Thursday, August 11, 2005
Biofuel nonsense
For some time now, a shady debate (not really a debate, more a guerrilla war) is raging around the fundamental question: does it cost more fossile fuel to generate a biofuel or not. In the US, ethanol is promoted as a (part) substitute for gasoline and federal and state subsidies and taxbreaks run in the several billions USD to promote ethanol. Cornfarmers and - to a lesser degree- soybean farmers make good business, but the ethanol industry is the big winner.
Prof Patzek of UC Berkeley and Prof Pimentel of Cornell Univ. beg to differ. They say that, if you take all energy inputs in proper account, ethanol production costs some 25 to 60 % more energy than it delivers. That means that the US needs MORE foreign oil instead of LESS if it continues to promote ethanol. Or, in other words, you must burn up to 1,5 gallons of oil to obtain 1 gallon of ethanol (which has less power than gasoline, by the way).
The Ethanol producers, organised in ACE, and the USDA disagree. Through complex manipulation of the data, or downright omitting important energy-inputs (because they are hard to estinmate, or because they are considered not important, or even because they are not liquid fuels), and allocating some postive energy effects to by-products (cattle feed), they arrange it to get a positive outcome.
For the informed reader an interesting debate.
Prof Patzek of UC Berkeley and Prof Pimentel of Cornell Univ. beg to differ. They say that, if you take all energy inputs in proper account, ethanol production costs some 25 to 60 % more energy than it delivers. That means that the US needs MORE foreign oil instead of LESS if it continues to promote ethanol. Or, in other words, you must burn up to 1,5 gallons of oil to obtain 1 gallon of ethanol (which has less power than gasoline, by the way).
The Ethanol producers, organised in ACE, and the USDA disagree. Through complex manipulation of the data, or downright omitting important energy-inputs (because they are hard to estinmate, or because they are considered not important, or even because they are not liquid fuels), and allocating some postive energy effects to by-products (cattle feed), they arrange it to get a positive outcome.
For the informed reader an interesting debate.
