Hi all,
Well I'm back home from my desert walkabout and hard at work again. I've been focusing on twitter as a tool to get my message out, and with 1150 followers I think I'm making inroads. I've also linked my twitter account, www.twitter.com/helpstopethanol, to this blog. You can see my five most recent updates a little lower on the right side of the screen.
I read today on twitter about a group called Camfed (http://www.camfed.org/) whose goal is to educate girls in Africa. Did you know that an educated African woman has, on average, two fewer children than an uneducated one? With the planet's population predicted to grow from 6.5B to 9.5B in the next 50 years, is this not the sort of thing we should be focusing on for the sake of people and of the environment?
I also read that a First Energy electric generating facility in Ohio is in the process of switching from burning coal (a hydrocarbon) to burning wood chips and corn (hydrocarbons). This will enable them to get carbon credits. Is this a desirable outcome? Or is it just surreal?
You know that cap & trade and carbon markets, in addition to vast subsidies for renewable energy, are looming large on the American and international agendas. Here's my pitch: We need to be wary of large scale solutions because they don't always generate the desired behaviour and they can be very hard to reverse. And of course, because their impact is far-reaching. We're not talking about retrofitting McDonald's cash registers here.
No one is denying that certain climate patterns are changing, and whether we fully understand what's happening or not, who can argue against less polluting technologies? But for goodness sake lets relax about tipping points and let the scientists do their work. Tremendous progress is being made on electric cars, for example. The world is not going to end tomorrow.
And while the scientists are doing their jobs, why don't the rest of us work on making the lives of Africans and everyone else better by helping those young girls get an education?
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10 comments:
George,
I think the biggest flaw in the way people are thinking about ethanol is they assume that the corn gets used up when you make ethanol, leaving less food for humans.
Most of the corn grown in the US is used as cattle feed, which wastes most of the starch. Cattle can digest the corn protein, but not the starch.
The yeast don't eat the protein, which leaves it for the cows to eat after the ethanol has been made. The protein available for the cows actually goes up because the cows can eat the dead yeast too.
Assuming you are going to feed the corn to cows, which most corn grown in the US is, there is no harm in feeding the starch to yeast and making ethanol first.
The cows still get the protein, which is all they can digest anyway.
The yeast get the starch and later become an additional protein source for the cows.
I'm not going to argue that we SHOULD be growing corn, or feeding it to cattle, or eating red meat, or factory farming cattle, that there should be mandated levels of use, or that ethanol should/could provide 100% or even 10% of our energy needs.
But given that we ARE growing corn and feeding it to cattle in feedlots, it is a waste of resources to insist that the starch be wasted instead of converted to ethanol.
That is like insisting that used grease from restaraunts not be made into biodiesel because there isn't enough used oil for everyone and we shouldn't eat fried food.
The starch in corn that is fed to cattle is being wasted if it isn't converted into ethanol.
I'm not saying that everyone involved in ethanol politically is an angel.
What I am saying is that there is a place for ethanol, biodiesel, biogas, wind, solar, wave power, geothermal and other otherwise wasted sources of energy in our future.
No one source needs to be 100% of the solution and we are probably better off if we combine ten different sources to meet our needs anyway.
Patrick Kilhoffer,
This is an interesting perspective and not one I have heard before. It would be helpful if you could reply with some reference sites that make it clear that non-cellulose-based corn ethanol is only/primarily being produced from what would otherwise be waste starch? Thank you.
I appreciate your comment and I am not arguing against finding feasible uses for residual material from various processes. What I'm trying to do is point out how an imminent, artificially imposed large scale solution is already motivating behaviour that most people would view as unintended and undesirable.
Has First Energy determined where the corn and wood chips will come from to feed their Ohio plant? Will there be enough residual corn husks or wood chips to feed all of the electric generating facilities that make the switch to biomass in order to get carbon credits? Or will it only be after they've made the switch that we are faced with an unpalatable choice: pick the planet clean or run out of electricity? Surely the PhDs in Agriculture and Energy have done the math. Can they talk freely to the media about their research? Are they subject to lobbying pressure?
It is in the public interest that someone be asking asking these questions.
There is a reason why the industrial revolution that started in northern England 300 years ago could not have happened without coal.
There was simply not enough wood.
Anon,
There aren't any magical cows that digest corn starch, if that is what you are asking. If the corn is being fed to cows, which the last number I saw was that 87% of US corn production is being fed to either beef or dairy cattle. So for 87% of the corn crop anyway if you don't use the starch to make ethanol before feeding the protein to the cows, then the starch is being wasted. Worse than wasted actually, since the yeast convert some of that starch that would have been wasted into more yeast, which the cows can digest. Assuming you have the same number of cows, it actually REDUCES the demand for corn by providing the dead yeast as an alternative source of protein.
As for the sources, pretty much every article I have ever read says the same thing. I grew up on a farm so maybe it's easier to understand what is happening, but I've never read any article that claimed yeast ate the protein or anything other than the starch, and I've never read any article that claimed the cows digest the starch or anything other than the protein.
People who don't understand how ethanol is made assume that the corn gets used up as if it were being burned in a fire. In reality, it's just using a resource that would have been wasted.
George,
These plants cost a lot of money. I suspect someone there owns a calculator. Not trying to be a jerk, just saying that's a really basic concept to ensure you have the resources to execute a plan before you do it.
Biomass is light and fluffy, compared to gasoline or coal. You don't plan to use it unless you have a local source that will meet your needs. Even ethanol plants plan to use corn that is produced locally to reduce shipping costs and biomass is has a lower energy density than corn does.
Each plant that burns biomass will line up it's own sources. Might be switchgrass in some places, corn stover in others, coconut husks in others.
Yes, people will make mistakes from time to time. They might plan to use corn stover and soybeans suddenly become much more profitable so no one near them grows corn anymore. It happens. But letting something go to waste just because you can't know for a fact that it will be there forever isn't a good idea either.
Can you imagine not recycling aluminum cans because the soda industry MIGHT switch to all plastic bottles some day?
Sorry, Patrick, I don't buy it. "Somebody" did the math on subprime mortgages and all their offshoots, and convinced everyone they were a good idea too. Government money and artificial carbon accounting are impacting the decision. I am not as trusting as you.
The plant makes enough energy to heat 190,000 homes. How much biomass does that take, and what impact is it going to have on natural ecosystems? The environment belongs to everyone, and First Energy's needs to convince not only itself and the EPA, but all of us that this project is in the public interest.
I have a very hard time seeing how you can save the environment by destroying nature, and there are many scientists that agree with me.
George,
This isn't happening instantly. Plants will add biomass to their inputs over a period of years. One plant here or there might add biomass over a period of a month or so, but the industry in total will move much more slowly. If there are fewer biomass sources available over time, those sources will become more valuable until they cost more than the alternatives and a balance will be reached long before the planet is "picked clean".
There are major limitations to how far you can ship biomass profitably and what forms of biomass can be gathered in large amounts at a reasonable cost.
These restrictions will automatically limit the volume of biomass that gets used.
George and Anon,
There is a good basic book on understanding ethanol history, production issues and has a good explanation about various possible inputs, etc. Its a big book, lots of diverse content. Its got an odd title, Ethanol can be a gas, by David Blume. I think its available on Amazon.com. Its under $100 and is worth the money. Your local library may be able to order it as well.
It will help you to better understand the factors involved in a lot of the issues you are concerned about.
The average person uses 100W of food power and 2300W of fuel power per day. Thus it would take 23 times the current agricultural capacity of the earth to meet all of our fuel needs from plants.
To put it another way, meeting just 5% of our needs through plants while leaving natural lands untouched would mean turning over all agricultural land to fuel.
I will leave it to the readers to decide if they see a danger of famine or ecological collapse in any of this, and if this is an endeavour they want financed by their tax dollars.
Mr. Kilhoffer, you are welcome to have the last word.
George,
Well to start, no one is suggesting that biomass should be 100% of our fuel usage. Also, just because we don't eat a plant, doesn't mean we can't use it as fuel. Most of the best fuel options come from plants you don't eat anyway.
Your math would be correct if we chose to burn all our food. Most folks eat their food. Hopefully in the future we will use more of the plants we don't eat and are currently wasted.
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