H02248
Headlines : EnvironmentThe Future of Ethanol
In Brazil, by law, all gasoline contains a minimum of 25 percent alcohol. Yet ethanol is so popular it actually accounts for 40 percent of all vehicle fuel. Its stunning success with ethanol has encouraged Brazil to begin displacing diesel fuel with vegetable oils from its vast soybean crop. Within 15 years it expects to substitute biodiesel for 20 percent of its conventional diesel.
[Posted By Ryz]Republished from Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
Want to see the potential of biofuels? Visit Brazil, as I did a few weeks ago.
In Brazil, by law, all gasoline contains a minimum of 25 percent alcohol. Yet ethanol is so popular it actually accounts for 40 percent of all vehicle fuel.
By 2007, 100 percent of all new Brazilian cars may be able to run on 100 percent ethanol. Brazilian sugar-cane-fed biorefineries will be capable of producing sufficient ethanol to allow the entire fleet, new and old cars alike, to do so.
In Brazil, ethanol is now being used in aviation. Small planes, like crop dusters, are switching to ethanol because it is a superior fuel and is more widely available, even in remote parts of the country, than conventional aviation fuel.
Its stunning success with ethanol has encouraged Brazil to begin displacing diesel fuel with vegetable oils from its vast soybean crop. Within 15 years it expects to substitute biodiesel for 20 percent of its conventional diesel.
One more detail. Back in the mid 1990s, Brazil ended its ethanol subsidies. Nevertheless, with world oil prices hovering around $55 a barrel, the price of ethanol today is only half that of gasoline. Since its inception, Brazil’s ethanol program has displaced imported oil…
Posted by Ryz
Born and raised in The Netherlands and living in Canada since 2000. Spent most of his professional career in the IT industry for corporations. Now self-employed. Loves music, graphics, science, politics and various other things that happen to pass in...
Liquid biofuels can’t solve the energy problem and increase environmental degradation and the climate change impetus on this planet already overburdened by the industrial agricultural production of sufficient food for its human population.
As a U.S. national policy, the interest in and subsidization of ethanol and the ethanol production infrastructure as a replacement for gasoline in an E-85 mix is to extend the utility of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by utilizing grain reserves as well in the event of a national emergency that limits or ends imports of oil to the United States.
Sometimes no Peace
good to see you back Ryz
I don’t think ryz is back. This is an old headline.
From the article…
Which is produced on marginal agricultural land formerly covered with tropical and subtropical forest. Soybean diesel is just as dumb as corn ethanol – if not more. And as for sugarcane, that’s slightly better, but it’s still grown on forest land, and it still requires tons of fertilizer and herbicide to grow. Brazil’s biofuel programs are greenwashed, but they’re not very green. If anything, it displaces the ecological impact of CO2 emissions into local ecological damage, which is sort of a six-on-one-hand, half-a-dozen-on-the-other deal.
From GW…
This is accurate – for crop-derived biofuels, like that goddamned corn ethanol that the corn lobby is foisting on us. Read an interesting article about how much topsoil is lost due to industrial agriculture per year – it’s shocking. Modern industrial agriculture is exceedingly destructive to soil nutrient dynamics.
However, I see a lot more of a future for the still-nascent algae-derived biodiesel industry and in biofuel production from cellulosic biomass. I heard a dude a few weeks ago talking about using tamarisk biomass (currently choking every major Western river and riparian area) to create cellulosic ethanol – which would be pretty fuckin’ sweet.
Now that is some interesting shit, and I’d never considered that angle.
There were 110 ethanol refineries in operation in the United States at the end of 2006, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. Many were being expanded, and another 73 were under construction. When these projects are completed, by the end of 2008, the United States’ ethanol production capacity will reach an estimated 11.4 billion gallons per year.
~New York Times
27% of the current (2007) U.S. corn crop is planned to be utilized for the production of ethanol.
Peace?
While poor central Americans pay three times the price they’re used to for tortillas.
While poor central Americans pay three times the price they’re used to for tortillas.
And NAFTA has flooded Mexico with subsidized U.S. crops, making farming south of the border much less secure.
450 lbs. of corn to make 25 gallons of ethanol that’ll only go 2/3’s of the distance of the same amount of gasoline.
The same quantity of corn has sufficient calories to feed an adult human being for an entire year.
Peace,
Brazil started looking for alternitive energys back in the seventy’s after the oil embargo. And it’s not just ethanol it’s every thing at their disposal to free themselves from being servants of OPEC and the OIL COMPANY’S. Brazil had enough common sense in the 70’s to act. President Jimmy Carter tried But Reagan put a stop to that as soon as he took office. Now why do you think Reagan did that. To protect the oil company’s, not the american people. And because of it oil is a threat to our national security. That’s why were in Iraq, and americans are dying, to protect the oil co. profits. The auto industry was forced to produce an electric car 15 years ago in calif. It was so popular the OIL COMPANYS, THE AUTO INDUSTRY AND GUESS WHO THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE sued CALIF IN FEDERAL court to end the production of the electric car, and won. If we were all driving electric cars we wouldn’t need foreign oil. But then we wouldn’t need the big oil company’s either. The U.S. government doesn’t want us to be free of dependent on oil. It would hurt the oil company’s, and at the same time help all americans. All the monies spent on oil and gas is astrinomical, and there have been alternitives for years, the monies saved could be spent on things like health care food clothing housing and the polution and air quality all would benifit, not to metion our quality of life. But the U.S. government’s not concerned about anything else other than protecting the oil company’s rather then you, the AMERICAN CITIZEN. Mike
GM’s Live Green Go Yellow Campaign
Ethanol is a dead ender.