How economical is it to produce ethanol?

Question

It's been a while since I've researched this, but last I heard, the answer was still up for debate. So, if anyone knows if a definitive answer has been found, I'd appreciate it.

The problem is with ethanol. Besides all the obvious arguments about it contributing to food shortages and that type of thing, a lot of people in the know claim that it takes more gasoline and other outside energy to produce ethanol than if we were to just use the gasoline and other energies as we normally do.

Does that make sense?

So, say, it takes 2 gallons of gasoline to produce 1 gallon of ethanol (I've no idea if that's correct....just numbers for sake of argument), and ethanol is 1/3 less efficient in autos than gasoline, wouldn't it just make more sense to put the original gasoline in the d**n car to begin with? Granted, ethanol is way better as far as emisions and such, but we're still burning the gasoline to make it. So, what's the point?

Answer 1

Ethanol but not made from Corn!!! maybe the solution is Sugar cane like Brazil!!!  or Mow grass from side of roads cities etc! all plants and tree waste!

Answer 2

plain and simple: no- it is not economical to produce ethanol as fuel.

Answer 3

Right now ethanol is not very economical or green.

It takes diesel powered engines to tend to the crops of corn that produce ethanol.  The corn does not have any other purpose but to be fermented into ethanol, and there is more CO2 produced by the engines than what is taken out of the air by the plants.

In addition, your'e absolutely right.  Ethanol "enhanced" gasoline does not burn very well.  Engines don't like it.  Nor do they like the oxygenated c**p.  Supposedly, both will reduce emissions, but my engine gets 25 miles to the gallon on regular unleaded and 18 miles on the treated junk.  Not very smart in my book.  I spend more on the less efficent stuff and go fewer miles between fill-ups.  In the long run, I am better off without it.

I'm all for alternative fuel sources.  I think we need them.  Both for the environment and the economy.  But until they come up with a solution that is practical and runs in my car without any modifications, I will simply stick to what is available to me.

Answer 4

It depends on how you make the ethanol. It can be made from corn or sugar cane or grapes or lots of things. The sugar cane process used in Brazil is quite efficient, but the corn process used in the U.S. is often criticized for its inefficiency. But corn grows well in the U.S. and sugar cane does not, because the climate is too cool I think. Maybe global warming will make sugar cane grow well in the U.S. and solve that problem! LOL

Answer 5

Economic to what or for whom

read this about ethanol production

Only transient Aliens could have approved that.

They are intending to replace most of the indigenous Forrest's in the world ,with mono cultures for the production of Ethanol,

Non sustainable, chemically grown ,heavily irrigated (with water needed for communities)one specie Forrest's,that have only plagues of insects as fauna which are controlled with pesticides.

Killing all bio diversity,in both flora and fauna ,adding to the destruction and extinction of species ,like nothing we have ever seen before.

All in the quest for alternative energy and to save the Environment ,

The irony here is that the growing eagerness to slow climate change by using biofuels and planting millions of trees for carbon credits has resulted in new major causes of deforestation, say activists. And that is making climate change worse because deforestation puts far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire world's fleet of cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined.

"Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil," said Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition, an environmental NGO based in Asunción, Paraguay. "We call it 'deforestation diesel'," Lovera told IPS.

Oil from African palm trees is considered to be one of the best and cheapest sources of biodiesel and energy companies are investing billions into acquiring or developing oil-palm plantations in developing countries. Vast tracts of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and many other countries have been cleared to grow oil palms. Oil palm has become the world's number one fruit crop, well ahead of bananas.

Biodiesel offers many environmental benefits over diesel from petroleum, including reductions in air pollutants, but the enormous global thirst means millions more hectares could be converted into monocultures of oil palm. Getting accurate numbers on how much forest is being lost is very difficult.

The FAO's State of the World's Forests 2007 released last week reports that globally, net forest loss is 20,000 hectares per day -- equivalent to an area twice the size of Paris. However, that number includes plantation forests, which masks the actual extent of tropical deforestation, about 40,000 hectares (ha) per day, says Matti Palo, a forest economics expert who is affiliated with the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica.

"The half a million ha per year deforestation of Mexico is covered by the increase of forests in the U.S., for example," Palo told IPS.

National governments provide all the statistics, and countries like Canada do not produce anything reliable, he said. Canada has claimed no net change in its forests for 15 years despite being the largest producer of pulp and paper. "Canada has a moral responsibility to tell the rest of the world what kind of changes have taken place there," he said.

Plantation forests are nothing like natural or native forests. More akin to a field of maize, plantation forests are hostile environments to nearly every animal, bird and even insects. Such forests have been shown to have a negative impact on the water cycle because non-native, fast-growing trees use high volumes of water. Pesticides are also commonly used to suppress competing growth from other plants and to prevent disease outbreaks, also impacting water quality.

Plantation forests also offer very few employment opportunities, resulting in a net loss of jobs. "Plantation forests are a tremendous disaster for biodiversity and local people," Lovera said. Even if farmland or savanna are only used for oil palm or other plantations, it often forces the local people off the land and into nearby forests, including national parks, which they clear to grow crops, pasture animals and collect firewood. That has been the pattern with pulp and timber plantation forests in much of the world, says Lovera.

Ethanol is other major biofuel, which is made from maize, sugar cane or other crops. As prices for biofuels climb, more land is cleared to grow the crops. U.S. farmers are switching from soy to maize to meet the ethanol demand. That is having a knock on effect of pushing up soy prices, which is driving the conversion of the Amazon rainforest into soy, she says. Meanwhile rich countries are starting to plant trees to offset their emissions of carbon dioxide, called carbon sequestration. Most of this planting is taking place in the South in the form of plantations, which are just the latest threat to existing forests. "Europe's carbon credit market could be disastrous," Lovera said.

The multi-billion-euro European carbon market does not permit the use of reforestation projects for carbon credits. But there has been a tremendous surge in private companies offering such credits for tree planting projects. Very little of this money goes to small land holders, she says. Plantation forests also contain much less carbon, notes Palo, citing a recent study that showed carbon content of plantation forests in some Asian tropical countries was only 45 percent of that in the respective natural forests. Nor has the world community been able to properly account for the value of the enormous volumes of carbon stored in existing forests.

One recent estimate found that the northern Boreal forest provided 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services such as absorbing carbon emissions from the atmosphere and cleaning water. The good news is that deforestation, even in remote areas, is easily stopped. All it takes is access to some low-cost satellite imagery and governments that actually want to slow or halt deforestation. Costa Rica has nearly eliminated deforestation by making it illegal to convert forest into farmland, says Lovera.

Paraguay enacted similar laws in 2004, and then regularly checked satellite images of its forests, sending forestry officials and police to enforce the law where it was being violated. "Deforestation has been reduced by 85 percent in less than two years in the eastern part of the country," Lovera noted. The other part of the solution is to give control over forests to the local people. This community or model forest concept has proved to be sustainable in many parts of the world. India recently passed a bill returning the bulk of its forests back to local communities for management, she said.

However, economic interests pushing deforestation in countries like Brazil and Indonesia are so powerful, there may eventually be little natural forest left. "Governments are beginning to realize that their natural forests have enormous value left standing," Lovera said. "A moratorium or ban on deforestation is the only way to stop this."

This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ - International Federation of Environmental Journalists.

© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service

Answer 6

right Corn Ethanol is ridiculous. So lets build Nuclear Power plants to make it,  I don't think its a good idea because its part of our food supply

Answer 7

Ethanol is more expensive than regular gas, and it f***s up food prices.

The only 'good' thing about it is that if foreign oil spikes, eth MIGHT be cheaper. It's still being subsidized by the government and there is nothing enviro-friendly about it.

Answer 8

The point is is that it is the most environmentally destructive method of producing energy ever proposed.

To produce entanol, you must clear land (wildlife be damned) plow it, fertilize it, spray it with incecticides and herbacides, divert water to fertilize it and then process the harvest.

If you really want to destroy the environment, produce some ethanol.

To produce ethanol from bi-products of other industries is a different matter, but producing ethanol for its own sake makes no sense whether it's 'cost effective' or not.

Answer 9

To drink:  Very

As fuel:  A complete waste of energy

Answer 10

Ethanol also produces twice the amount of CO2 as gas.

Answer 11

At one time I figured Ethanol could be made by me at 1.70 a gallon.  That included the price to distill it so it takes less fuel than is being made to create it.  But since then, corn prices have doubled which makes the cost of ethanol higher thanks to higher demand of corn needed for ethanol.  This higher corn price also caused the following products prices to go up on: Meat since livestock eats corn.  Milk since dairy eats corn.  Food since grain and flour is corn.  Other crops since farmers quit growing them to grow corn because corn is worth more.  Other items made from other crops.

Answer 12

I'm not sure that I have the answer to your question, but I want to make sure that we are talking about apples to apples here.

Be careful when you talk about how much "gasoline" is needed to make ethanol.    I think many of us confuse the energy equivalent of gasoline with the physical gasoline itself.

The last I read, it took the equivelent of 1.2 gallons of "gasoline" to make one gallon of gasoline.  So 20% of  the gasoline went to production energy and 80% went to raw materials.

When people say that it take 2 gallons of gasoline to produce a gallon of ethanol (or whatever the conversion is) they are talking about the ENERGY contained to 2 gallons of gasoline.  Not the gasoline itself.  

So if it take 3 gallons of ethanol to make one gallon of ethanol (65% for energy and 35% for raw materials) - you still are using less fossil fuels.   In fact, you don't need to use any fossil fuels at all in that equation.

It's less efficient than the conversion of fossil fuels, but then solar energy is less efficient than combustion turbines.   Solar energy only uses 15% (at best) of the solar energy that is harvested.  But because the "wasted" energy isn't harmful or costly, we don't care.

I'm honestly not sure what the balance is right now in terms of which is better.   And there are points to be made about the sources of fertilizer, man-power and acreage consumed, and so forth.

But please don't confuse a gallon of gasoline (as an unit of energy) with a gallon of gasoline (as a raw material.)

Great question.