GM and ethanol

Just because General Motors calls it green doesn't mean it is.

Posted by David Roberts at 12:38 AM on 08 Jan 2006

Read more about: energy | biofuels | ethanol | business

Joel Makower reports that General Motors will lead a joint demonstration project "to learn more about consumer awareness and acceptance of E85 as a motor vehicle fuel by demonstrating its use in GM's flexible-fuel vehicles."

The California Department of Transportation will use some flex-fuel vehicles and work with Chevron Technology Ventures to make sure there are filling stations that offer E85 (gas w/ 85% ethanol). A company called Pacific Ethanol will provide the liquid fuel. Filling stations that sell E85 will be receiving "a lucrative federal tax credit."

Joel passes rather lightly over the central problem with biofuels, a problem advocates have never satisfactorily resolved. We're always told that biomass for ethanol could come from crop waste, fryer grease, turkeys, or what have you, but what it inevitably will be made from is whatever's cheapest.

Right now it's cheapest to use corn, sugarcane, soybeans, and palm oil -- heavily-subsidized agribusiness products. Joel holds Brazil up as a model, boasting that it just became a net exporter of sugarcane ethanol. But right there in Brazil rainforests are being plowed down to plant crops, making carbon sinks into carbon sieves.

If there were more confident predictions and fewer just-so stories about how genuinely renewable sources of ethanol will become cheaper than biodiversity-destroying, CO2-increasing agricultural crops, I would feel more comfortable biofuel boosting.

I'm not ready to walk blindly into this future, holding General Motors' hand for comfort.

For story: GM and ethanol
8 Comments | Post a Comment

I drive an electric motorcycle.

You can see it here. It gets 30 miles per charge and goes 30 miles per hour.

http://www.hoflink.com/~dbaer/viento.jpg

by maximus at 6:45 AM on 08 Jan 2006

What a waste.

Biofuels (from anything but the waste stream or possibly algae grown in solar collectors)are a titanic waste of scarce capital that ought to be going into electric cars powered by wind, water, and solar power.

As well as a waste of the natural world in the form of agribiz monocrop genetically modified pesticide herbicide eco-suicide.

Biofuels still require combustion to yield useful energy. And infernal combustion vehicles are inherently inefficient.

In a world at war over oil, it is imperative that a viable alternative be produced.

That alternative is electric battery power, charged up with green power. These cars are being kept off the market by the present capital allocation monopoly that favors infernal combustion at all costs.

The agribizz biofuel movement is a scam. It uses oil, coal, and nuclear power to produce huge government subsidies for nothing but a feel good solution.

Nuclear power (from the sun) charging battery powered vehicles through wind, water, and solar power systems is the safe, economical alternative that is needed to end oil wars and global climate disaster.

And since the cost of electric transportation is about one dollar for an equivalent amount of power provided by one gallon of oil or biofuel energy, merely removing the subsidies from fossil fuels and nuclear and applying even a fraction of that wasted capital to kick start this green electric revolution, will have 5 major problem solving effects.

Jobs. Manufacturing jobs will return along with the buildout of green energy. Millions of electric cars, heat pumps, solar and wind installations, and electric vehicles woll need to be manufactured.
Global climate change from CO2 greenhouse gas due to fossil fuel combustion will be halted. The costs in terms of storm damage and lost economic growth may be the biggest hidden expense of ALL from fossil fuelishness. 100's of trillions, Katrina's costs are rumored at 2 trillion now?
The US economy will boom without the endless oil wars and ever increasing oil prices draining effect. Stable energy prices for decades to come will dispell fear of fear itself and restore investor, consumer, and business confidence. Fear of terror over oil has a huge negative effect on confidence in the economy.
Standard of living. Having ones own solar panels, wind generator, and electric car will be like owning ones own home instead of renting. Buying increasingly expensive energy from corporate monopolists is like renting and having the rent double every few years, natural gas, heating oil,gasloine, and diesel all doubled in recent years.

And that "rent" money is GONE! Money invested in solar, wind, and electric vehicles just keeps on yielding higher and higher dividends over the years, restoring the standard of living lost to job outsourcing and soaring transportation and heating and cooling costs.

5. Quality of life. All life on planet earth will benefit from an end to the devestation that fossil and nuclear power wreak upon nature. We are all a part of the natural world, as inseparable as our individual breath from the breath of mother earth.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 8:21 AM on 08 Jan 2006

Biodiesel Versus The Orangutan

Biodiesel can come from environmentally disastrous sources, including palm oil. In Malaysia, the development of oil-palm plantations has been responsible for 87 per cent of deforestation between 1985 and 2000. The pace of forest destruction has accelerated in recent years. Professor Birute Galdikas believes that "The orang-utan is endangered because of habitat loss. Today the greatest threat to orang-utan habitat is the continued expansion of oil-palm plantations. Palm oil is the greatest enemy of orang-utan and their continued survival in the wild."

Here are some sources of further information:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18825265.400&feedId=online-news_rss20

http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/biodiversity/case_studies/palm_oil/

http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/oil_for_ape_summary.pdf

by rodneylbrownjr at 1:36 PM on 08 Jan 2006

Great links there Rodney,

Especially that last one.

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

by biodiversivist at 8:16 PM on 08 Jan 2006

ethanol fuel

On the order of 500 million acres may be available for all crops in the whole United States, including current and potential farmlands. Through 2000, the United States was burning more than 128 billion gallons of gasoline annually. Trying to substitute corn-derived ethanol for it all would require dedicating nearly 2.5 billion acres of farmland to corn crops--5 times more land than is now under agricultural production for all purposes. A much more optimistic, but still grossly unrealistic, estimate is 300 to 500 million acres of grassland and forests under cultivation for ethanol to supplant our entire current gasoline consumption, not allowing for growth. Even adding just 10 percent ethanol to gasoline, the farmland needed for growing it would amount to 250 million acres, more than twice the size of California.

Howard Wilshire

by howardgw at 10:33 AM on 10 Jan 2006

ethanol

Getting ethanol from corn doesn't make any sense. You can make ethanol from any number of materials. We only make ethanol from corn now to 'help' the corn farmers. When we need the corn for other purposes, we can easily make ethanol from other materials. Used newspaper makes excellent ethanol--my husband described a process to do so twenty years ago, but nobody was listening. And it looks as if no one is listening now.

Martha Bartter

by mbartter at 11:27 AM on 10 Jan 2006

Algae as a source of biofuel! No agribizz.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0111/p01s03-sten.html

"After the CO2 is soaked up like a sponge, the algae is harvested daily. From that harvest, a combustible vegetable oil is squeezed out: biodiesel for automobiles. Berzin hands a visitor two vials - one with algal biodiesel, a clear, slightly yellowish liquid, the other with the dried green flakes that remained. Even that dried remnant can be further reprocessed to create ethanol, also used for transportation."

"One key is selecting an algae with a high oil density - about 50 percent of its weight. Because this kind of algae also grows so fast, it can produce 15,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre. Just 60 gallons are produced from soybeans, which along with corn are the major biodiesel crops today."

And then the remainder of the algae mash can be converted into methane to entrap CO2. Synchronicity, like this....

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/1/10/1646023.html

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 8:19 PM on 10 Jan 2006

Oil from Algae

Another site that provides inputs on biodiesel from algae is Oilgae.com - http://www.oilgae.com - Oil from Algae!

Hope this helps

Vic

by ecacofonix at 3:45 AM on 03 Jun 2006

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