Ethanol Lowers Gas Prices 29-40 Cents Per Gallon

90% ???? Where the hell did you get your numbers?
Actual Real and verifiable Breakdown of corn use
* Feed/Residual (45.9% of total U.S. corn usage in 2007-08)
* Food/Seed/Industrial (35.2%)
* Export (18.9%)

25% went to ethanol production which has attributed to 100% of the price increase of corn and corn-based products - number 1 affected direct use product is chicken and chicken products such as eggs.

You should check your numbers before you post idiotic statements

Almost 90% of all corn grown is feed to cattle *not* people. Of the approximately 10% of corn that is feed to humans, 7% is turned into high-fructose corn syrup, which is probably unhealthy for humans and cattle.

I think it is unfair, and scientifically incorrect, to blame the ills of corporate industrial petro-chemical agriculture on biofuels.

Even if 100% of the corn were feed to humans, the industrial petro-chemical production of corn would still deplete farmland and pollute our air and waterways (not to mention the lack of nutrient in industrially produced corn).

I do not think humanity's best interests are served when the solution is mistaken for the problem.

Kind Regards :)

This is an unrefereed working paper and seems rather poorly written. The results are highly dubious.

Skimming through the full article, it seems that ethanol is fantastic for the US consumer pocketbook! Unless, of course, you like to eat.

This article is a joke. I appreciate that they are focusing on accurately reporting the effect of ethanol on gasoline prices, but to avoid mentioning the total impact on America, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Haiti, and essentially the entire poor of the world through food price increases is to me a crime.

Shame on you Iowa State.

Most studies show it takes more energy to produce than is produced. Ethanol has 15-30% less energy than gas, a fact the study rephrased as the 90-10 gas mix retains 97% of its energy. True, but how does that relate to ethanol's impact? Here's how: Combusting 7.22 billion gallons of ethanol means 1.62 billion additional gallons of gasoline to compensate for the estimated ethanol energy loss vs gasoline. At $4 /gal that's $6.5 Billion off-their-books, paid by we consumers. Adding $.51/gal Fed incentive equals another $3.68 billion. Just these 2 items mean ethanol costs taxpayers over $10 Billion or $1.41/gallon!

Ethanol production incurs wide energy costs e.g., Transportation, distribution, mixing, logistics, ethanol plant utilities, Land tillage, fertilizer, herbicides, pesticide, seeds, tractor energy costs to build, maintain, operate (and fuel must be transported to the tractor), and farms require energy to maintain. The process has a spine of inefficient land transport, fields and consumers are distant and can't use pipelines.

But, US corn stover (left over stalks in the field) has 50+ billion gallons of fuel potential annually. There are non-enzymatic, here-now, technologies to convert this biomass cheaper than ethanol. But, since Ethanol is a huge "rice bowl" if we converted stover (and other high efficiency biomass crops) to energy cheaply it would crash the $10's of billions spent on ethanol refineries, crash the ethanol market, and point out their folly. Would we want to do that (in an election year?) Ethanol money spent on wind power in this regions which possess high density wind energy would produce energy 365 x 24 and a multiple that from ethanol. My company's intent is to commercialize copious, cheap ($.05/kWh) renewable energy from wind, and concentrated solar. I sure I am not alone in realizing the Great Plains great potentials in both these renewable forms. CEO, Sannerprojects, Inc JRIAM1945@aol.com

The lower energy content of the gasohol mixture means I have to spend as least as much as I "save" to make up for the lost fuel efficiency.

Jeff, Jeff Jeff,
It matters not a twit how much corn is fed to Humans;

It matters how much land, water and agricultural capability, are used for food crops - and more particularly - how much of these limited resources have been directed away from food and towards energy as a consequence of centralized command market manipulation. Let's not forget that centralized market manipulation was the cause of poverty in the Soviet Union. If you have never waited three hours in a bread line personally - It doesn't mean you can't learn from the mistakes of others.

Manipulating the food market is a ^&*ing dangerous move, and the morons responsible for this manipulation should be sent to the end of the food line they created.

Ben

Even if the results are correct.
We're paying nearly 90 cents per gallon in subsidies.
http://greyfalcon.net/truecostofethanol.png

So I'd hardly call 40 cents a savings.

Before spreading more of Megaoil's myths about alcohol one should read David Blume's book, 'Alcohol can be a gas'. Henry Ford designed his cars to run on alcohol, which is 106 Octane, and will never cause pinging.
R. Buckminster Fuller wrote the Forward, and supported Blumes ideas. He believes in crop rotation and sequestering CO2 in the root systems of the crops grown for alcohol, making growing our fuel a way of removing half the CO2 used by the plant each year. He points out that farmers could produce alcohol crops on marginal land, and that corn is not his choice for sensible production or alcohol. He suggests about 50 other crops, and explains that coffee farmers could make money from the pulp that surrounds each coffee bean instead of dumping it in the nearest river. He also advocates using many waste products and damaged food stocks in production of alcohol. It is too bad that we all have been conditioned to believe the oil producers propaganda about alcohol that started in the early 1900's, in order to create a use for their noxious waste product---gasoline. The farmer cooperative that were producing alcohol in those days were all killed by cheap but inferior gasoline, due largely to untruths which were disseminated. Rather like the campaign they waged against the wonderfully efficient electric street cars that were operated in most large cities in the mid 1900's, which were destroyed by the introduction of gas buses. And more recently like the campaign waged against the electric car in California in the 1990's which succeeded in having those cars demolished against the wishes of the hundreds of leaseholders. When will we start thinking for ourselves and stop believing the self serving oil companies????

This argument ranges from the preposterous to the silly.

Monoculture of any crop is just wrong. It will deplete the soil, cause erosion, etc. Any farmer knows that but is locked into a bad situation as most farmers these days are struggling just to pay the bills.
Consumers will gladly pay big bucks for unnecessary toys but then demand cheap food. Well, you get what you pay for.

Grain prices have been depressed for decades, thats why most of the grain is used to feed livestock. It is strictly a way of marketing grain. ethanol production is just another way to market grain, and bring some stability to the market.

The fact that ethanol production consumes grain is not what is causing food prices to rise. The biggest cost factor in any farm operation is the cost of fuel.

There are better ways of producing biofuels, and these technologies are slowly coming on-line. The current corn based ethanol production is bridging technology, creating the demand that will foster innovation.

So, the next time you drive your oversized SUV to the mecca of consumerism to buy your large screen TV, stop and think!

WHAT ABOUT THE COST OF ENGINE , AND CATALIC CONVERTER REPLACEMENT, IN TO DAYS AUTOMIBLE FROM OVER HEATING?

Since all the ethanol we will produce under the Renewable Fuel Standard of 2007 (RFS) will only provide that needed as a pollution reduction additive, this whole thing would seem to be moot. What needs to be examined is the viability of the RFS. The 15 billion gallons of grain-based ethanol allowed under the RFS would require 80 million acre-feet of "new" water. Where would that come from when 24 states, including some in the corn belt, are already in drought? Grains are lousy ethanol feedstocks, and the only reason they're being used is because of ADM and corn belt politicians. If they'd only grow sweet sorghum instead, they'd get twice the energy and only use half the water - and would end up with millions of tons of grain to feed livestock and people too. What's happening now is an ecological and human tragedy, due to greedy businesses and greedy and stupid politicians.

Best way to use corn "others" is to convert to biogas and fertilizer under anaerobic fermentation conditions -- get energy and idear fertilizer tailored to crop needs.

Beyond that, except for the ethanol supported thru subsidies:
Editorial: Green Plants, Fossil Fuels, and Now Biofuels
David Pimentel College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University
Tad Patzek Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
University of California–Berkeley

November 2006, Bioscience 56(11): 875.

For 700 million years, green plants contributed to the formation of soil, oil, natural gas, and coal. As the human population increases, so too does the consumption of soil and fossil energy. If this trend continues unabated, humans will consume most of these precious resources within the next few hundred years.

By 1850, when wood accounted for 91 percent of US energy consumption and the US population was less than 10 percent of the current 300 million, serious wood shortages already existed. Now, with only about 4.5 percent of the world population, the United States accounts for a quarter of total fossil fuel use, the largest per capita consumption of any country. Between 1850 and 2000, 90 percent of the US oil endowment was mined.

Converting grain or other biomass into ethanol is currently a popular idea, but it is not a new one. It requires fertile soil, large quantities of water, and sunlight for green plant production. Green plants in the United States collect about 53 exajoules of energy per year from sunlight. Americans consume slightly more than twice that amount, however. Enthusiasts suggest that ethanol produced from corn and cellulosic biomass could replace much of the oil used in the United States. Yet the 18 percent of the US corn crop that is now converted into 4.5 billion gallons of ethanol replaces only 1 percent of US petroleum consumption. If the entire corn crop were used, it would replace only 6 percent. And because the country has

The fall of the US ethanol industry would only hurt those that deserve to be hurt though their short sighted economic models.

How does adding Ethanol "improve octane and performance" if by adding it, gasoline is reduced in efficiency by 3%? Where is the logic in that statement?

It is crazy to think that the production of ethanol will relieve the energy problems. It has increased food prices across the board and we are wasting our land. We should be using hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cells right now. There is no reason that we are not using fuel cells. Congress and the administration is responsible for the sand bagging. If we need transition time, we open up the US production and start drilling in Alaska. Ther is no threat to the enviroment from drilling the oil.

If a relatively poor country like Brasil can run all of its cars and trucks on the renewable fuel, alcohol, with no gasoline mixed into it, surely we can, and at a much lower cost than the Middle Eastern oil suppliers are charging. The use of corn for alcohol production, which is 87% used in the USA for animal feed, with most of the balance shipped to other countries for fattening cattle, should have little affect on the food production of the planet, since the mash left after the alcohol is produced is better for animal feed (more easily digested by them) than the raw corn. Other crops that can be grown on less arable land might be a better source. Alcohol is easier on internal Combustion engines because the timing can be set closer to top dead center than in an engine that burns gasoline, thus reducing the back pressure caused by gasoline combustion, and creating a much smoother engine. I would also like to see hydrogen used as fuel and the use of the fuel cell and the use of the electric car. All I believe are part of the answer to global warming, along with solar, wind and water power. However the production of alcohol can be readily achieved, probably best by farmer cooperatives, located close to population centers. This would avoid the need for pipelines and would instead mean short hauls to existing fuel stations which could install alcohol pumps similar to the diesil pumps currently available. This would also give the farmers another crop that could bring in needed cash since their normal incomes have not kept pace with their operating costs over the last 30 years.

I'm glad to see a very healthy post-article 'discussion' in this string. I'm also very glad that this study (the subject of the article) is a working paper, and not a definitive statement.

The results of the aforementioned study may be a good example of selective use of data, or looking only at certain aspects of the data. Unfortunately, others might use that resultant information as the basis for their calculations -- or, in simple terms, they'd run with that '29 to 40 cent savings if we use ethanol' headline... failing to remember other important aspects about life. Like, eating, reduced performance with reduced power output using ethanol, machinery repair cost increases, and, in a bigger picture view, still employing the internal-combustion engine as the primary power unit if using ethanol. It's an extension of the current crude-oil, finite and on its way out, no doubt.

I think this recent increase in fuel prices in the USA will help motivate Americans to make some new decisions based on new thoughts and good information. I hope that this information from this Iowa study don't gloss over the 'costs' of ethanol vs. a calculated savings based on a limited set of factors used for the calculations. Not only do we need to pump the liquid fuel into our tanks, but we have to buy and maintain the vehicle (cost factors) and we need to eat daily (crops or feed, we eat it eventually) and we're stuck with a need for a long-term problem of running on empty.

Time for a new type in engine (and requisite fuel) to motivate the machinery of our existence.

nufsed

Miles,
Poor countries can run on odd fuel sources precisely "because" they are poor. If only 10% of people in the US owned a Car, they could probably all run on McDonalds grease. Turns out, when everyone needs fuel, that doesn't work so good. Similarly in Brazil, they have fewer drivers per acre of agriculture land. Without being insulting, the proposition that Brazil is a model that must work well anywhere displays a somewhat incomplete grasp of fundamental math.

Generally I'm opposed to such criticisms, but this is a dangerous habit - to reach for the emotional argument of jealousy (if a backward country like Brazil can do it - than a "great" country like the US can do it in its sleep), while ignoring the math. One reason we, as a country went to the moon, is because we promoted math and science over religions, beliefs, and self-aggrandizing dogma. May I suggest we keep on that course, and not be distracted by empty appeals to nationalism.