But sugar cane, that’s different!
Ethanol, especially in its purest Brazilian sugarcane form, was supposed to be the route to clean fuel and energy independence. Not so fast. The Financial Times reports that market pressures in Brazil, the 2nd largest producer of biofuels after the U.S., are pushing the price of ethanol above that of gasoline
[…] once touted by greens as just such a solution, presents myriad other problems as Amazon jungle is cleared for cane plantations, fertilizer runoff fouls waterways, and the price of food staples rises dramatically leading to unrest in key countries around the world. Now that the “successful” Brazilian model is unable to compete with gasoline on price despite massive government subsidies, it may be time to rethink the role of renewable biofuels in future energy production.
That’s the beauty of fossil fuels. You can develop an oil or gas field in a productive agricultural region and still have a productive agricultural region.
h/t Jason
Has anyone ever figured out the number of kilometers per meal they get by converting food to fuel?
Kate said: “You can develop an oil or gas field in a productive agricultural region and still have a productive agricultural region.”
But that’s a bad thing Kate. It doesn’t decrease the human vermin infesting Mother Gaia, it doesn’t decrease the amount of energy available to the human vermin, and it doesn’t decrease the individual freedom of those damn human vermin the good, Gaia-loving WatermelonPeople are working so hard to stamp out.
Furthermore it puts no cash in Saint Algore’s pocket.
Next you’ll be telling me we should be building mega-refineries in Sask and shipping finished product through a pipeline to the Americans AND the BC coast. That’s cwazy talk!
Calgary is preparing for the spruce meadows masters. 747’s fly horses in from around the world using jet fuel (not ethanol or electricity from wind farms) Not one word of protest from the enviro’s or the animal rights groups about this event. I suppose it’s because it’s the hoity-toity who attend these events who are the biggest donors to the loony causes. Margot Kidder and Darryl Hannah where are you?
Perhaps to clarify a few points…
In the past, rum (ethanol) was produced by fermenting the crushed cane…in effect a low cost by-product of sugar production…
Now the sugar itself is being converted to ethanol…
So now the feed stock has a cost/price as apposed to a waste product being the feedstock….putting the same into the insane economics of converting corn or soybeans to bio-fuels.
“rethink”? Maybe ‘think through” would be a better suggestion.
“… once touted by greens as just such a solution, presents myriad other problems as Amazon jungle is cleared for cane plantations, fertilizer runoff fouls waterways…”
Same thing happening in Ontario. Tens upon tens of thousands acres of Bambi-land being cleared for corn-sourced ethanol, but nary a peep from the green crowd.
A cry to Drs. David Suzuki and Rick Smith…why have you forsaken your flocks in their hours of deepest need???
sasquatch – perhaps I misinterpreted your item, but, sugar cane produces 2 products – sugar and bagasse, bagasss is the roughage byproduct. Sugar can be as molasses, refined, sucrose variations, and these can be further processed into Rum or ethanol.
Who’s going to break the bad news to Bill Maher?
Kent, it’s not too difficult to calculate some approximations. First, the human daily calorie requirement is approximately 5,000 calories/day, or 20 kilojoules (KJ).
The energy content of ethanol is approximately 25 megajoules (MJ) per kilogram. Assume that you have 30 kilograms of fuel in your vehicle. That’s a total energy content of 25 MJ x 30 = 750 MJ.
Divided by the human daily requirement of 20 KJ, we see that [750/20 x 10(3)] means that a single tank of ethanol contains the daily food requirement of about 37,500 people.
Those ethanol plants need electricity to operate. I’ll bet if they put up a bunch of solar panels & wind turbines they could save so much money and save the planet while they are saving the planet.
They could pick up some cheap solar panels in California I understand.
cgh
One food calorie = 1,000 calories = 4.2 kilojoules.
Biofuels is good for us. The price of food is way up.[good for us farmers] You pay more for food we make more money. That’s all right with me and phil will be happy. Farmers make lots of money all the rest pay and pay. Tooo bad.
Right you are, Fred. I omitted that. So the actual number is 37.5.
Indeed – producing oil wells in the midst of wheat fields can be
seen in Alberta – likely in Saskatchewan too.
Greens may or may not mean well, but
they are destructive.
How many tractors run exclusively on ethanol? If it made any sense farmers would have converted to it years ago.
Mention that to a leftist moron and they just drool for a while and then repeat talking points. While the education system trains them to be stupid, they have yet to come up with a ‘unified theory of stupidity’ that can answer such questions. Obviously they need more funding, for the children.
When will people realize that opposition to recycling used fryer oil as fuel is counterproductive in every way.
I’m opposed to growing food for fuel, however a myopic view towards recycling used fryer oil is foolish, and only demonstrates an uninformed view of reality.
For those of you out there that don’t like burning Ethanol in you vehicles;
Try out pure-gas.org ( http://pure-gas.org/ )
It lists the stations in the US and Canada that sell gasoline without ethanol. While traveling through the states I found many stations (using this list)that sold no ethanol reg at the same price as other brand reg. In Canada, I’ve only found a few that do but only in their more costly premium brands. I pay for it sometimes just for the better mileage and my car does run a bit better, but I don’t need the octane and prefer unethed reg.
There seems to be more stations on the list every couple of months when I check.
It appears there is an increasing demand to get rid of ethanol in auto fuel
does this mean I should quit pi$$ing my gas tank on the home from the bar????
Ethical CANOLA Oil for all – brought to you by PETA and other old nuts and berries has-bins!
“First, the human daily calorie requirement is approximately 5,000 calories/day…”
5000 calories a day?? Sure – if you’re michael moore.
mhb23re
Ethanol is -hell- on fuel systems. Corrosive, attracts water, messes up rubber parts… terrible stuff.
Water/Alcohol injection to a turbo-diesel or turbo-gasoline engine though, that’s awesome. Nice anti-knock, reduces intake temp, reduces plug fouling and engine deposits, reduces NOx and SO2 pollution by regulating combustion temps, and it -doesn’t- frig up the fuel system.
As a child I was taught it was immoral to destroy food, or waste food in any way. Using food for fuel is not just nonsense, it is wrong.
small c conservative has it right. Although I would add that grain which is not usable for human or animal consumption because of weather related grade quality could have a role in fuel production rather than being dumped to rot.
Our old 88 Camry would not run properly on ethanol blended fuels. This is the main reason why I use premium in our Pilot.
“market pressures in Brazil, the 2nd largest producer of biofuels after the U.S., are pushing the price of ethanol above that of gasoline”
This is an Outrage, I tell ya.
This must be the work of the ultra right-wing.
You know who they are. Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and that Mike Harris guy from Ontario.
Higher prices for food,I love it. I would like to thank all the GREENS out there. Keep up all the good work. I grow it you pay. Good deal for us poor Sask. farmers.
When will people realize that opposition to recycling used fryer oil as fuel is counterproductive in every way…
Posted by: North of 60 at September 4, 2011 2:50 PM
Now, if we could only get the entire population of Toronto to eat french fries 3 x 7 x 365, we could probably power the TTC buses for what….21.42 hours?
There’s nothing inherently wrong with using used cooking oil as motor fuel; it’s just that there is not very much of the stuff compared to the demand for motor fuel.
And the used fryer oil was not simply being tossed in the dump. For many years, it’s been picked up by special trucks and hauled to a “reduction” plant, where it goes into products like soap, glycerin, or animal feed. So it’s not being wasted.
Yes, a lot of the fryer oil was going into landfills. Those of us that use it know that. The ‘renderers’ collecting it were only in the big cities, the rest went to waste.
No sensible person is suggesting that fryer oil can displace a significant amount of petro fuel. The fact that it can’t makes it no less useful. The important fact that most of you miss is that integer percents of biodiesel added to petro diesel significantly reduces the particulate unburned hydrocarbons in diesel fuel exhaust that causes so much respiratory distress. If the used fryer oil plus the non-food-grade canola seeds is used to make biodiesel as a diesel fuel additive then the toxic urban pollution can be significantly reduced. What person in their right mind would see a problem with that?
Don’t let your myopic hatred of anything you perceive as ‘green’ get in the way of intelligent thought.
It’s easy to test gasoline for ethanol content.
Use a tall container like a soft drink or water bottle. Fill it to about 1/4 with water and make a mark on the bottle at the top of the water column. Then add gasoline to the 3/4 point. Cap and shake well for about half a minute then let it set for a few hours to completely separate. The ethanol will dissolve into the water and the division point between the two liquids will rise if alcohol is present. It’s easy to scale the distances and compute ethanol percent in the gasoline.
Don’t let your myopic hatred of anything you perceive as ‘green’ get in the way of intelligent thought.
Posted by: North of 60 at September 4, 2011 7:58 PM
An admittedly difficult thing to do, now-a-days. When ‘green’ and ‘intelligent thought’ so rarely go together.
Thanks for proving my point.
Thanks for proving my point.
Posted by: North of 60 at September 5, 2011 12:32 AM
And you, mine….
North of 60, there -are- other uses for expired fry oil than fuel, that’s why its collected and saved by restaurants. Animal food, chemical feed-stocks, surfactants and soap, fertilizer, all use fry grease in whole or in part.
Fry oil makes some pretty expensive fuel.
In fact, a major issue for the guys making synthetic oil out of slaughterhouse “waste” is the price of the raw material. Turns out all that goo gets used down to the last drop for all kinds of things. Same deal for manure, chicken trash, all kinds of bio “waste”. The stuff is too expensive to make fuel out of when you can get oil out of the ground, even at $100 a barrel. That’s $2.40/gallon US for crude, incidentally. 42 gallons to the barrel.
The one thing nobody seems to want to do is make methanol out of sawdust. Don’t know why.
The Phantom
“The one thing nobody seems to want to do is make methanol out of sawdust. Don’t know why.”
In the past methanol (methol hydrate)was used for lighting, antifreeze, fuel treatment in winter variously. It was produced by distructive distilation of wood. The waste product was charcoal, which was then used to fuel the ovens.
Then as funny thing occurred….BBQ….the demand for methanol had declined and charcoal was in big demand for BBQ fuel….the methanol became a more or less byproduct used to fuel the ovens.
I suspect that sawdust is difficult to handle in that system…but I suspect the charcoal brickets could be sawdust rendered to charcoal and then pressed into brickets…although pressing charcoal unto brickets is more likely.
In the past steam power sawmills feed their boilers with sawdust….and frequently burned down…the mills had no fire-insurance because it was more economic to have the sucker burn down every 5 years.
Something like the steam thrashing engines being fuel with straw on the tree-less west.
sasquatch, good points.
I’ve been to many a steam engine show and watched those big old machines bang and chuff their way through plowing, thrashing, log sawing etc. They are quite a spectacle.
I’m really glad we have diesels. ~:D
The one thing nobody seems to want to do is make methanol out of sawdust. Don’t know why.
Posted by: The Phantom
That’s obvious. It’s significantly cheaper to make methanol from natural gas. That’s why most methanol comes from places like Trinidad or Chile where there is an abundance of natural gas and not much of a local market for it.
Fry oil makes some pretty expensive fuel. Posted by: The Phantom
Most of us are making diesel fuel from used fryer oil at about half the cost of petro diesel at the pump, therefore your statement has no validity.
Do you know about Google or Bing? They can be very useful sources of information to answer your questions so you don’t continue to spout misinformation solely based on your feelings and opinions.
“Most of us are making diesel fuel from used fryer oil at about half the cost of petro diesel at the pump, therefore your statement has no validity.”
North of 60, how much of the pump price is tax?
Fry oil diesel is only cheaper because it isn’t taxed as fuel. No royalties, no HST, no forty seven other rip-offs from well to gas tank. You’re staying ahead by DIYing yourself around a tax loophole.
The actual -cost- of the material and the processing is higher than diesel from crude. Economies of scale in processing and transport, lower raw material cost all on the petroleum side.
Its a great idea for an individual like yourself. Dodging tax is always great. 🙂 But for a nation, then its super expensive.
Wrong again — the jurisdiction I live in has exempted any tax on non-petroleum fuels. You really need to do more research before spouting off with your unfounded opinions.
You obviously missed this the first time, so read it very slowly so it actually sinks in this time.
No sensible person is suggesting that fryer oil can displace a significant amount of petro fuel. The fact that it can’t makes it no less useful. The important fact that most of you miss is that integer percents of biodiesel added to petro diesel significantly reduces the particulate unburned hydrocarbons in diesel fuel exhaust that causes so much respiratory distress. If the used fryer oil plus the non-food-grade canola seeds is used to make biodiesel as a diesel fuel additive then the toxic urban pollution can be significantly reduced. What person in their right mind would see a problem with that?
how much of the pump price is tax? Fry oil diesel is only cheaper because it isn’t taxed as fuel.
Wrong again – the average fuel tax in Canada is 25 cents per liter. Even if it costs half the price of petro-diesel to make, it would still be much cheaper, even if it was taxed, and in most jurisdictions it’s not.
Do you even check on facts before gracing us with your risible opinions?