Corn Shortage Hampers US Ethanol Production 419
drdread66 writes "A nationwide corn shortage brought on by last year's drought has started to curtail ethanol production. While this shouldn't be surprising to anyone, it raises public policy issues regarding ethanol usage requirements in motor fuel. Given that the energy efficiency of ethanol fuel is questionable at best, is it time to lift the mandate for ethanol in our gasoline?"
Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:3, Insightful)
... As long as we can drive around cars! Cleaner burning cars too!
Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: No, it is, in fact, way past time.
Next question?
Ethanol from corn is height of stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
Kill Corn Subsidies! (Score:5, Insightful)
The sooner these tax-payer-subsidized industries get the rug pulled from under them, the sooner things like cellulosic ethanol and other *real* technological innovations can come to fruition.
Not if you want to win votes in the farming states (Score:5, Insightful)
Corn ethanol is and probably always will be a handout to the farming states. It takes more oil to grow the corn for ethanol than we save from blending ethanol into our engines.
The rest of us are screwed over by this. It would be better for the economy and the environment to just calculate out how much profit the farmers are getting and just hand out yearly checks for that amount. But that would be socialism and we can't have any of that.
Re:Ethanol from corn is height of stupidity (Score:4, Insightful)
Least efficient way of making the stuff. The tractors burn more diesel harvesting the stuff than the energy it will produce. .
Not that I am inclined to disagree, but please... [citation needed]
Shouldn't have had the mandate... (Score:4, Insightful)
If we are going to use ethanol, it makes sense to use sugar like Brazil. Unfortunately the US has a pretty terrible climate for growing sugar except in a few key areas, and those few key areas have lobbied for massive tariffs on the importation of sugar, making it cost-prohibitive to import sugar from the areas of the world where it makes sense to grow sugar.
The US farming industry is a mess. Honestly, unless you are a factory farm, you're almost better off to buy an unproductive piece of ground, make a half-assed effort of farming it, take out crop insurance and live off the proceeds of that.
Re:Kill Corn Subsidies! (Score:5, Insightful)
My point exactly. Make the industry stand on its own two legs goddammit. The US Government has enough money leaks already. Sure HFCS prices will rise without subsidies, but that's capitalism for you. Once industries are faced with the *real* price of corn, sugar and ethanol alternatives will be sought out and maximized. A cheap or cheaper alternative will be found, that's innovation.
Corn subsidies breed stagnation, not innovation.
This has always been a bad idea. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only that, but every acre of ethanol production corn is one less acre of food for human or animal consumption. So, veggies and starches go up as well. Not as much as livestock feed prices, but quite a bit.
Gets better. You need to grow the corn in advance of pouring it into a gas tank. Makes sense, right? Which means you'll have a minimum of one year of higher food prices across the board, as that is how far in advance (minimum) that corn production is locked in. It would be more intelligent to scale things back down slowly, but I doubt it'll happen. Worse, the EPA wants to move to 15% ethanol. Which is VERY bad for small engines not built for it. That's a couple billion dollars of motorcycles, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, generators, etc that may be damaged by higher ethanol rates. This sort of thing needs to be planned out a decade in advance, ideally.
Only the corn lobby, politicians accepting campaign donations and "environmentalists" made out on this one. Yes, some less bright environmentalists pushed for it as increasing "renewable" energy. Just because something is technically renewable doesn't mean we should do it. Burning food in our cars isn't the ideal solution. The environment and everyone in the US buying food took the hit for them. Thanks guys.
I'd rant about synthetic hydrocarbon fuels pulled from atmospheric carbon and cracked water (to provide hydrogen and oxygen), but I honestly don't feel like it at the moment. Back to programming the firewall.
Re:Kill Corn Subsidies! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Kill Corn Subsidies! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Misleading summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Should be 'A nationwide corn shortage brought on by ethanol mandates, as designed by the people who imposed them'.
Corn was a bootstrap (Score:4, Insightful)
The concept was that by establishing a market for ethanol as a fuel, it would then justify investment in other technologies to generate ethanol. The bootstrap would significantly reduce the risk of developing those technologies. Now is the time to cut the subsidies for Corn based ethanol production and to push the alternatives.
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually ethanol burns worse than gasoline and (if you make it our way) takes more energy to make than you get from burning it, but that's ok because of, well, I have to really reach for this one -- JOB CREATION!
What I don't like is how ethanol is damaging for older vehicles. I know I have nothing to back it up, but ever since 10% ethanol started showing up at the pumps I'd swear I've had more trouble with my older car (difficulty starting, power, etc). Reading articles such as this one about the upcoming Ethanol-15 [popularmechanics.com] redouble my concerns.
It's the corn lobby and government subsidies that's driving adding ethanol into our gasoline, nothing else. I'm all for alternative-fueled cars designed to run on E85 (or E100 for that matter), but leave the stuff out of the "gas" pump.
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm originally from a part of the country that was impacted by Sandy, and I got into an argument with a co-worker over subsidies for beach fill projects. While I agree that we'd be better off without subsidies, I take offense when people pretend that only the beach communities benefit from federal money. I mean, when's the last time you traveled through a suburb that paid for it's own highway system? Most of those suburbs made a developer very rich when taxpayers funded a highway through farmland.
And I'm convinced it's unavoidable. Even if the Federal government were limited to defense and courts, we'd still have certain places getting more benefit from base and prison locations, not to mention the way government contracts get granted. This is why I tend to favor limiting the size and scope of the government unless the benefits outweigh the additional monkeying around with the free market.
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:4, Insightful)
But if you didn't have extremely cheap oil Ethonol is the only game in town.
What people miss is that all (useful) energy comes from the Sun. Fossil files are just the byproduct if burrying the prehistoric forests several times over... Ethanol is the best power-to volume you are gonna get until batteries make some major revolution or two more.
Ethanol infrastructure is necessary to have if Oil was somehow taken away overnight. It's a hedge more than a plan for everybody.
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Burns worse? -- Hot rodders say "No" (Score:4, Insightful)
The people that really care about fuel quality -- the hot rodders -- like ethanol. The following quote is about E85 (85% ethanol) -- "When it comes to using E85 I can’t tell you enough how nice it is to tune for cars with this fuel. Burn temperatures are lower, initial octane rating is much higher than gasoline at ~105, and it’s not uncommon at all to gain 40bhp+ by using E85 alone with no other changes aside from tuning." This is from a professional tuner's article on a popular Volvo site (http://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=54435). Both ethanol and methanol are very high octane fuels which burn extremely well in piston engines. They don't have as much energy per gallon as gasoline but for power output in an engine tuned for them they are better.