We’ve already determined what you are, now we’re just haggling over the price.
It was. The attractions of the fuel varied over the years: renewable energy; domestic production for energy security; fuel oxygenation for lower emissions; and buying corn-country votes.
It didn’t take long, though, to figure out that the net energy production from corn-based ethanol was meager. Lefty fans of biofuel crops for transportation moved on to a plant called switch grass. I don’t know whether or not switch grass is still the great hope. It has much better net energy production than corn ethanol does, but the fuel production is more complex.
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So who owns the largest corn based ethanol plants in the US? Koch Industries.
So who owns the rail lines that transport the millions of tons of corn to those plants and then the ethanol to oil refineries? Warren Buffet
So who owns the agriculture operations that grow the corn (not family farmers)? ADM, Koch, and they all rely on Monsanto for the GMO corn and the cancer casing pesticides and herbicides used to max. yields.
Ethanol is the perfect storm for the US Environment…very few other things are a greater threat to the US Environment and to climate change than Ethanol.
Ethanol also increase starvation for the poor around the globe…burning food to power SUV’s might seem like fun to poorly informed and brainwashed US housewives, but to those in the southern red states in the US and impoverished 3rd world countries around the globe it means higher food costs for basic staples like corn, corn meal, and other food products made from corn. Don’t forget Corn Syrup…all the processed food at Walmart has obesity causing HFCS (corn syrup) which is farless expensive than cane sugar and combines well with preservatives…this is why McDonald’s Big Mac’s never decompose.
There are about 3 dozen US Billionaires (Oligarchs) that rake in billions when the US subsidizes and opposes any reduction in fossil fuels…Warren Buffet and the Koch Brothers in particular.
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Ethanol-free premium will be over $4 a gallon before the snowmobile trails open this year. Somehow, I think big oil will scrape by.
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The problem with biomass is transportation. It takes a lot of it to produce significant quantities of fuel and, as you said, the process is complex. If you have to ship it to a large production facility, the transportation fuel requirements eliminate any advantages. The only biofuel that makes any sense in terms of efficiency is ethanol produced from sugar cane and it gives about 5 units of energy for ever 1 unit of input. Solar panels and wind farms, on the other hand, have a gain of 20+ over their lifetime.
Farming is more industrial than industry. One article I found interviews farmers who bought combines, who harvest 1,800, 3,600, 5,000 acres. It’s becoming a fairer and fairer question each year, how much nostalgic, political virtue anyone should bestow any longer.
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