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Fill 'er Up: A Grist special series on biofuels
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Main Dish

Fill 'er Up

A Grist special series on biofuels


04 Dec 2006
Illustration: Keri Rosebraugh
These days, ethanol is praised as the whiz-bang cure-all for our energy ills. And maybe all the sweet talk will cause this "new" fuel to forget that America dumped her for oil in the early 20th century. Oil's just so ... ew all of a sudden. We may finally be ready to return to our first love, an energy source that's been by our side in some form or another since Neolithic times. Oil was too high-maintenance and demanding, anyway.

And ethanol's a much better match ... right? Or maybe biodiesel is the one? Or vegetable oil? Hemp? Turkey guts?

For all the hype, most people barely know enough about biofuels to drop a line or two at a cocktail party. What is ethanol, and how's it different from biodiesel, and where does fry grease come in? Are there cars that can run on this stuff, and who's making them, and where can they fuel up? Who sells it, who makes money off it, and why's it such a political darling? Does "cellulosic" ethanol actually exist in the wild? What's the big deal with Brazil? And does Willie Nelson really run his bong on biodiesel?

We're here to help. Biofuels -- derived from recently living organisms or their metabolic byproducts, aka plants, animals, and poop -- are back, big time. Here's your two-week crash course.

Biofuels series index:
Explainers
Issues and implications
Profiles of proponents
Helpful resources


Uh, bio-what? Explainers

Not so fast: Issues and implications

Count me in: Profiles of proponents

Helpful resources

To add a link to this series from your website or blog, save the following image and link it to: http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/12/04/biofuels/



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Comments: (19 comments)

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Miscanthus

Miscanthus is another grass similar to switchgrass this guy..
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5702888891289509...
(Long video I don't remember where)
Thinks it is a much better option than Switchgrass I think
Just wanted to mention Miscanthus

The numbers on biofuel

Montenegro's article is useful, but misses a major point -- there is no free lunch.
If you use switchgrass, or anthing else growing to create fuel, especially if you use the residual lignin for combustion, you are depleting the soil at an incredible rate. Yields will shortly fall dramatically unless tremendous energy inputs are used to maintain soil fertility.....so you're back to square 1 or zero.

Second, when she talks of 93% more energy out than in, thats and energy return of less than 2:1. Petroleum yields 20:1, even now on the cusp of peak oil. If we restructured society to use perhaps 5% of the fuel we do now for vehicles, and none for heating or industrial processes, biofuel sources might make sense.


Biofuel

There is an alternative to Biodiesel that you have not researched. This biofueldoes not use methanol which is harmful to your engine and allows a greater mixture volume of organic matter in the fuel which produces less emissions. It is called Viesel.  

CJ Porter
biofuels GOP twist

Consumer Reports Oct 06 article entitled the ethonol myth shows how GOP math in Federal regulations allows GM to say a two-wheel drive Tahoe normally rated at 21 mpg, because it is built to run on E85, is EPA rated at 35 mpg! That report also compared actual mpg, acceleration, and emissions with E-85 and gasoline in their Tahoe. For GM buying regulations is cheaper than developing true hybrids. My 05 Prius (for which I waited 11 months) averages in the upper 40s mpg, but developing their hybrid system cost Toyota lots of dollars.

yeaperson
Slash and Burn

You make a good point -- during the period that man gobbled oil without restraint, it was also the time when the comfort and civilization of man increased the most.

Yet, no one seems to get the point.   It's not about  trying to keep a constant source of oil.  It's about making sure that the physicist driving his car to the anti-matter reactor at CERN, has enough gas to get to a meeting, so he can have an insight in 2035 about a whole new generation of energy.

If that doesn't happen, then we may have 1000 years left, or 100, but we won't have 100,000 and beyond.

You Read It Here First


The Texeme Construct

need to account for PHEVs

Biofuels can't be expected to provide more than about 10% of our fuel needs, due to limitations of sustainable agriculture in this country.

That said, you didn't even mention the most efficiently produced biofuel: renewable methane.  With a given amount of biomass, one can produce about twice the fuel (from the standpoint of energy content) in the form of methane than one can in producing ethanol.  And the leftover byproduct is valuable fertilizer, as much of the nitrogen is retained in it.  This is compared with ethanol, every drop of which much be essentially boiled from water to purify it adequately for use.

PHEVs (pluggable hybrid electric vehicles) are needed to fill in the large the gap for our country to become independent of oil.  PHEVs make efficient use of electric energy to much of our transportation energy needs.  PHEVs, plus some biofuel, plus some synthesized fuel (solar/wind electric to hydrogen to methane) can take us to the 100% replacement that is desired and will eventually be required.

Build plugin hybrids that run on renewable methane. That's all that's needed.

Nice piece Maywa

Some notes:

Making biodiesel from algae is analogous to making ethanol from cellulose. Both technologies hold great promise but neither has been proven economically feasible.

The following two sentences sound contradictory:

Over its lifetime, pure biodiesel emits about 78 percent less CO2 than conventional diesel ... They also found that biodiesel reduces greenhouse-gas emissions by 41 percent compared with fossil fuels.

Also note that this is for soy biodiesel. Palm oil biodiesel is far more CO2 neutral but about 100% more destructive of biodiversity, which makes it worse from a global warming perspective because further production of palm oil will require destroying remaining carbon sinks (the destruction of which presently accounts for about 20% of all global warming).

When Tier 2 emissions standards bring biodiesel up to par with gasoline and ethanol for air pollutants, biodiesel seems like it should be a no-brainer for green energy.

Note also that these standards will bring cars that burn regular diesel up to par with gasoline cars. In other words, one of the biggest reasons to use biodiesel (less pollution) will be mooted. That will leave energy independence and reduced CO2 as the remaining arguments. But, since we can only replace half of a percent of our diesel (as you point out) the energy independence argument is a farce and should be tossed. That leaves one argument for its use. It produces less CO2. But, is that 78% less or 41%? But again, because we can replace less than half of a percent of our diesel use, we can only reduce our CO2 production by half of that, making CO2 reduction about a quarter of one percent. These numbers make the CO2 argument rather farcical as well since we will leave 99.75% of our CO2 production from diesel untouched by using soy biodiesel.

Government mandate of soy biodiesel use is just another way to subsidize soybeans.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Ethanol the new eco-diversion

I rented and drove a GM EV1 oil-free, zero-emission, highway-capable battery electric vehicle (EV) almost seven years ago. It was fast, comfortable and practical for a visit to Los Angeles (with its hundreds of free recharging parking spots.)
Hundreds of people still drive practical EVs such as the Toyota RAV4 EV, one of the few survivors of the great major-automaker EV crushfest a few years back. Tesla is making sports EVs now; Commuter Cars sells its fast Tango EV and another practical highway EV debuts next week in Santa Monica.
Almost half of the RAV4 EV drivers charge them from home solar installations for truly zero-emission driving. All the noise about ethanol (replacing the now-debunked hydrogen hype)serves to distract Americans from the promise of EVs that can be built right now.

Breathe free, hewman1
Biofuels

The 3 pieces under Fill 'er up have some very useful information, but two significant points are overlooked:
  1. the focus is entirely on fuel, but the fuel is supposed to run something, like cars and trucks. They do not come out of thin air, but use other nonrenewable materials that, like oil, are on depletion curves. Manufacturing the vehicles also takes lots of energy.
  2. we cannot hope to replace significant amounts of fossil fuels with biofuels, NRDC notwithstanding. NRDC's scheme calls for a lot of rich folks who can afford 50+mpg cars and "smart growth" has to supplant many thousands of acres of dumb growth already on the land.
Corn ethanol is, as noted in your pieces, a nonstarter for serious inroads on oil. The entire 2005 U.S. corn crop devoted to ethanol would replace only 3% of our current gas consumption.

Howard Wilshire
biofuels Use of land vs driling in the Artic for n

In the article on the the numbers related to biofuels, the suthor calmly says that a "reasonable" chunck of land could produce108 billion gallons of biofuel.. Thats the equivalent of 4.9 million barrels per day of oil production.  But it would take 250 acres of land. A reasonable chunk!  Comparewd to the 80 million acrwes in corn today, where is all this farm land, water and fertilizer coming from.  Also it takes at best 75% of that amount of fuel to produce the end resule meaning there is at best 1.3 net barrels of biofuel produced, and at a 70% energy production of oil that's less than 1 million barreels per day of oil replaced.
We cold get that amount of ol from the use of less than a thousand acres in the Artic reserve.  Which is mnore earth friendly. 250 acres in switchgrass production with all of its fertilizer use, need for water,emissions from equipment and bio generation palnts and destruction off open grassing lands or 1,000 acres out of a 100,000 acre in Alaska.

Three things

For general interest

Human Fat ==> Biodiesel
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1559489.ec...
(liposuction wastes)

I think alot more of our coming energy sources well come as wastes from other areas
Leaves other yard clippings waste into cellulosic ethanol for example
**************
To Jimbuyer and
Hewman1 on
PHEVs/EV

When you plug something into the wall you're getting grid energy which is mostly coal these days.  Which may be good economically, and puts of the limited resources problem off for a few hundred years. But Coal now produces nearly the same CO2 as Oil. Which means you're not anything above a typical hybrid for global warming. This also doesn't consider atrocities of coal barons both to the mining environment, downsteam of it and anyone who lives in that area or works as a miner.

http://www.mountainjusticesummer.org/facts/steps.php
^More on coal mining^

The hybrid parts these cars do wonders for efficiency. Are there FFV that are Hybrid? Seams like it would be a great idea.  
*
***************
To Henry Joe (ethanol confusion)
Don't confuse conventional ethanol (Corn (us) Sugarcane (Brazil)) With cellulosic ethanol
(from any biomass often Switchgrass and Miscanthus)

The difference is modern Corn farming is heavy fertilizer dependent, while switch and miscanthus are not.

I think of conventional ethanol as good way to start getting the infrastructure built for cellulosic ethanol which should in a different category once digester enzymes are sorted out.  It also should be able to adjust to alot of other biological wastes greatly increasing it's usefulness  as waste management and fuel production in one step.

return on the fossil fuel investment

You mention that "corn-based ethanol provides 26 percent more energy than is required for its production, while cellulosic provides 80 percent more energy."

According to the New York Times (April 10, 2006), sugar cane ethanol provides 8.3 times (yes, that's 830 percent) more energy than is required for its production.

Assuming these numbers are even half accurate, it is obvious that sugar cane would be a lot better use of the world's land, fertilizers, and petrochemical inputs. Corn can only compete because of the huge subsidies it gets from the U.S. government.

drilling in the Arctic...

Thanks for your comments, Henryjoe.
  I would like to know, however, where you got the information to back the following statement: "Also it takes at best 75% of that amount of fuel to produce the end resule meaning there is at best 1.3 net barrels of biofuel produced..." According to my own research (cited in the article), cellulosic ethanol provides roughly 80% more energy than is required for its production. Your 75% figure is closer to true for corn-based ethanol---which is generally reported at  66-75% production efficiency (in other words, corn based ethanol provides 26% more energy than is required for its production).
   In the next statement, your estimates are actually more generous than the sources I found. You say, "at a 70% energy production of oil," while all the reports I came across said two-thirds or 66%.
   So, .80 X .66 X 4.9 = 2.6 million barrels of oil replaced per day. The estimated acreage of land then comes to 114 million acres, which is high, but still "reasonable" since contrary to your statements, cellulosic ethanol does NOT require intensive fertilization or watering. Switchgrass is a perennial dry grass---very little maintenance required (of course, fertilization does increase the switchgrass yields, but a recent study shows equal gains can be had with by planting diverse mixtures of native prairie grasses.)

Re: Nice Piece, Maywa

  Thanks for your feedback, Bio  (your biofeedback!). You are right, the line should read "When Tier 2 emisions standards bring DIESEL up to par..." Even with that change, however, what follows is a nonsequitor. At the time, I was under the impression that the Tier 2 change would target ALL diesels (bio and non), in effect ridding biodiesel of the soot and particulates that are now its achilles heel (am I right in assuming that this change will only affect the petroleum derivation process?).

   Also, about the discrepancy in CO2 emissions...I have gone back and reread all the statistics I cited for the article. I also read a good chunk of the Delucchi articles another reader with  your same concerns kindly referred me to. The latter are outstanding and very detailed---unfortunately it is difficult to compare his life cycle analysis to those used in other studies without a complex analytical review of our own.

  The main factor which Delucchi seems to include---and which earlier studies have omitted---are the N2O emissions from soy fields and the carbon emissions due to changes in land  use (chopping down carbon sequestering trees to plant soybeans). Combined, these factors send the greenhouse gas savings other studies report into the red in Delucchi's analysis. He reports a net increase in GHG emissions with the use of biodiesel.

  As for the inconsistency in my own biodiesel piece, I have two thoughts. The 78% figure came from the National Biodiesel Board website which states "A 1998 biodiesel lifecycle study, jointly sponsored by the US Department of Energy and the US Department of Agriculture, concluded biodiesel reduces net CO² emissions by 78 percent compared to petroleum diesel."  This is in rough agreement with information on the Union of Concerned Scientists website, which says, "Plant-based B100 resulted in over 75% less carbon dioxide emissions that conventional diesel in a full life cycle assessement." Their reference, oddly enough, appears to the same study reference by the Biodiesel board: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, An Overview of Biodiesel and Petroleum Diesel Life Cycles, May 1998 (Since NREL is affiliated with the DOE, I'm almost sure this is the same study...which of course, raises the question why the Biodiesel Board quotes 78% instead of 75%. The number on the NREL website is 75%, so I think that this is a safer statistic).

The 41% figure arrived at by the Minnesota researchers was a complete life cycle analysis, although it did not take into account (as Delucchi, I'm sure, would dispute) land use changes that would occur with large-scale implementation.

Still, this does not answer the question of the broad discrepancy between the 1998 and 2006 figures. I don't have access to the full text of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper (only the abstract is free online), where the Minnesota researcher may address deficiencies in the earlier studies. It must be that the earlier DOE study used different assumptions for inputs/outputs somewhere along the life cycle chain, but exactly where, I don't know.

Another possibility is that we are talking apples and oranges. The 78/75% number is a comparison between biodiesel and regular diesel, while the 41% number is a more nebulous comparison to "fossil fuels"---which could be regular diesel, but might also be gasoline (if they assume that biodiesel-powered vehicles would replace gas-powered ones).

With access to the assumptions used in both studies I'm  sure we could track down the culprit. Meanwhile, I think it is probably safe to assume that if science progressed rather regressed, the 2006 numbers are closer to the mark. More current research tends to find and fill in gaps in earlier methodologies. That is my hope, at least.

government mandates

I hope someone can answer this for me:

When the government mandates 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol to be used by 2012, what "happens" if that number isn't reached?

What about thermal depolymerization?

The process of changing garbage to oil, employed by Changing World Technologies, seems to me an alternative fuel source that merits mention.  Unlike some of the other fuels mentioned, scientists do not dispute its viability.  The process has a zero net-carbon impact.  And it comes with the added bonus of eliminating our environmental waste issues (i.e. trash) and decreasing methane releases (and methane's green-house burden exceeds that of carbon fuel).  I have read that it costs more than traditional oil to produce.  However, the added economic benefits -- most notably reduction of trash and landfills which pollute water supplies and spawn endless CERCLA litigation -- should be included in any assessment of the overall cost of the product.

I'd love to see more on this useful product.

Shattering the 'Royal Deception'

As one of the "well-intentioned" or not so "well-intentioned commentators" piling on the scorn, you decide which, here is yet another steaming shovel-full.

Though the crux of David Morris' well-intentioned piece "By The People, For The People," is to celebrate the viability of an autonomous biofuel industry free from the serfdom of corporate globalization, as he points out, you may in fact be able to get there from here, but where exactly do you think you are going, and is there anyway to come back home?

An initiative based on government subsidies will get us nowhere fast. Off the top of my head, keep it much more local at the start if that is where you want to end up. State initiatives that fund locally owned production and distribution facilities from coffers filled by conservation and reduction efforts across the state cutting financial inputs into the energy grid as it operates currently. Citizens that want to see the potential benefit of a local, directly democratic biofuel 'industry,' will have to rise to the occasion, cutting need and overall use thus generating excess state and local funds to then 'subsidize' state and local alternative energy projects.

The last thing we need is the feds pulling more money out of health care and such for research and development into biotechfuels and deforestation, padding the same dirty lobbyist and industry accounts already getting rich in the agribusiness, biotech and energy sectors.

Please read my recent article, "Shattering the 'Royal Decption,' online at http://www.gefreemaine.org/article.php?story=200609261613 ... ... or in print in the January 2007 issue of Acres USA magazine, for more well-intentioned debate.


Bio Fuel or Frequency Fuel ??

Whilst I have run all of my vehicles and heated my house for several years for free.I am in favor of making hydrogen with frequency.Many are working on this concept and successfully making hydrogen/oxygen gas that they are using in vehicles.With just a little time there will be available large hydrogen generators to retrofit onto turbines of coal plants. They only use electricity and water,so plant needs to be on the water for best results.Then electric vehicles would be the norm.There is a power plant in europe that uses a hy-gen for their small local utility.

Earth Shaman
Energy

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