Is It Finally Game Over for Ethanol? | Hacker News Reader

Is It Finally Game Over for Ethanol?

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53 pointsDiabloD355 comments

There are billboards up across Michigan advertising "Save $1/gal, look for the yellow hose". Doesn't say a thing about the yellow hose being ethanol. My grandparents decided to take this opportunity to save $1/gal and had to have their fuel lines flushed because their car doesn't run on ethanol. It's like saying "get better mileage, switch [your gasoline engine] to diesel!"

Ethanol can't go away fast enough. It's like 3D TVs. All the companies are pushing it but it's not something the consumer ever wanted.

Apparently Isobutanol is supposed to be a better biofuel:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isobutanol

This is independent of the issue of weather we should use biofuels in the first place.

Ethanol cannot go away fast enough for my liking. Economic issues aside, it is hell on motorcycles. Many modern bikes use lightweight polymer fuel tanks which turn out to deform and leak after long term exposure to high ethanol gas, especially when many station owners tend to cut gas with slightly more ethanol than is allowed or labeled. Not to mention the engines don't run as well; most bikes are made in Japan or Europe and aren't engineered around our peculiar corn fetish.

I've had two gas tanks warp and need replacement and I am going to be sending my new motorcycle's tank off to be treated and coated on the interior before I take delivery and it sees a single drop of ethanol mixed fuel.

Its even more hell on small lawn equipment that continue to use priming bulbs, and flexible fuel hoses. Pretty much the only solution is to run the $10 no ethanol gas for small engines, or drain them after every use.

Some of the gas I once bought in San Diego melted the fuel line in my chainsaw immediately. It didn't even manage to start before the little hose collapsed and melted.

FWIW, you can still buy ethanol free gas at certain pumps at marinas/boat yards. Ethanol is hydroscopic, so adding it in high concentrations will usually absorb too much water out of boat gas tanks, since boat gas tanks virtually all have some water in them.

I'm not a big fan of the subsidies given out to promote ethanol production, but to be fair, this article does nothing to mention the tens of billions of dollars given out to promote oil and gas exploration. Oil and gas have had a 100 year head start in developing production technology thanks to federal subsidies. To really get an understanding of how these two energy sources compare, all subsidies for all energy sources need to be accounted for.

At least oil and gas has a massively better return on the energy invested. A gallon of ethanol barely contains more energy than it takes to produce it. Oil is so much better that, for example, tar sands production is criticized because it only returns something like 4x the energy required for production. Questions of finances and subsidies are secondary to this.

I'm no fan of oil either, but ethanol is clearly not the answer.

Absolutely true, for corn ethanol in the Midwest, today. Sugar cane ethanol coming out of Brazil has something to the effect of a 10x return on energy spent to produce it (better than oil). I'm from the Midwest, have an ag background, and have been very skeptical of the idea of corn ethanol as an alternative fuel source ever since it became big in 2006/2007 (for the reason you mention, ROE).

What I hadn't thought about before though, is the fact that 100 years of compounding subsidies in oil and gas have allowed for massive technology investment which has improved the ROE for petroleum based energy sources over that timeframe. The question then becomes, if we could subsidize ethanol production for the next 100 years to spur R&D in the area, what kind of ROE would we be getting 100 years from now? Or, alternatively, what kind of ROE did gas get when it was first discovered as a new energy source?

You're right that it's not ethanol in general, just corn ethanol, and by extension American-produced ethanol. Which is the topic here, but it's certainly true that it's not a condemnation of ethanol in general.

Ultimately, as far as picking technologies goes, the history of oil doesn't matter. It's interesting for sure, but they're a sunk cost that we get whether we want them or not. If oil is better than ethanol right now, either with no subsidies or with equivalent subsidies, then we should stick with oil. The fact that oil got subsidies in the past doesn't change that.

Of course, sticking with oil is a bad idea in the long run, but the same basic idea applies to comparing ethanol with other sorts of renewable energy, and electric cars and such. Would we be better off putting those subsidies into nuclear, wind, solar, electric cars, etc., rather than ethanol? I think so.

I wonder what it is for Methane Hydrate...Wikipedia says 10X for natural gas, but drilling on the ocean floor has to cost more.

With 80%+ of corn grown in the US being from Monsanto seeds, you can bet that there is going to be a lot of push back against this. Why are taxpayers subsidizing an already profitable industry? How many millions does Monsanto spend on lobbying every year?

http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/can-we-feed-our-world-without-mon...

> With 80%+ of corn grown in the US being from Monsanto seeds

As a grower of corn, I find that pretty hard to believe. Pioneer, a DuPont company, has a presence that is as large as Dekalb, Monsanto's brand. There are also several more smaller players. A quick search of my own suggests that Dekalb and Pioneer own 70% of the market together[1], which seems more realistic based on my experiences of buying corn seed.

[1] http://www.indystar.com/story/money/2013/10/28/agreliant-cor...

> How many millions does Monsanto spend on lobbying every year?

Between 3 and 9 (most years closer to 3), a lot less than Google has spent over the past few years[1][2].

[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00000005...

[2] https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00002200...

I doubt it describes the current situation, but it is presumably sensible to subsidize a profitable agricultural industry if the cost of the subsidy is lower than the cost of occasional bust years (and any subsequent food shortages).

(The US market could be of sufficient size and sophistication where it would never actually happen, but that is hard to determine in the abstract)

This Monsanto is evil stuff is our generations "contrails" conspiracy theories.

The audacity of designing a better corn seed knows no bounds!

Designing better corn isn't the reason people have issues with Monsanto.

In the tech world and scientific communities, no. We care about IP abuses, if anything--many, many studies have shown that the products are safe to eat, but Montanto's behavior is occasionally despicable.

The rest of the country, though? The hippie, New Age folks that make up a frighteningly large segment of the population? GMOs are "unnatural Frankenfoods" destroying our DNA and whatnot.

My friend group is definitely skewed toward the hippie spectrum, so I may me over-estimating their numbers, but only 37% of Americans say GMOs are safe to eat[1]. I don't know what percent of those know who Monsanto is, or what percent say Monsanto's business practices are unethical, but I certainly lean toward "designing better corn" being the most common qualm.

[1] http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/29/chapter-3-attitudes-an...

The problem with GMO's is that most people aren't equipped to have a nuanced discussion about them so the conversation devolves to massive generalities and extremes that aren't useful because both polar extremes turn out to be illogical positions to take, but they are the only two positions that are discussed.

As far as I can tell, the only reason people have issues with Monsanto specifically is because they are explicitly named in Food, Inc. If it were about GMOs or pesticides, there are many other companies, and even larger and more well known companies, that are developing similar and potentially damaging products.

But they don't make it 'better', they just use GE to make corn produce glysophate.

You mean resistant to glyphosate? Is there any GM crop that actually produces glyphosate?

Oops. Yes.

Unfortunately corn is far from best crop for ethanol production. Hemp is twice as good, and if it wasn't for this stupid war on drugs, ethanol may have done us a lot of good. Of course, they promised us switchgrass ethanol with is something like 10x more efficient, but never delivered -- probably b/c from the get go it was all about getting subsidies and only pretending to actually do something about our addiction to oil.

I have a slightly different perspective: I grow wheat and beans for human consumption. But growing those crops over and over again leads to lasting disease and eventually terrible yields. Because of that, I also grow corn. Corn rounds out the rotation to provide enough bio-diversity over many years to help with disease problems.

It is possible that switchgrass or hemp would fill the same role just fine, however, they require an entirely different infrastructure to grow, harvest, and deliver. Corn has the advantage of being able to use the exact same tools I already have for growing food for humans. I do not farm in the US and am not able to take advantage of the corn subsidies everyone is always taking about, but despite that, we still end up growing corn at a loss sometimes because it is cheaper than growing nothing at all, which is the only realistic alternative.

I remember the 2006 crop of corn was so large, and the price was so terrible (naturally), that a large amount of corn was just left out to rot. This is what put the pressure on the creation of the 2007 ethanol subsidy program. Compared to letting the crop rot away, corn ethanol is the better option of the two in my mind.

If it was simply a matter of growing corn for ethanol, I think we can agree that other crops are better suited to it. However, the real world is quite a bit more complicated.

Depends on which efficiencies are important. Aren't you taking about sun etc. -> biomass? Whereas biomass -> ethanol appears to be a lot more important, and starting from simpler sugars and starch is a lot easier than cellulose, wherever the latter comes from. That also has a lot to do with the upfront capital costs you decry.

manHours*land -> biomass is a good one. So it has to be grow densely, grow everywhere, grow without supervision and be easy to harvest, preferably as many times per year as possible.

I expect it is (game over), but not because anyone in authority is going to say it, rather because farmers are going to be able to make more money raising food crops now that California is out of water. If you plant a corn field with nut trees you will won't want to plow those under again until you get your money back.

Subsidies should go to electric cars and new nuclear power plants instead.

Farming subsidies have a long pass. The concern is that we lose to many farmers we lose the ability to feed ouraselves. Willie Nelson started "Farm Aid" to address his own conern and it was apart of a national movement. So US Farmers are supported by the governemnt and they get the subsidies. It isn't the seed manufators that them.

Personally I hate ethnol and well there is hope that we will get off of fosil fuels for electricity sooner rather thamn later AKA After I Die.

Ah, but farmers don't take these subsidies and stuff them in their homespun mattresses. They pretty much hand them over to seed, fertilizer and equipment manufacturers.

George Archer was once asked why he didn't just employ farmers directly, instead of buying contracts for their output. He allegedly replied along the lines that he'd never be able to get away with treating employees so poorly.

Canada does not give their farmers subsidies for grain farms. I had friends that ran a fairly large farm. It was always fest or famine. On good years they would make hundreds of thousands of dollars and on bad years they would lose tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. The issue was if you had a string of bad years for to long. My friend is still farming 20+ years now and he made money in all but 5 of them.

He also says that the work load is basically the same for a profit or loss year. It is based on the prices of the crops and that the yields stay the same. He predicts this year will be a BIG loss year.

This is the forecast for farmers this year in US. http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-sector-inco...

Farming was something I did for 2 weeks a year for fun. It was so different than my desk jobs that I really enjoyed it and the economy of the business is really hard to get your head around but was fascinating to me.

EV CO2 footprints are in the same ballpark as gas cars. It's just environmental procrastination, there's nothing in sight to make two cars per household sustainable. (Or even one for that matter.) Giving subsidies to nuclear plants wouldn't drastically change the picture.

Electric cars have similar CO2 emissions as a Prius on the current US generating mix. Of course, you can drop that to near zero by buying only renewable power (which would cost me about 10% extra if I felt like doing it).

I'm curious as to why you think nuclear wouldn't drastically change the picture, though. Nuclear substitutes nicely for coal on the grid, and coal power is by far the biggest offender here.

To drastically change the picture you need to cut into the demand for fossil fuels. Subsidies for nuclear power and individuals opting for renewable electricity only make incremental increases in electricity supply and indirectly crowding out fossil energy this way is very expensive compared to going at the culprits directly (eg heavily taxing/cap-and-trading co2 and investing the proceeds cleverly to combat climate change).

Yes, capturing the true cost of fossil fuel usage would be a really good thing.

Even if the bill/subsidies are returned , i don't see how corn-based sugars could compete with proterro which claims to make(using biotech) sucrose at 1/3 of the cost of sugar made from sugar cane.

Maybe if celluse based ethanol was viable there was a way ,but it isn't as far as i know.

My (very trusted) mechanic just told me to switch to 100% gas instead of the 10% ethanol that is so common. My car is a 2007 model but he said that it will be better for the engine in the long run and I'll get more efficiency.

Where would you even find 100% gasoline?

http://pure-gas.org/

I know you can get it at two places in my state (nh) - one is a place for older boats, up in our lakes area, and you need to be filling an old boat to pump it. The other is an airfield, and you need to be filling an old airplane to get it.

So it's not strictly accessible.

It's around. They even sell testing kits to make sure.

If you can find it, run the 100% pure stuff in your lawn equipment unless it specifically says it can run on E10. The E10 absolutely destroys the old rubber lines and clogs up carburetors.

For smaller 2 cycle engines (chain saws, string trimmers, etc.) you can also buy small volumes of pre-blended gasoline and oil at various mixture ratios that are ethanol free. You can find these near the mower section in most of the big box hardware stores. It's not cheap compared to blending your own, but it keeps my tools very happy.

Though I generally have tried to move away from 2 cycle tools to LiPo electric ones where feasible. My electric push power works really well, and I maintain a little under 2 acres of grass.

Around here in NW Georgia I see a lot of "Hi-Tech" branded stations with 100% gasoline, but usually for about a 30 cent markup per gallon.

100% gas does cost more because ethanol is subsidized, but depending on your engine you can get more than that back in mileage. (The same mechanic told me that some 6-cyl Toyota engines lose 42% of efficiency on 10% ethanol.)

> The same mechanic told me that some 6-cyl Toyota engines lose 42% of efficiency on 10% ethanol.

He's off by a magnitude. E10 has about 97% energy density as 100% gasoline (http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/fuel_comparison_chart.pdf)

A 42% loss would be huge. A 30 MPG Toyota would get about 18-19 MPG.

Just because the energy density is there does not mean that the engine can take advantage of it. ICE engines are all about timings and combustibility. If the timing computer is not configured to adjust for E10's alternate timing, this measure of poor efficiency is entirely possible.

That's what the octane rating is for. Ethanol even has a higher octane rating than gasoline. All modern (~'96 or later) engines have anti-knock sensors and can adjust timing. 89 octane gasoline vs 89 octane E10 will perform the same.

It just isn't possible to lose 42% from running E10. You won't even lose that much efficiency from running low octane fuel in an engine that requires high octane.

Are you getting E10 confused with E85? E85 is a whole different beast and will ruin a car not designed to run on it.

Empirically, there seems to be a correlation between lawn care company usage and stations that carry 100% gasoline where I live. I am lucky to be about 7 km from a station that has it (suburban/semi-rural border area). Cost is roughly 10% more than E10 (at this one particular station).

Here in Ontario, a lot of stations I've seen offer "up to 10% ethanol" in regular (87 octane) gasoline, "up to 5% ethanol" in mid-grade, and "0% ethanol" in premium.

Best bet is to buy the "premium" blend, but ask to be sure.

Strangely, a lot of Cenex Stations have a non-ethanol pump.

I recently moved ~60 miles and I don't remember any gas stations in my old town advertising E85 fuel but here it seems like most of them have it. I'm still in the same state and it seems weird that it would be so common in this town. I don't think there are any car plants here so I'm not sure why this town bought into E85 so much. (In the town I grew up in there is also a compressed natural gas station but there is a car plant that manufactures them there so that makes sense.)

E85 is usually cheaper because of the subsidies.

I've found the more rural gas stations stock 100% gasoline. I assume it's because the older engines in farm and sporting equipment don't take kindly to E85 (different valve timing needed, it's rough on old seals, etc).

Politics aside, its a worthwhile endeavor to hedge our bets on fuel. We're addicted to it; when our supply is threatened it costs us many times the entire cost of the ethanol subsidy program.

In fact, the annual corn subsidies in their entirety would operate Welfare for 36 hours per year. Its a drop in the investment-bucket.

and i would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling rain forests and 3rd world hungry people.

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