Critical policy recommendations mentioned above (Flex fuel GEM mandate, Alternative fuel infrastructure tax credit, and Government vehicle purchase mandate).
We must solve the “chicken and egg” problem of the alcohol fuel market by forcing initial demand.Increase the blending mandate of ethanol in the gas that we currently buy to 15%. Mandate fuel blenders to buy any ethanol offered to them until they meet the 15% minimum.
Cars can safely run on 15% ethanol using the current infrastructure. This will guarantee demand until enough flex fuel cars and flex fuel pumps are in service.Any newly built gasoline station should be able to carry any alcohol fuel in all pumps.
Improve the ethanol distribution infrastructure.Eliminate anti-competitive practices in gasoline distribution. Exempt gas station owners from exclusivity clauses if they cannot buy mixed blends from their exclusive supplier. The current law is not sufficient.
Gasoline companies’ use of anti competitive practices to stifle blended fuel distribution should be stopped, by legal means if necessary.An alcohol purchase mandate for gasoline distributors – force them to buy any quantity of blending alcohol like ethanol and methanol offered to them (similar to the electric utilities mandate for wind and solar).
It will cause distributors to offer incentives to their franchise gas station owners to convert pumps (since they will need to sell the blended gasoline).If the pace of fuel pump conversion is not satisfactory, then it could be mandated, although we do not believe it will be necessary.
Requires monitoring of both supply and demand.The government should not be in the business of selecting feedstock for ethanol (or other biofuels) production. Government intervention is required to reduce GHG. Therefore, any ethanol production and use cycle should have better global warming effect than the current gasoline production and use cycle, or it should be on a clear technological path to achieve that ratio in three years. This law should not be enforced by a permit procedure, but rather by a fine or conditional stop work order.
Current corn based ethanol is GHG positive vs. gasoline. The President should have the authority to remove this restriction in case of an oil shock (e.g., shortages caused by a terror attack).Eliminate the tariff on imported ethanol. It will encourage investors to invest in ethanol production from efficient plants in the developing world and export it to the U.S. “Growing ethanol” can lift many people out of poverty in countries that are friendly to us, especially in the Caribbean.
Ethanol demand could not be satisfied solely by internal U.S. production. The worldwide potential of growing bio-mass in developing countries is $500 billion dollars a year (vs. combined worldwide aid of $60 billion).Corn subsidies – given the immense investments already made in this sector, continue for at least four years (to help kick start the market). In four years, re-evaluate the market – subsidies may not be needed.
Until we have a healthy supply system, we should help our farmers. The $4 billion subsidy saved us $60 billion in oil imports in 2008.Maintain the current producers’ and blenders’ tax credit programs and extend them until 2018.
Investors in ethanol production need a stable horizon. Incentives that have to be renewed frequently discourage investment.Modify EPA regulations that give preferential treatment to gasoline.
It is just one of the ways the gasoline monopoly is maintained.Alternative methods for producing ethanol – government intervention is not required except in research.
The government should stay away from choosing which ethanol production method is better. Let the market decide.Recently bio-fuels in general and ethanol specifically have been blamed for the rise in food prices around the world and for causing hunger in poor countries. We now know better. The two leading components of the rise in food prices were oil price and speculation. This is evident by the recent identical drop in oil and food prices while ethanol production has been rising.
The only reason why this subject is mentioned in the energy policy is the lesson to be learned. The anti-ethanol campaign was largely funded by oil interests. We should expect that foreign oil producing governments will try to sabotage this energy policy. We need the FBI to pay special attention to defending our independence in this area.
Yes, it should. But let’s be careful to use equivalent boundaries for ethanol, methanol and gasoline when we do these life cycle studies. The current raging debate about so called indirect land use effects for biofuels is an example of different (much more rigorous) boundaries being applied to biofuels than to petroleum fuels. What folly!
For those of you not from California, this is the new regulation proposed in California that has specific land use “penalties”. Of note:
On page 30: The is a table showing that on the average Ethanol produced from corn emits roughly 2/3 of the CO2 emissions of gasoline. However a strait 50% land use penalty is applied which takes ethanol produced from corn to be almost as high as gasoline.
On page 24: “To assess the emissions from land use changes, staff used a global trade model to estimate the GHG emissions impact. The Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model is discussed in detail in the Staff Report and related Appendices. In general, the model evaluates the worldwide land use conversion associated with the production of crops for fuel production. Different types of land use have different rates of storing carbon. Multiplying the changes in land use times an emission factor per land conversion type results in an estimate of the GHG emissions impacts of land conversions.”
On page 38: “Carbon intensities are calculated under the LCFS on a full lifecycle basis. This means that the carbon intensity value assigned to each fuel reflects the GHG emissions associated with that fuel’s production, transport, storage, and use. In addition to these direct GHG emissions, some fuels create emissions due to indirect land use change effects. An indirect land use change impact is initially triggered when an increase in the demand for a crop-based biofuel begins to drive up prices for the necessary feedstock crop. This price increase causes farmers to devote a larger proportion of their cultivated acreage to that feedstock crop. Supplies of the displaced food and feed commodities subsequently decline, leading to higher prices for those commodities. The lowest-cost way for many farmers to take advantage of these higher commodity prices is to bring non-agricultural lands into production. These land use conversions release the carbon sequestered in soils and vegetation. The resulting carbon emissions constitute the “indirect” land use change impact of increased biofuel production.”
Note that this generalization of land use penalizes existing growers as if they are cultivating the land for this first time.
Note also that even for new land the land use transformation penalty should only apply to the first year of cultivation. But the way the regulation is phrased it penalizes the field for eternity.
Last note there is no penalty for gasoline produced from existing sources of oil. There is no surcharge for the GHG emissions that are incurred by the vast number of employees working for the oil companies (they are the largest employers in California). There is no surcharge for the GHG emission of the US armed forces protecting the oil supply (the US armed forces is the single largest user of petroleum products in the US). There is no surcharge for the GHG emissions needed to clean all the pollution generated by the petrochemical industry in California, particularly in ground water treatment plants which are a significant electricity consumer in the state.
Indeed – one can actually argue that in a broader context ethanol production in the US has helped keeping the oilprices down by upto 15% thus helped reducing the effects of the high oil prices on food prices
Matthew Wald’s recent article (see below) in the Times is a pretty good summary of the status and challenges facing the emerging cellulosic biofuels industry.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/business/energy-environment/15biofuel.html?hpw
There are now 12 different cellulosic biofuel (mostly ethanol to my knowledge) production facilities either operating or in different stages of construction. KL Energy was actually the first to produce commercial celllosic ethanol, but the Coskata plant is noteable because if is focused on advanced technology, while KL uses established technologies. We will see more cellulosic biofuel plants opening next year using a wide variety of new and older technologies. As Wald points out, the technology developers like Coskata are working the kinks out of their processes.
While this new industry has a lot of development work to do, given the amount of investment going into biomass conversion, I feel quite confident these process problems will be worked out. A emerging critical issue is how we will supply the larger commercial scale plants that will follow on these demonstration plants with the thousands of tons of biomass per day they will need over the 30 years or so of their useful lives. Feedstock and logistic issues are emerging as a critical next step for attention and investment for all cellulosic biofuels, not just ethanol and not just fermentation systems.
Collectively, the EU and the US have spent billions of dollars to be able to construct the inefficient behemoth factories, which in the distant future might ingest megatonnes or gigatonnes of apparently free biomass “trash” and spit out priceless liquid transportation fuels. It is therefore prudent to ask the following question: Where, how much, and for how long will the Earth produce the extra biomass to quench our unending thirst to drive 1 billion cars and trucks? The answer to this question is immediate and unequivocal: Nowhere, close to nothing, and for a very short time indeed. On the average, our planet has zero excess biomass at her disposal.
Here is my reasoning: http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/papers/Biofuels/OECDSept102007TWPatzek.pdf
The purpose of this paper is to: 1. Show that the current and proposed “cellulosic” ethanol (a “second generation” agrofuel) refineries are inefficient, low energy-density concentrators of solar light.
2. Prove that even if these refineries were marvels of efficiency, they still would be able to make but a dent in our runaway consumption of transportation fuels, because the Earth simply has little or no biomass to spare in the long run.
3. Propose a transportation fuel alternative that does not rely on agrofuels and show why this alternative is at least 100 times more efficient than agrofuel-based systems.
Back when Steven Chu was Director of the Berkeley Lab in the spring of 2008, I listened to one of his Berkeley “town-hall” seminars on energy, including biofuels. During the question period, a young man stood up and challenged him: “How can you advocate biofuel when people are starving in Darfur?” To my best recollection, Steven answered that starvation was more a result of unequal access and distribution of food, that several bioenergy studies had indicated that with genetically-engineered biofuel stocks, the earth could in principle grow all the energy and all the food needed to sustain the world’s population. My opinion: Clearly this is a very high-stakes proposition, and while I think biofuel research should continue, as a moral principle I think that large scale deployment of biofuel production should not go forward unless and until world hunger is eradicated first. While I am not qualified to argue with the scientific analysis papers on agrofuel sustainability, I had an eyewitness experience growing up on a farm in the Palo Verde desert that convinces me that “free”, non-edible, biomass “trash” is far more valuable to recycle into soil for growing crops than for fuel use. My father bought 150 acres of virgin desert land so poor it could not initially grow any crops, even with irrigation- and fertilizer was too expensive for us. For 8 years, I helped him transport tractor-trailer-loads of free cotton gin trash to be plowed into the sandy soil, until it finally became wonderfully productive. Seeing the year-by-year improvement of that land was unforgettable. My father explained to me why biomass recycling was key to sustainable soils management. I will never forget that lesson.
It is indeed critical to build soil organic matter to increase soil fertility, both for biofuels and food production. This is a win-win situation if we apply just a bit of common sense. Perennial grasses and double crops (combined with corn production) will increase overall soil fertility while capturing more of the solar energy and improving the GHG profiles of biofuels. While not neglecting worst-case situations, let’s do our best to exploit the many synergies that are potentially available from biofuels–and pursue those.
The bio-fuels debate is a subset of a larger issue: The future supply of liquid fuels.
The United States and other countries need to solve a major energy problem: where to get replacement liquid fuels as the availability of oil becomes more and more scarce. Even with a great deal more of electrified mass transportation (trains, light rail, trams) and even if every vehicle were a plug-in hybrid, there would still be an enormous need for liquid fuels for longer trips beyond the range of plug-in hybrid batteries. Even if batteries in plug-in hybrid vehicles had a 40 mile range, this would still leave 38% of the miles we drive today to be accomplished by liquid fuels. Assuming that half of our miles could be accomplished by electrified mass transportation, this would still leave about 19% of the present demand for liquid fuels in transportation. Then there is the need for additional liquid fuels for air travel and ship transportation. Stating this a bit differently, even if the U.S. spent many years and trillions of dollars in creating an electrified mass transportation system and more billions to trillions of dollars for a whole plug-in hybrid industry with its supporting sources of electricity and transmission lines, this would still leave us with a demand for about a fifth of the oil use we have today, treating cars and trucks similarly. This is rather optimistic because long trips take up more large truck miles than those in passenger vehicles. Add to this the demand for oil for petrochemicals, synthetic fibers, pharmaceuticals, etc. In 2007 the U.S. consumed 20,680,000 barrels of oil per day. One fifth of this amount is about 4,136,000 barrels of oil per day, which is still more consumption than any other country in the world except China and Japan. Another comparison: In 2007 Russia consumed 2,858,000 barrels per day. So where are we going to get all this liquid fuel from, even after we have built an electrified mass transportation and put a plug-in hybrid in every garage?
To solve this huge liquid fuel challenge some first turned to ethanol derived from corn, since large quantities of ethanol from sugar cane, such as that produced in Brazil, can not be grown in the climate of the United States. Even if sugar cane or sugar beets were grown in the U.S. they would not be up to the task of meeting our liquid energy needs. It is now widely accepted that ethanol from corn is an energy failure (1) as are several other biomass schemes that impact food supplies. Corn production today causes more soil erosion than any other crop. It has also been suggested that corn stover be used as a source of ethanol. Removing corn stover would increase soil erosion by 100 fold according to investigations (2). Subsidized corn-based ethanol is still the number one source of profits for agrobiz giant ADM. As are many energy schemes afloat today, support for corn-based ethanol is a result of politics, not good science or wise national energy policy.
Some are now counting on a “second generation” approach to producing ethanol from biomass, in particular using switchgrass instead of corn. Switchgrass has a number of advantages over corn in terms of net energy consumption and net greenhouse gas releases. However, earlier claims about the amount of ethanol that could be produced per hectare from switchgrass have been shown to be significantly overstated. These earlier estimates of the ability of switchgrass to yield ethanol were based on very small research plots, typically less than 5 square meters in size. These small research plots were hand-sewn, hand-weeded, and hand-harvested which maximized their output. Much more realistic results (3) have been reported by Schmer, et al, based on multi-year farm-sized experiments in several locations in middle America. These recent results show that the ethanol yield per hectare from switchgrass is similar to that from corn, provided that modern farming techniques are applied. Modern farming techniques are based on the use of fertilizers, herbicides, diesel fuel for tractors, etc. These experiments also investigated ethanol production from switchgrass grown in areas where there was far less energy input, such as man-made prairies. The measured switchgrass ethanol output in these low energy input areas was considerably less than those areas that used modern farming techniques and are therefore unattractive.
Schmer, et al, caution about comparing ethanol yields from corn to those from switchgrass. The corn-to-ethanol conversion technologies are far more mature than the switchgrass-to-ethanol technologies. The sugars and starches in switchgrass are more tightly bound than those in corn and this will result in higher conversion costs and greater energy losses. Wright and Brown have estimated that the cost of a cellulosic facility would be some five times greater than a comparable corn ethanol facility (4).
If 100% of U.S. corn production, or about 71.3 million acres’ worth, were used to make ethanol, this would be the energy equivalent of about 7% of the petroleum use in the U.S. (5). If all of these 71.3 million acres were converted from corn to growing switchgrass and modern farming techniques were applied, then, at best, this would still only produce the same 7% as the all-corn scenario, but would likewise cause a huge food/fuel conflict. To avoid such a food/fuel conflict, we might consider limiting the growth of switchgrass to poorer land now under the control of the Conservation Reserve Program, some 43.7 million acres. At best, growing switchgrass on this more erosion prone land would produce about 3.4 percent of today’s petroleum energy equivalent. If greater energy losses are incurred in the biorefineries to convert switchgrass to ethanol, perhaps the final yield might be in the range of 2.5%. This is well below the 19% we need under the optimistic future transportation case described above.
A simple Rule of Thumb adds perspective to the Bio-Fuels debate: nature only converts about one part in a thousand of the solar insolation to stored energy that might be useful to humans. This very low energy conversion rate creates issues of its own. It means that large areas are needed, that the net energy from plant systems converted to ethanol will inherently be small or negative, and the net amount of greenhouse gases will also hover around zero, unless there is a net increase in greenhouse gases due to releasing carbon compounds originally stored in the soil into the atmosphere when convering fallow land into biomass factories.
At this time our best hope for producing liquid fuels is to employ an established chemical engineering process: converting coal to liquid fuels (CTL). However, this time we have to do better. In the past this CTL process used coal both as a chemical feedstock and as a source of process heat. Such an approach releases far too much greenhouse gases per gallon of liquid fuel. Therefore a number of scientists have published papers that suggest a different source of energy for CTL process heat, such as high temperature nuclear power plants which do not release carbon dioxide. Others warn that coal reserves themselves are more limited than thought before. This is a second reason to conserve the use of coal in the CTL process to just being a chemical feedstock. It also raises questions about the long term viability of coal generated electricity, our present source of about half of our electricity. If coal resources are more limited than we thought before, the it may be better to use coal in a CTL process, even if carbon capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide from coal electric plants is eventually shown to be viable. There are lots of other ways to make electricity than with coal,i.e., nuclear, natural gas, and renewable energy and we need the coal for liquid fuels.
References: (1) “Europeans Reconsider Biomass Goal”. James Kanter, NY Times, July 9, 2008. (2)” Biofuels, Solar, and Wind as Renewable Energy Systems”., Professor David Pimentel, editor, to be published. (3) “Net Energy of Cellulosic Ethanol from Switchgrass”, M.R.Schmer, et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol.105, No.2, January 15, 2008. (4) “Comparative Economics of Biorefineries Based on Biochemical and Thermochemical Platforms”, M.Wright and R.Brown, Biofuels,Bioproducts, and Biorefining, Vol.1,2007, pp 49-56. (5)Personal communication, Professor David Pimentel, Cornell University, August 7, 2009.
Mr. Specter identifies some important issues, but a bit of balance is needed to the opinions of Dr. David Pimentel which Mr. Specter echoes. For example, he might examine some of the other biofuel-related papers provided by OEP, as could others who are interested in forming balanced, well-reasoned conclusions. Specifically, no one is proposing the all ethanol be derived from corn, and it is incorrect to assume that we are already using our agricultural land either efficiently for solar energy capture or for food production. We are not.
I thank Professor Patzek for the information he has provided detailing his thermodynamic arguments against large scale biofuel production. I have carefully read his reasoning (actually twice) and respectfully disagree with his conclusions. Dr. Patzek argues that biofuels will cause ecosystem collapse when all biomass is removed. While the principles of thermodynamics are well established, I believe a little consideration of the evidence will show that his conclusions are not correct. Sugar cane has been grown on the same lands in Sao Paulo, Brazil for over 400 years with all of the above ground biomass either harvested or burned. Rice has been grown on the same fields for even longer periods with harvesting of the grain and burning of the residual straw. There has been no ecosystem collapse in either case even though all the above ground biomass is removed. There simply is no evidence to support Prof. Patzek’s conclusions and lots of evidence to conclude otherwise.
It is true that biofuel systems must develop ways to recycle mineral nutrients. The basic technology for doing this has been worked out for biofuels derived from pyrolysis and gasification. Similar approaches should be developed for the so-called “sugar platform”. Apart from these minerals, plant matter consists of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Burning biofuels returns these elements to the great carbon and hydrologic cycles to which they belong, to be fixed again as energy-rich plant matter by the action of solar radiation. The process sounds pretty sustainable to me.
Prof. Patzek further argues that biofuels are “inefficient”. There are two elements to consider with regard to biofuel efficiency. First is the biorefinery. It is true that current cellulosic biofuel conversion systems are not as efficient as they need to be. This is a major reason for the large investment of public and private funds to develop cellulosic biofuels. The first generation of oil refineries was not particularly efficient either. Biorefinery efficiency will improve with time as did oil refinery efficiency.
The second aspect of biofuel efficiency is solar energy collection efficiency. Over the entire year, a corn field will fix about 1% of the total available solar radiation, while a sugar cane field will capture 4% or so. Manmade solar collectors achieve 10% plus. But Mother Nature is not a specialist and she is not committed to “efficiency”, the single minded pursuit of a one objective. She multitasks. In addition to fixing solar energy, green plant s provides human food, animal feed, oxygen and pure water through evapotranspiration. Green plants are also about the only practical near term way of sequestering large amounts of carbon. No solar collector yet designed can provide us all these services. Plus, plants are a lot prettier than solar collectors.
Like Professor Patzek, I happen to support the use of electricity derived from solar energy to provide transportation services. Battery electric vehicles will become more and more important. But there are many transportation services that no conceivable battery can provide. For example, the 30 billion gallons per year of jet fuel we use will not be replaced by batteries any time soon. Also, solar collectors work better in the drier, sunnier areas of the country while biofuels are more readily produced in the wetter, cloudier areas of the US. They complement each other. We need them both. And if we are careful how we develop these systems, both can be sustainable.
We’ll know the government is serious when they treat the energy problem like the Reagan administration treated SDI — Star Wars.
No tax incentives, loans, cost sharing or rebates that are all geared to allow large companies with resources to get lot’s of federal dollars. The private market is NOT up to the task. Biofuels cannot make money the way a good old-fashioned speculative bubble can. So the Wall Street titans are not buying.
Spend the money, issue the contracts, buy the fuels — just like the Pentagon does with bullets, bombers, bayonnets, and battleships. The US military is the largest single user of petroleum in the country. Give out a contract if you like the fuel — same way as he Pentagon funds any weapons system. Cost-plus, etc. Assign government staff to monitor progress like the uniformed armed services assign liaisons to the weapons contractors. The Pentagon would never stomach not having a weapon because some small company could not find somebody on Wall Street to provide a cost share. It’s ridiculous to see the differences in how the military procures materiel for it’s use, compared to the DOE and other civilian agencies.
Until this happens, everybody knows that the government is not really serious.
Biofuels could contribute much more to displacing oil and reducing GHG if Congress harmonizes multiple conflicting definitions and standards of “renewable biomass” in existing law. The Council for Sustainable Biomass Production (http://www.CSBP.org) includes NGO’s, agriculture and energy industries, academia and environmentalists. CSBP is developing consensus criteria for definitions and certifications for basic and enhanced levels of sustainability. Congress must provide federal regulatory agencies and industry with consistent definitions and performance-based standards for sustainability and GHG lifecycle analysis. The goal should be simple, inclusive and neutral definitions concerning feedstocks, manufacturing technologies and products with incentives for innovations that achieve and, importantly, exceed targets for “sustainable renewable biomass.”
Ethanol, methanol, and biodiesel are already competitive at roughly $60 to $80 per barrel of oil. Congress should hold American automakers accountable for their December 2009 testimony that they could manufacture 80 percent of their light-duty automobiles as flexible fuel vehicles by 2015 under H.R. 1476/S. 835, the Open Fuel Standard Act of 2009 or the OFS Act introduced by Reps. Eliot Engel (D-NY-17), Bob Inglis (R-SC-4) and Sens. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA). Providing Americans the option to fill their tanks with gasoline/diesel, ethanol, methanol, or biodiesel would incentivize investments in renewable fuel infrastructure and provide significant long term benefits.
–> excerpt submitted by the Offices of Rep. Roscoe Barlett. Op-Ed, “OPEC would benefit from ongoing failure by lawmakers to act,” published in The Hill on 2/22/2010. Read the full text here: http://thehill.com/special-reports-archive/757-energy-a-environment-february-2010/82917-opec-would-benefit-from-ongoing-failure-by-lawmakers-to-act
Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md-6) is Co-Chairman of the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Caucus as well as a member of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee of the Committee on Science and Technology.
It is indeed important for Congress to resolve conflicting definitions of renewable biomass. Congress should also resolve the different greenhouse gas “accounting” rules in EISA. These rules treat GHG emissions from gasoline and diesel differently, less strictly, than emissions from biofuels.