AutoblogGreen

Actually IndyCars have used alcohol fuels for years because of their greater safety (less likely to explode in crashes), and the higher octane rating (greater responsiveness and acceleration) probably didn't hurt either.

Alcohol fuels are a practical alternative to gasoline, and superior to gas-electric hybrids in many ways:

It's cheaper to add alcohol capability ($100 factory) than hybrid (thousands);

Alcohol capability just involves better materials in the fuel tank and fuel line, a sensor to determine the fuel mix, and reprogramming the fuel injector. But a hybrid has to haul a redundant second electric engine and a huge battery eating up cargo or passenger space and weighing hundreds of extra pounds minimum.

Hybrids just eke a few more miles out of your gas tank, at best slowing down the galloping growth in world oil demand, but in no way breaking out of our unnecessary locked in to oil only fuel situation, which benefits no one but OPEC and other petro tyrannies like Russia. That's a lot of effort and expense for minimal gain.

By huge contrast, Alcohol fuels are the real game changer, transferring hundreds of billions in wealth a year away from Islamists, narco-Marxists, Russia, and other corrupt kleptocracies to peaceful farmers and trash recyclers.

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its better to waste the corn now than to be controlled by arab/terrorist oil economy in the future...

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obviously you are not poor or hungry

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I'm tempted to say you're well named, Otto, but I'll make allowances for ignorance, which is curable.

The fact is that corn ethanol has a byproduct used in animal feed, so corn ethanol ends up in the human food chain anyway.

Also, despite the dramatic increase in corn ethanol production in the last few years, non-ethanol corn production has ALSO gone up, as have other staple crops. So the idea that the more corn you grow for ethanol means that corn becomes scarce and food becomes pricey is FALSE, by the NUMBERS.

In fact, the price of the corn in a box of corn flakes is a tiny proportion of the overall cost - the price of fuel affects everything at every stage and affects the price much more. Since ethanol helps keep the price of gasoline lower than it would otherwise be, corn ethanol actually helps LOWER food prices.

Furthermore, if we adopted alcohol capability as a standard feature in our cars like seatbelts and switched to an alcohol rather than a petroleum economy, millions of desperately poor Third Worlders would have a market for their agricultural output because US corn farmers cannot meet that huge demand alone. So ethanol and methanol will actually HELP solve world poverty and hunger

Especially so because the artificially inflated price of oil (the all inclusive Saudi cost of production is about $1.50 a barrell) is a viciously regressive tax on the most desperately poor people on Earth. Kick the legs out from under OPEC money making machine which is closely tied to our unnecessarily locked-in-to-oil-only transportation fleet, and the price of fuel and fertilizer the world over collapses, greatly benefiting the world poor.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/in-defense-of-biofuels

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Corn may be cheap now but as you mentioned the US alone cannot supply enough to meet full demand. Increasing demand will only increase prices. There is just simply not enough corn to fuel and feed the US. If Ethanol is widely used, it shoudl come from other sources.

"So the idea that the more corn you grow for ethanol means that corn becomes scarce and food becomes pricey is FALSE, by the NUMBERS."

There is actually no data to back this. The data has been manipulated by government subsidies and market scale. IF the govt was not subsidizing the procduction of corn ethanol and the demand was increased 1000fold, I dont think we really have a clear picture by the numbers of what would occur. Plus there are other factors in this equation. Our energy supply would be greately affected floods and droughts. And in times where there is not enough corn to meet food and energy demands, the energy will win out since that is always where the deeper pockets are.

There is also the problem of ethanol transportation. Gas pipelines were not meant to transport ethanol so we have to use fuel to transport the gas. It has been shown that pipelines can be retrofitted to transport ethanol but this is not free and has had limited realworld testing. So we are faced with transporting ethanol via train and truck. There is another variable in the equation.

Idealy we would have an ecomony that is not tied to one source of energy. I like your idea that we require all gas car be able to run on e85. Just dont mandate that we have to and stop spending my tax dollars propping up ethanol to make it competitive.

We need an economy that is independent of the source of fuel. Electric cars are ideal in this regard. It opens up many possible sources of electricity generation and more market oportunity. Plus it is easier to solve emissions problems at a large scale than at a small scale (meaning at the power plant rather than under the hood).

If we want to go forward with biofuel (and there are lots of reasons to do so) we need to put muscle behind biodiesel. It does not have many of the disadvantages that ethanol does. It can be transported via pipelines, it can be made from a broader range of biomass sources, and diesels are efficient and require minimal tweeking to accept biodiesel.

Ethanol seems like a good idea but there are far more issues with it than other biofuels. It just so happens we have a corn industry that is good at lobbying the govt we they get lots of subsidies.

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The fact that our corn farmers can't supply all our ethanol is GOOD news, not bad. If we mandated flex fuel capability they'll have all the business they can handle, and then some, so they won't be threatened by dropping the subsidies and tariffs on foreign ethanol.

That foreign ethanol will be a big boon for global development.

Instead of hundreds of billions from the productive world going to fund Saudi concubines, drugs, palaces, yachts, and racehorses, not to mention mischief like madrassas, terrorism, Chavezite narco-Marxism, and Russian adventurism, it would go to peaceful poor farmers desperate for a way to make a living. With viable cash crops, Third Worlders would be able to earn an income, and with drastically lower fuel and fertilizer prices, the viciously regressive taxes they pay to OPEC would be reduced.

The goodwill that this massive flow of fuel dollars to ordinary poor people will cause will help us a lot, and the increased development in the world will help everyone.

Corn is not the only source of ethanol. It can be made from the starchy or sugary portions of a wide variety of plants grown all over the world. Furthermore a wise flex fuel mandate would be sure to include methanol as well (being the simplest alcohol, methanol capable engines can run any of the higher alcohols as well). Methanol can be made from coal, natural gas, trash, sewage, crop residues (the rest of the corn plant for instance), weeds, you name it.

So instead of our system grinding to a halt if there are Midwestern floods, the world economy operating on alcohol would be much more secure than it is now at the mercy of OPEC price hikes. No one can "corner" the market and slow production.

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You're right, Bob N: energy independence is a dumb slogan. Energy security is a better one.

Seeking North Korean style total self reliance is pointless and economically damaging.

It does us no harm if Brazil sells us ethanol. And who cares if some desperately poor black African grows cassava or the like for ethanol?

By contrast, when Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Russia financially benefit from our oil purchases even if we don't buy their oil directly, our national security is greatly harmed.

The problem with drilling here is that our oil is much more expensive and scarce than the Saudis'. Their reserves are deeper and cheaper, so they can either price us out of the market by ramping up production, or just wait until our resources are exhausted and really have us where they want us. Drilling doesn't solve the problem any more than conservation / fuel efficiency: both assume a permanent lock-in to an oil-only fuel system.

Flex fuel technology opens up the system and allows cars to run on gasoline or any alcohol fuel.

Because ethanol can be made from any starchy or sugary plant material, and methanol can be made from any biomass without exception including crop residues (the REST of the corn plan), weeds (including those that clog water systems requiring expensive removal), trash, even sewage, as well as natural gas and coal which we have centuries of, no one can "corner" the market on alcohol and conspire to restrict production and jack up the price as OPEC does. If someone tries he'd be immediately undercut by the broad diversity of available alcohol sources.

This means not only national security, but also economic security since we'd remove the Sword of Democles of another Arab oil embargo from over our heads and enable confident predictions of future fuel prices in the markets, encouraging investment, entrepeneurial risk-taking, and jobs growth.

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