This short article is a must read...providing many interesting points about ethanol such as the following:
1) Ethanol is produced in mainly five states: Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska, Illinois & Minnesota~all about 1,500 miles from 80% of the population.
2) Ethanol is corrosive so it cannot be transported through pipelines but must be transported by trains, barges, or trucks.
3) Our U.S. waterway is overtaxed and antiquated, besides the fact that the Mississippi freezes so that takes care of the barge issue, backlog for rail cars has risen 400% since 2005, so rail is not an option, which just leaves the transportation of ethanol by trucks.
Therein lies the rub!
to quote William Pentland, the author of this piece:
"The best hope for clean, green ethanol right now is to ship it in diesel-powered trucks. Unfortunately, the U.S. already lacks the drivers available to meet anticipated growth in shipping demand, even without ethanol. Driver shortages will reach nearly a quarter of a million by 2015, according to the Federal Highway Administration. Ethanol producers are likely to have particular problems because of the hazardous material certifications required to haul the loads. Add to this the cost of diesel fuel, the extra carbon emissions and the further strain the trucks would place on the nation's highways and the outlook for clean, supposedly green ethanol looks dimmer and dimmer."
Showing posts with label Ethanol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethanol. Show all posts
Monday, May 19, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
Let Them Eat Ethanol
Mona Charen on Food Fight on National Review Online:
- Five people are dead in Port Au Prince, Haiti after a week of food riots.
- Unions in Burkina Faso have called a general strike to protest the high cost of grain.
- Food riots have rocked Egypt, Cameroon, Indonesia, Ethiopia, and other nations.
- In Manila, police with M-16s have supervised the sale and distribution of subsidized grain.
- Hoarders have been threatened with life imprisonment.
- In Thailand and Pakistan, troops are guarding fields and warehouses.
- In Egypt, the army has been called out to bake bread.
"In our search for cleaner energy we jumped aboard the “biofuels” bandwagon. This debacle should be an object lesson. Fighting global warming (if there is global warming) is a tricky business and can only be undertaken after careful review of the costs and benefits."
Hungry Like The Ethanol Wolf
From the Editors on Ethanol on The National Review Online:
The federal government can do something right now to provide relief to Americans facing higher food prices: Repeal the ethanol mandate.
The diversion of one-third of the American corn crop into ethanol production is a direct result of the 2005 law that required gasoline makers to buy 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol — a mandate that the 2007 energy bill President Bush signed in December increases to 36 billion gallons by 2022.We realize that a repeal is highly unlikely, given that the machinery of government is currently calibrated to move in the opposite direction on biofuels, but as food prices keep going up, pro-ethanol politicians will find it increasingly difficult to justify their position. Food riots in developing countries are becoming more frequent. Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club has started limiting sales of rice because immigrants are buying all the rice they can and sending it to relatives in countries suffering from food shortages. In the U.S., the Labor Department reported this month that the price of bread is up 14.7 percent from last year. Milk prices are up 13.3 percent.
More insight from the article in the National Review:
* Congress has created an artificial demand for ethanol to satisfy the farm lobby, which is one of the most powerful in Washington.
* John McCain somehow made it through the early primary gauntlet without going back on his long-held opposition to ethanol subsidies. To be sure, he took a lower profile on the issue and made some comments about how ethanol "makes sense" now that oil prices are so high, but when questioned about these pro-ethanol comments he reiterated his opposition to the federal government’s meddling in the market.
The federal government can do something right now to provide relief to Americans facing higher food prices: Repeal the ethanol mandate.
The diversion of one-third of the American corn crop into ethanol production is a direct result of the 2005 law that required gasoline makers to buy 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol — a mandate that the 2007 energy bill President Bush signed in December increases to 36 billion gallons by 2022.We realize that a repeal is highly unlikely, given that the machinery of government is currently calibrated to move in the opposite direction on biofuels, but as food prices keep going up, pro-ethanol politicians will find it increasingly difficult to justify their position. Food riots in developing countries are becoming more frequent. Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club has started limiting sales of rice because immigrants are buying all the rice they can and sending it to relatives in countries suffering from food shortages. In the U.S., the Labor Department reported this month that the price of bread is up 14.7 percent from last year. Milk prices are up 13.3 percent.
More insight from the article in the National Review:
* Congress has created an artificial demand for ethanol to satisfy the farm lobby, which is one of the most powerful in Washington.
* John McCain somehow made it through the early primary gauntlet without going back on his long-held opposition to ethanol subsidies. To be sure, he took a lower profile on the issue and made some comments about how ethanol "makes sense" now that oil prices are so high, but when questioned about these pro-ethanol comments he reiterated his opposition to the federal government’s meddling in the market.
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