By Request: Biofuels We Can Believe In?

John requests comment on "Barack Obama's support for corn ethanol subsidies and tariffs on the more energy-efficient Brazilian sugarcane stuff, please." There was a good New York Times article on this yesteday and Obama turns out to be sort of worse than I'd thought -- not just shuffling along the Midwestern party line but really in tight with a bunch of corn ethanol people.

The problems with corn ethanol are pretty well-rehearsed at this point, and obviously anyone trying to block the importation of foreign ethanol isn't actually serious about this topic as an alternative fuel and is just trying to hand out yet more money to Big Corn. I'm not sure how much the president's attitude toward this issue really matters, but if Obama wins let's hope it doesn't matter too much.

Comments

Regardless of all other arguments, why would we block importation of fuel from Brazil but ask Saudi Arabia to pump more oil? I haven't heard of Brazilian terrorists plotting to attack the U.S.

As to ethanol, we need to move towards cellulosic. Corn should be a first step only.

As an aside, scientists have created a microbe that eats waste and excretes oil. If true (and viable), it certainly would be a game changer.

Posted by LFC | June 24, 2008 11:10 AM

Matt,

Do you have any articles on the ROI for biodiesel made from soybeans? I hear anecdotally that they are superior biofuels to ethanol because 1. being legumes they don't require nitrogens and therefore don't need the heavy fertilizer that corn does and 2. diesel engines are far more fuel efficient than gasoline engines, and moreover diesel engines running on biodiesel release less sulfur emissions than regular diesel, so they are less pollutant.

Of course I don't think that it is possible to grow enough biodiesel to quench the country's thirst for fuel, a boondoggle is still a boondoggle. But a less bad boondoggle perhaps? I don't know, I haven't seen any convincing articles.

Posted by freddiemac | June 24, 2008 11:13 AM

Regardless of all other arguments, why would we block importation of fuel from Brazil but ask Saudi Arabia to pump more oil?

Because Iowa, unlike Saudi Arabia, is a swing state.

It's pretty clear that Obama will say what he has to to get elected. In my opinion that's a good thing, provided none of his dodgier campaign rhetoric is followed by action.

Posted by Jasper | June 24, 2008 11:16 AM

There are some good articles in the latest Economist on Energy. In one of them, they made the point that the switch to electric cars may happen sooner than many expect. Technically, they are talking about hybrids, but unlike the current hybrids, these would use the traditional engine only as a generator that recharges the batteries.

Anyway, they claimed that switching to electric cars like this could doom biofuels.

Posted by Jim W | June 24, 2008 11:16 AM

Freddiemac, do you know if biodiesel can be used by trucks without engine modification? If so, it wouldn't have to replace all diesel. It could simply be another product.

Posted by LFC | June 24, 2008 11:19 AM

Obama's support of corn ethanol is really the single biggest strike against him, IMO. It's the one stance he has taken that's made me really think long and hard about whether I should continue supporting him

In the end, I do, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a disappointment.

This just in: there are no perfect politicians and the responsibility of the voter is to choose the best of the imperfect.

Posted by Andrew Lias | June 24, 2008 11:20 AM

Well, any discussion of ethanol that doesn't mention the federal Renewable Fuel Standard and how no new corn ethanol production will be subsidized after 2009 or 2010 (the standard is based on volume of production) doesn't meet minimal standards of understanding the dynamics of the ethanol issue. Repeat after me: "There will be no subsidies for corn based ethanol once production reaches 15 billion gallons in 2010." Any further increase in ethanol production will have to come from advanced biofuel technologies. It's not just a good idea, it's the law. OK?

http://www.ethanol.org/index.php?id=78&parentid=26

Posted by justawriter | June 24, 2008 11:22 AM

Technology Review ran through a few of the options earlier this year. For now, my understanding is that biodiesel, like corn ethanol, does not really yield enough energy to justify the inputs. Significant challenges in biochemistry still prevent using really exciting feedstocks, like switchgrass.

Posted by almostaquantum | June 24, 2008 11:23 AM

Meanwhile, McCain surrogates paint anyone who supports conservation and tech innovations as an "absolutist" and their man as the voice of compromise.

Request: Matt, please tear this meme apart.

Posted by ss | June 24, 2008 11:25 AM

As a midwesterner, it's fun to have a corn farmer boondoggle instead of the usual financial industry / telecom industry / entertainment industry / oil industry / military industry / DC bureaucrat boondoggles.

In your face the rest you smarty-pants states!

sebelius for vp!

Posted by jim | June 24, 2008 11:27 AM

LFC,

It is my understand that trucks can run on a biodiesel blend. Diesel engines can be run on biodiesel blended with diesel. It actually cleans the engines, and so switching to straight biodiesel would clog the engines.

http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/biodiesel_basics/

Not a terribly informative site, and fairly partisan, but processed biodiesel can work in most any diesel engine, from my understanding. Modification is needed to run a diesel on unprocessed forms of biodiesel like vegetable oils.

Posted by freddiemac | June 24, 2008 11:34 AM

Meanwhile, McCain surrogates paint anyone who supports conservation and tech innovations as an "absolutist" and their man as the voice of compromise.

Request: Matt, please tear this meme apart.

Posted by ss | June 24, 2008 11:43 AM

As a midwesterner, it's fun to have a corn farmer boondoggle instead of the usual...

What do you mean, "instead of"?

Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra | June 24, 2008 11:45 AM

Yes, Obama's stance on this is terrible. I can't say McCain's is that much better either. They are clearing Amazon rainforest by the second to support this ethanol craze, which is also accelerating global warming.

Here is an an article from Time, called "The Clean Energy Scam":
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html

Posted by Michelle | June 24, 2008 12:00 PM

The only thing I will say in Obama's defense is that corn-based ethanol could have a role to play as a transition fuel between gasoline and the superior biofuel possibilities, insofar as the latter are still being developed and in the meantime switching our car fleet from gasoline to diesel will be a gradual process.

Posted by DTM | June 24, 2008 12:01 PM

Unfortunately, I think it is likely that whomever is elected in November is going to conclude that a substantial chunk of the current President's unpopularity is due to the price at the pump, and is going to decide to try to avoid a similar fate, and thus pursue policies which are precisely the opposite of what would be optimal in the long run. Frankly, gasoline needs to get a lot more expensive, if the externalities of being heavily involved in Persian Gulf oil extraction are to be captured, and if the carbom emissions alarmists are correct. Subsidizing corn ethanol is a loser on both fronts, but I doubt it is going anywhere, no matter what current legislation says about sunsetting the subsidies in the future. Democrats and Republicans alike just love corn farmers, and those thaty do business with corn farmers, in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, etc., waaaaaay too much for these subsidies to end.

Al Gore's advocacy of an idea that has been lying about for at least 20 years, that of substituting carbon taxes for floor on below which FICA taxes do not apply, is welcome. Unfortunately, when Gore was interested in winning elections, he showed how politicians ALWAYS behave when they want to hold office, by using his sister's death to declare war and undying hatred on tobacco interests, but then speaking in favor of tobacco subsidies when it was time to buy votes. pay no attention to what legilsation says now about ending corn ethanol subsidies; when it's time to win an election, the votes will be bought with new subsidies.

Ah, doncha' just looove democracy?

Posted by Will Allen | June 24, 2008 12:03 PM

Who knows what we'll be making biofuels from in five or ten years. If we want to promote the best biofuels (and not just hand money to corn farmers), we should give tax credits for ANY biofuel, and let the market decide which is the cheapest.

Posted by Noah | June 24, 2008 12:06 PM

Brazil clears vast amounts of land for crop production. Their Atlantic Rainforest is almost entirely gone, and their central savanna (Cerrado) region is largely converted to crop production and grazing. The Amazon is now on its way out, although it will take a while.

While sugar cane only accounts for about 450,000 square kilometers of land at present, Brazilian land is owned by very large landowners who convert land to industrial use very efficiently, scrubbing out the local plants and animals, and developing a large population of landless workers. There are laws on the books to protect a fraction of the land, but these laws are honored only in the breach. Ask anyone who has traveled through south central Brazil.

The environmental costs of importing Brazilian ethanol include the extinction of large numbers of species from the world's most biodiverse nation. Of course, it is also true that corn cultivation in the US Midwest is done with industrial, sterile precision. We should preserve more natural land in Iowa for example. But Iowa never had the diversity of Brazil.

Posted by patrick205 | June 24, 2008 12:08 PM

It's an absolute strawman to claim that Brazil is being deforested because of ethanol made from sugar cane.

To the extent that any crop is driving deforestation in Brazil, it's soy, not sugar cane.

Posted by JRVJ | June 24, 2008 12:20 PM

JRVJ,

I think you're right...they aren't clearing the Amazon for sugar. But they are clearing the Cerrado savanna for it.

Posted by Michelle | June 24, 2008 12:39 PM

LFC - Regardless of all other arguments, why would we block importation of fuel from Brazil but ask Saudi Arabia to pump more oil? I haven't heard of Brazilian terrorists plotting to attack the U.S. As to ethanol, we need to move towards cellulosic. Corn should be a first step only.

Trying to get dumb equations of hypocrisy is a silly exercise if you lack the knowledge that:

1. Brazil is on the road to exterminating several hundred species to make ethanol from rain forest.

2. Knocking down carbon-fixing rain forests means Brazilian ethanol is a net CO2 contributor.

3. Brazil maintains high agricultural tariffs against US produce and have for a long time to encourage development of a vast, native agricultural industry. They even have tariffs on US products they can't grow in their climate, like apples..Given Brazil's market barriers, we would be foolish to let them export and have the market they deny us. (Just like the US tariffs on more efficient Euro manufactured goods that allowed us to become, until recently, an industrial nation with a middle class - the Brazilian tariffs worked very well..).

4. Yes, the next phase of "miracle ethanol" was supposed to be "easy cellulostic fuels made from this amazing switchgrass" - which either is a carbon-fixer or is consumed and recycled to make for more wildlife and fertile soil....and no doubt has some nasty surprises waiting - like there isn't that much switchgrass and it isn't that easy to convert or the 150-year long effort by Germany's top organic chemists would have panned out decades ago.
*************
Good post by Patrick205.

Posted by chris ford | June 24, 2008 12:57 PM

The NYT article was remiss in not mentioning that Obama actually distanced himself a bit from corn ethanol in his last Meet the Press interview, indicating that it's only a 'transitional' solution:

MR. RUSSERT: Would you be willing to change ethanol subsidies or suspend some of these requirements so that people are not using corn for ethanol, but using corn for food and lowering food prices.

SEN. OBAMA: Well, look, we, we've got a serious food problem around the world. We, we've got rising food prices here in the United States. In other countries we're seeing riots because of, because of the lack of food supplies. So this is something that we're going to have to deal with. There are a number of factors that go into this. Changes in climate are contributing. The, the fact that in a lot of countries, you know, we've had problems getting food supplies to poor countries because the wealthier countries have reduced their stockpiles in, in serious ways. And so there're a whole host of reasons why we're seeing problems with food supply. There's no doubt that biofuels may be contributing to it. And what I've said is, my top priority is making sure that people are able to get enough to eat. And if it turns out that we've got to make changes in our ethanol policy to help people get something to eat, then that's got to be the step we take.

But I also believe that ethanol has been a important transitional tool for us to start dealing with our long-term energy crisis ultimately. Over time we're going to shift to cellulosic ethanol, where we're not using food stocks but we're using wood chips, we're using, you know, prairie grass, we're using...

MR. RUSSERT: How long...

SEN. OBAMA: ...other stuff for this.

Posted by RC | June 24, 2008 1:00 PM

"The problems with corn ethanol are pretty well-rehearsed at this point, and obviously anyone trying to block the importation of foreign ethanol isn't actually serious about this topic as an alternative fuel and is just trying to hand out yet more money to Big Corn..."

Absolutely true.

Posted by kafka | June 24, 2008 4:55 PM

Why complain about the only part of US policy that is actually solid ecological economics? Why not complain about all the other parts that aren't?

Given the low EROI and source of the energy, corn ethanol is mostly greenwashing fossil fuels ... but it is automatic that any imported biofuel is not a sustainably renewable technology. If the US, with twice the biocapacity per capita as the world average, is importing biofuel ... and if everyone else on the planet follows our lead ... what planet will we be importing all that biofuel from?

The EU has caused enough problems with their biodiesel policy that is leading to rainforests being cut down in favor of oil palm plantations in places like Malaysia. Why should the US join in and make the problem worse?

Posted by BruceMcF | June 24, 2008 5:01 PM

Why complain about the only part of US policy that is actually solid ecological economics? Why not complain about all the other parts that aren't?

Given the low EROI and source of the energy, corn ethanol is mostly greenwashing fossil fuels ... but it is automatic that any imported biofuel is not a sustainably renewable technology. If the US, with twice the biocapacity per capita as the world average, is importing biofuel ... and if everyone else on the planet follows our lead ... what planet will we be importing all that biofuel from?

The EU has caused enough problems with their biodiesel policy that is leading to rainforests being cut down in favor of oil palm plantations in places like Malaysia. Why should the US join in and make the problem worse?

Posted by BruceMcF | June 24, 2008 5:02 PM

Might want to look into this, Matt.

From Bob Cringeley's column a couple weeks ago:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080606_005036.html

Cars are the key to U.S. energy consumption. The dominant automotive platform here, whether you drive a truck, a car, or a motorcycle, relies on gasoline-fueled internal combustion engines. That's the platform we are unlikely to change quickly. So how do we leave that platform intact and unchanged, ask nobody to significantly sacrifice, yet still achieve the noble (and Nobel) goals of lower fuel consumption, lower greenhouse gas emissions, lower pollution levels, dramatically lower oil consumption, lower cost, and lower geopolitical vulnerability for our country? There's only one way I know to accomplish this: change the fuel.

This happened to a certain extent in Brazil during the '70s and '80s by embracing ethanol. But ethanol has less energy per gallon so fuel consumption goes up and mileage goes down. Ethanol can't be shipped in pipelines also used for oil. Cars have to be modified to run on it and even then there are issues about internal corrosion. Ethanol is far from perfect. What's needed is a replacement for gasoline that looks and feels and tastes just like gas to your car but isn't made from oil. Then the platform could remain completely unchanged yet my 1966 Thunderbird (and the world) could benefit starting with the very next tankful.

There is such a fuel, developed by a husband and wife team of scientists working in Indiana in cooperation with Purdue University. This new fuel, called SwiftFuel, is right now intended for airplanes, not cars, but the lessons are the same.

Oh, and based on an average $1.42 per gallon wholesale cost for the ethanol used as its feedstock, SwiftFuel costs $1.80 per gallon to produce, meaning that it ought to be able to sell for $3 per gallon or less no matter what happens in the Middle East.

Heck of a deal.

The ethanol used to make SwiftFuel can be any type, according to Mary Rusek, president of Swift Enterprises. The pilot plant they are building in Indiana will, interestingly, make ethanol from sorghum, not corn. The Ruseks claim that sorghum, which isn't a typical U.S. crop, can produce six times the ethanol per acre of corn, turning on its head the argument that ethanol production consumes more energy than it produces. China, the third largest producer of ethanol after Brazil and the U.S., is switching entirely to sorghum for its ethanol production.

The FAA is already testing SwiftFuel with the goal of approving it for use without modification in all aircraft, leaving the platform unchanged while improving its impact on almost any scale. Hopefully by the 2010 cutoff for tetraethyl lead SwiftFuel will replace the 1.8 million gallons of 100LL aviation fuel used every day.

"But what about cars?" I asked Mary Rusek. "We don't say much about that," she replied. "The aviation fuel market is tiny and has a real need we can fulfill so everyone wants us to succeed. Cars are different and we don't want to make any enemies."

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 24, 2008 5:48 PM

BruceMcF "Given the low EROI and source of the energy, corn ethanol is mostly greenwashing fossil fuels ... but it is automatic that any imported biofuel is not a sustainably renewable technology. If the US, with twice the biocapacity per capita as the world average, is importing biofuel ... and if everyone else on the planet follows our lead ... what planet will we be importing all that biofuel from?"

Um, that doesn't make sense. Some countries import and others, you know, export. So, Brazil, which can make cheap renewable ethanol, would be an exporter and other countries would be importers. That's perfectly sustainable. In the same way that the US importing watches from Switzerland isn't unsustainable just because if everyone imported watches it would mean we'd have to be buying moon watches.

Posted by Kyle | June 24, 2008 8:51 PM

While researching the feasibility of biofuel production in Hawaii, three or four years ago, I came across a paper that addressed Brazilian sugarcane ethanol production in detail: Thermodynamics of Energy Production from Biomass, Tad W. Patzek, David Pimentel, 2005 (a 1.8mb PDF download).

The upshot: Brazilian costs were low because they weren't adding nutrients. They planted and harvested until the output dropped below a threshold of profitability, then moved on. In essence, they were mining the soil. Therefore, their current practice was not sustainable.

Posted by cmholm | June 24, 2008 10:50 PM

The previous abstract was my take after reading. The authors' own abstract puts it this way:

The average industrial sugarcane for-ethanol plantation in Brazil could be “sustainable” if the cane ethanol powered a 60%-efficient fuel cell that, we show, does not exist. With some differences (ethanol distillation vs. pellet production), this sugarcane plantation performs very similarly to the acacia plantation, and is unsustainable in conjunction with efficient internal combustion engines.

If you Google "Patzek Pimentel", you'll see that they're on a few people's shit list for papers they've written suggesting that a number of popular biofuel feed stocks are net consumers of (human-supplied) energy. Bruce McF previously used the term 'greenwashing' of fossil fuels.

As we pursue biofuels, I support the idea of "transitional fuels" as long as we are serious about "transitioning out". Otherwise, it's rapidly going to be cheaper to bribe the growers to not plant than to keep this act going.

Posted by cmholm | June 25, 2008 1:04 AM