Pols Drunk On Corn-Based Ethanol Have Left Millions With Hangover
The Bear on Feb 29 2008 at 9:28 am | Filed under: Energy Policy
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“There is a right way and a wrong way to produce (ethanol),” the New York Times editorialized on Feb. 24. “Done right, ethanol could help wean the country from its dependence on foreign oil while reducing the emissions that contribute to climate change. Done wrong, ethanol could wreak havoc on the environment while increasing greenhouse gases.”
There is not, in fact, a right way to produce ethanol. But several wrong ones — spawned by congressional and presidential edicts — are already wreaking havoc on food prices and the natural environment. What we need to do is free up the ingenuity of innovators to devise a variety of approaches to biofuel production, and then permit the marketplace to decide the winners and losers.
President Bush announced last year a goal of replacing 15% of domestic gasoline use with biofuels over the next 10 years, which would require an almost fivefold increase in mandatory biofuel use to about 35 billion gallons.
Last June, the Senate pushed the target to 36 billion gallons by 2022, of which 15 billion are mandated to come from corn and 21 billion from other more advanced but largely unproven sources. China is aiming for 15% conversion to biofuels.
The reality is that with current technology, almost all of this biofuel would have to come from corn because there is no other feasible, proven alternative. But because of the inefficiencies inherent in producing ethanol from corn and the relatively meager amount of energy yielded by burning ethanol, the demands on farmland would be staggering.
An analysis by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development suggested that replacing even 10% of America’s motor fuel with biofuels would require that about a third of all the nation’s cropland be devoted to oilseeds, cereals and sugar crops. Achieving the 15% goal would require the entire current U.S. corn crop, which represents a whopping 40% of the world’s corn supply.
In the short and medium term, ethanol can do little to affect oil consumption. But the diversion…
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ethanol, foreign oil, emissions, climate change, food prices, biofuel production, President Bush, domestic gasoline
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I have another take on things.
In the late seventies, they said we had 220 billion barrels of oil in known reserves, and that at the current rate of usage, we’d be out of that by 2010. We promptly doubled our usage over the next ten years or so, and had consumed that much by the early nineties, if I remember correctly.
But wait, there’s still oil, you say? Of course, it turns out there are NOW over four hundred forty billion barrels of proven oil reserves, with considerable more not proven but suspected because of evidence, evidence that says that four hundred could double, or actually, be HALF of what we know we have.
Sorry if you still think you’re in trouble, because after this next bit, you’ll realize we’re NOT.
In Canadian tar sand oil deposits alone, there are over three hundred TRILLION (yes, that’s right River City, that’s Trillion with a capital T) barrels of RECOVERABLE oil, and that doesn’t even touch the shale oil deposits in Colorado, a few TRILLION more barrels.
Add to that the capacity in this country is reduced simply because of laws, and you realize they want you to be afraid, because this is what drives up the price of oil and funds the worlds terrorists, including the Soviet Union.