Bio-fuels

[welsh]

Sorry this is a long post- but its not really available on the regular economist.com site-


Brazil played with an ethenol fuel for awhile. My wife had a car that ran on alcohol-gas and it sucked.

Is this a good idea?

Biofuels

Stirrings in the corn fields

May 12th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Diesel fuel made from oilseeds, petrol replaced by ethanol made from corn, sugar or grain—or even straw. They're here and are starting to change energy markets

AMERICAN output of maize-based ethanol is rising by 30% a year. Brazil, long the world leader, is pushing ahead as fast as the sugar crop from which its ethanol is made will allow. China, though late to start, has already built the world's biggest ethanol plant, and plans another as big. Germany, the big producer of biodiesel, is raising output 40-50% a year. France aims to triple output of the two fuels together by 2007. Even in backward Britain a smallish biodiesel plant has just come on stream, and another as big as Europe's biggest is being built. And after long research a Canadian firm has plans for a full-scale ethanol plant that will replace today's grain or sugar feedstock with straw. Output is still tiny compared with that of mineral fuels. But the day of the biofuel has arrived.

Which might be a good thing in another way- more protection of the environment to allow for the agriculture necessary to produce bio-fuels?

The reason is simple. Forget greenery or energy security, the grounds on which governments justify subsidising biofuels. Just take the past year's soaring price of mineral fuels, subtract the biofuel subsidy, and the answer is plain: for the user, biofuels are currently cheaper. Indeed, in America's corn (maize) states, locally produced ethanol is close to being competitive even without subsidy; imported Brazilian ethanol could have been so long ago, had not a federal tax credit for ethanol, originally 54 cents per American gallon, been carefully balanced by a 54 cent tariff.

Though production methods are rapidly evolving, the new fuels are new only in their rampant growth. An engine that Rudolf Diesel showed at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris ran on peanut oil, and biodiesel has been in small-scale use here and there since the 1930s. You can make it from animal fats, oilseeds, used cooking oil, sugar, grain and more. Indeed, you can feed your diesel vehicle with cooking oil from the supermarket and it will run, until (as they will) the filters gunge up. As for ethanol, Henry Ford was an enthusiast for crop-based ethanol in the 1920s.

If there was so much interest in this nearly a century ago, what the fuck happened?

Modern uses were sparked by the oil shock of 1973. Brazil, rich in sugar-cane but not oil, led the way, building cars adapted to burn pure ethanol until the late 1980s, when sliding oil prices and rising sugar prices made sugar a more profitable end-use for the cane growers and the subsidy for ethanol too costly for the state. In 1989-90 ethanol pumps began to run dry, and sales of these cars collapsed.

Again, those cars kind of sucked. But then again these were first models so we shouldn't expect great results.

blah blah blah.....
The oil companies were originally far from happy to see “their” filling stations openly selling a rival fuel. They are still not eager. But pro-ethanol pressure has grown. America's environmentalists favour it (except the purists who object, truly enough, that the real “green” issue there is not the fuel but the cars that guzzle it). And the law, in some areas, is with them. Anti-smog rules require a clean-burn additive to petrol, and one formerly favoured, known as MTBE, turned out to have nasty properties, and is being phased out. Ethanol—as such, or used roughly half and half with another chemical in a compound known as ETBE—can do the job.

So why wasn't this done earlier- oil companies are big campaign contributors? So now it's corn vs oil?

There is pressure too from the corn-growers, gleefully envisaging a huge new market; and hence from their politicians. The market is big already: of America's 255m tonnes of maize last year, 30m went into ethanol. ....

blah blah blah ....................
As in America, there is also political pressure, though the politics, so far, is more that of the green lobby than the farmers. The European Union, unlike the United States, has ratified the Kyoto treaty on emissions and the environment, and the EU authorities in 2003 issued indicative targets for translation into national law: 2% of motor-fuel consumption should be biofuel by 2005, and 5.75% by 2010.

Many of the 25 EU governments have thumbed their noses at Brussels. In February, the European Commission sent warnings to 19 for failing to put their targets into law; and later to nine for not even fixing targets. Even of those that have, many picked figures below the EU's hopes. The politics sounds like a typical EU non-event.

In fact, not so: EU governments dislike being tied down by Brussels, but few will mind tying down their own citizens, or at least cajoling them with tax breaks. And there is national pressure for that, from committed greens below and ministers eager to look green above. Even Britain's government this year extended its biodiesel subsidy to bioethanol too. France is to enlarge the quotas of biofuel output that qualify for subsidy.

Yet in the end it is the market—producers, intermediaries and consumers—that will decide. And there are already signs that, given the price signals (and the supply of raw materials) they may in time leave governments behind.

THe article is much longer- if you want to check it out I think you can register for free on the economist.com web site.

What do you think- bio-fuels are the wave of the future or not? If so what can be the benefits and costs?

 

[calculon000]

Oil will run out eventually, but good luck finding enough farmland to grow enough corn needed to replace oil as the primary source for fuel.

 

[DJ Slamák]

So why wasn't this done earlier- oil companies are big campaign contributors? So now it's corn vs oil?

[tinfoilhat]Maybe they realise oil probably won't last much longer, so they're preparing for the future. I could imagine it as a viable scheme for oil companies to milk the oil cash cow for what it's worth, then start selling these new fuels. Seems to me they'd maximise profits without losing market share that way.[/tinfoilhat]

 

[welsh]

Perhaps what the oil companies need is incentive to develop bio-fuels. Considering the large marketing and administrative power of the major oil companies- what they would need is incentive to begin looking at alternative sources.

The fact that oil will eventually disappear should do it. Plus agriculturally derived bio-fuels are ideally sustainable.

 

[King of Creation]

These kids at my school converted one of the shuttle buses to run on cooking oil or something. What we should do is create an engine that runs on garbage, a la Back to the Future.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

The fact that oil will eventually disappear should do it. Plus agriculturally derived bio-fuels are ideally sustainable.

'cept there isn't enough arable land on Earth for that, at least not at present consumption rates (which are only going to increase as time passes).

Face it, we're doomed.

 

[Ashmo]

Actually the problem is that alternative fuel research and development is more of a farce to show off how good natured the car houses are.
There have been quite some improvements in the development of engines that run on "bio oil" or (solar gained) electricity, but right now they don't have a reason to switch their focus from fossile fuels over to less harmful methods.

Same reason engines are generally still not as fuel efficient as they could be.
Apart from the odd fact that Americans (in particular) seem to prefer low-efficient cars over the more economical ones (then again, I haven't seen that many fuel efficient SUVs) -- but that's a different problem, I guess.

 

[Roshambo]

Speaking of the SUVs these cattle buy en masse, I have witnessed a few who apparently believed that "SUV = something you can go straight from year-round summer street, straight into snow with those street tires, without changing tires or putting on chains".

BWAHAHAHAHA!! Idiots, yes.