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re: We could start with a 10% ethanol in gasoline mixture
EnergyExpert — (archived)

First, the idea of a political mandate to FORCE a bad technology on the public is a refuge of the desperate. IF it makes sense environmentally and economically then you should let the market decide. A politcal mandate is just another a nice term for forcing a bad idea on people. .

Not for the problems with Cellulose ethanol.

First, no one knows how to make it in large quantities at a cost to compete sugar based ethanol. The first commercial plants are just now under construction. That is why Sugar Cane and Corn are the basic sources of ethanol today. To break cellulose into ethanol requires a much more complex and energy intensive process. That is why the DOE is spending billions to try to find a way to do it effectively and at a cost competitive with sugar ethanol.

Second problem – the yield per acre. Cellulose ethanol produced using sawgrass has about half the yield per acre so to replace gasoline demand by it would require around 1.5 billion acres or 2.4 million square miles. To reach your modest 10% goal would require 240, 000 square miles of pasture land or about half of the pasture land in the U.S. today (good bye steak, hello tufu). The distillation process is also more energy intensive, how much is unknown as its still in the pilot plant stage.

From what I have heard at conferences its also C02 neutral. That means the process puts out about as much CO2 as it creates so it will do nothing to lower the atmosphere CO2 levels, unlike hydrogen whose CO2 output is determined by the electricity source and has the potential to be near ZERO if renewable energy is used, unlike Cellulose Ethanol.

And then we won’t take about the lost of species diversity from turning half of the nation’s pasture land to a monocrop of sawgrasss. Good bye Ducks, geese and other prairie wildlife.

Nope ethanol on just about any scale that would impact gasoline use is an environmental nightmare. Ethanol proposals are really nothing more then schemes to get votes from farmers and campaign money from firms like ADM and DuPont which will benefit from them. Its not even a stopgap to the national energy problems. Its only switching the demand for imported oil from use directly by autos to use in making ethanol for autos.

It works from Brazil simply because Brazil is ideal for producing sugarcane, they have a lot less cars then the U.S. and they don’t care about destroying the rain forest to get the land needed for the Sugarcane. None of these conditions apply here.

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