Potatoe Blossoms |
Mike's Garden Blog
Questions, Answers, Musings about gardening. |
|
||||
|
Home 
 Stumble It!
Save This Page
| Energy Production, Consumption, and You, or Me October 12, 2007 09:42:47 Corn for ethanol is mostly a waste of time, energy, and land. If we want to get serious about making fuel for engines we should be looking at using cellulose rather than grain. The difference is large. We can receive about 8 times more energy per acre than corn. The continued development of corn for ethanol production is just about a dead end. At the current rate using corn for ethanol production will replace about 3.7% of imported oil by the year 2017. That is according the The U.S. Department of Agriculture, an agency that is not necessarily prone to trashing ehtanol production and agriculture in general. So, there is ethanol being produced right now and is being burned in vehicles all over the country. For years there has been 10% alcohol added to gasoline. I am not even sure why that got started. But, just in last year I have noticed along highways in the Midwest signs noting the E85 is available at such and such gas station at the next exit. E85 is 85% alcohol and can only be put in a vehicle that is set up to burn fuel with that much alcohol. There are vehicles available called Flex Fuel vehicles that will burn this stuff. It was recently in the news here that the State of Missouri has purchased hundreds of the these vechicles for state use. The sad thing was they were paying almost the same price per gallon for E85 as gasoline but their mileage was down about 30% because ethanol simply does not have as much energy per gallon as gasoline. So it was said the state was actually wasting money by purchasing the vehicles and using E85. Another article pointed out the State of California had purchased hundreds if not thousands of E85 burning vehicles but there was practically no where to buy E85 in the state. So this fleet of E85 vehicles is using regular gasoline. It seems most pumps selling E85 are in the Midwest where the production of ethanol is underway. In fact, ethanol production is underway in such a way here that all kinds of groups, communities, and entrepreneurs are trying to put up an ethanol production facility and get on the gravy train. Aside from selling the finished product the federal government will give them more than 50 cents for every gallon of ethanol they produce. Why is there not more ethanol available at the pumps at gas stations. Well guess, whose product is being sold at the gas stations? That's right, the oil companies market their product at the gas station and ethanol is just competition. Competition is something companies really do not like although they will probably espouse all the benefits of the free market system but implied in that philosophy is a free market as long as controlled by oil companies. Are they required to put in E85 pumps at their stations? No. Are they going to do so? Probably not until they are required to by law. I would guess this notion of little distilleries, and that is what an ethanol plant actually is, popping up here and there producing fuel for vehicles to burn must be somewhat of a bad dream for a company that has controlled a commodity so long they probably have the delusion they are entitled to our hard earned dollars. It kind of takes them out of the loop so to speak. There is one school of thought about ethanol production that takes things down to a very local level. Materials are produced locally, turned into fuel locally, and consumed locally. It is a very good idea that requires community effort, cooperation, and support. It also is a sea change in how society is stuctured. Actually, the real question, in my opinion, is not how do we keep the cars going but is there an alternative to keeping the cars going? More on this later. Comment on this article |