Oliver88]

Does anyone read these pages and pages of pasted crap?

No since it's usually completed by a environmental loon for an author with an agenda.

[furrowtickler]

Exactly Oliver