Warning is sounded on ethanol use

[Rose Siding]

Source: LAT

The fuel would create more ground-level ozone than gasoline if used heavily, a study finds. Critics disagree.....

Ethanol, widely touted as a greenhouse-gas-cutting fuel, would have serious health effects if heavily used in cars, producing more ground-level ozone than gasoline, particularly in the Los Angeles Basin, according to a Stanford University study out today.

"Ethanol is being promoted as a clean and renewable fuel that will reduce global warming and air pollution," said Mark Z. Jacobson, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and author of the study in the online edition of Environmental Science and Technology. "But our results show that a high blend of ethanol poses an equal or greater risk to public health than gasoline, which already causes significant health damage."
...
The study determined that a 9% increase in ozone-related deaths would occur in Greater Los Angeles, and a 4% increase nationally, by 2020 if a form of ethanol called E85, were used instead of gasoline. In the Southeast, by contrast, mortality rates would decrease slightly.
...
He used a computer model to simulate air quality in 2020 — when ethanol-fueled vehicles are expected to be widely available in the United States — with a focus on Los Angeles. His study is the first to combine emissions data with multiple other variables, including climate, population density and current amounts of air pollution, he said.


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ethanol18apr18,0,7852828.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[mod mom]

1. Annual food crops (which must be re-planted every year) are an inefficent source

of energy, besides the excellent points you make about the safety. We need leadership to look beyond the mis-information put out by industry lobbyists.

[papau]

2. One can't approach "decision" via one factor at a time - if electric cars should hybrid

engine be fueled by E85 via algae, or should we only use E15 or no alcohol? And are we using diesel or not for that hybrid engine in 2020?

[DemReadingDU]

3. Who sponsored the study?

Who gave Stanford University the money to do this study?

Maybe if we followed the money, we could find out the real reason for this report.

[Odin2005]

4. Not that I agree with the study, but...

I hate the "all science is biased because of how it's funded" attitude.

[SmokingJacket]

8. I agree, but...

knowing whether or not interested parties sponsored the study is important in weighing its validity, especially if the science has a large political impact.

In an ideal world, we'd be able to look at the science itself and trust it -- unfortunately, there is a lot of bad and biased science out there.

[Pacifist Patriot]

11. How do you feel about the attitude...

"reserve judgment until bias of funding can be ruled out?"

[Eugene]

6. Ethanol is no magic bullet. Smog is one of the known trade-offs.

Jacobson has criticized ethanol before, especially Shrub's
current push to expand its use. Big Corn is as big a player
in this as Big Oil.

[razzleberry]

9. big oil hates ethanol

thousands of new competitors.
unbrandable product.

ok, E85 is 85 percent unbrandable

[KittyWampus]

19. true, but ethanol simply maintains another inefficient, undemocratic status quo. Centralized energy

centralized energy production, where materials are shipped to a central area for some company to grow a crop who then ships the crop to a central area where another company makes the ethanol and then the ethanol is shipped across the country simply allows monopolies to control energy.

See how much energy is wasted transporting materials and ethanol?

It's inefficient and undemocratic.

No matter how many ethanol produceres the economy might start with, corporate culture will consolidate them.

Better to produce energy on the local level at the town dump using thermal depolymerization.

Drive to your local dump and deposit your garbage and fill up your tank while you're there with energy made from your garbage.

[Chemical Bill]

23. Interestingly enough...

my landfill has energy generation, run by a private company who sells the energy back to me. Some days you're the windshield, some days you're the bug.

Bill

[razzleberry]

24. lust for easy-petroleum-money, warps the politics of the world

easy money has a very strong appeal.

do you think Sudan-Darpur,
would be suffering as it is, without interest in petroleum?

[meldroc]

5. IIRC, Corn-based ethanol burns more energy to make than it provides.

Corn is very energy-intensive to make, and doesn't provide a heck of a lot of ethanol per acre. In fact, it burns more energy to make corn-based ethanol than the ethanol provides.

But, that's what the lobbyists on K street are pushing for - those corn farmers want their subsidies.

Why not sugar cane or sugar beets? That gives more ethanol energy than corn. It's not like the corn farmers can't switch...

[frogcycle]

7. sugar cane/beets won't grow in a lot of places corn will

plenty of tropical and subtropical countries could benefit - like Cuba, DR, Puerto Rico - from a big increase in sugar-derived ethanol use - but that is not helping Cargill et al

what WILL grow every place corn will grow and gives a much higher yield at much lower cost is switchgrass - a perennial native prairie grass that needs no fertilizer, irrigation, or pesticides. Basically you cut it in the fall, roll it up in those big round bales, and send it for processing. Processing is more complicated than with corn - the cellulose needs to be broken down using acids or bacteria - kind of like fermentation - but there are test processing plants working now

switchgrass is second only to sugarcane in overall energy yield when you account for all the costs of growing and processing - and it will grow in the midwest (the prairie)

Switchgrass could and should be planted right now on the 40 million acres currently in the "land bank" where farmers are paid to not grow anything. It takes a few years to mature; it spreads via rhizomes, so thickens up over time. This could produce a "seed crop" to expand to other areas if/when it catches on. It would provide both seed and transplant "plugs." If it never catches on, well, then, those acres are beautiful "amber waves of grain" and they are scavenging carbon from the atmosphere like mad.

what a lot of people overlook with biofuel vs fossil fuel is that teh carbon released by burning the biofuel was captured from the atmosphere in just the last year or so, whereas teh fossil fuel has been sequestered for millions of years. In the former case it is a near-zero net affect on carbon in atmosphere; the latter is a big increase

this study may have produced actual facts, when the chicken-little "spin" is removed. If the combustion process using ethanol needs fine-tuning, well, fine then, get cracking on the solution. If it is used just to say "stick with business as usual" then it is suspect top to bottom.

[meldroc]

15. Interesting.

I was suggesting sugar beets because we've grown them in lots of places in the US - it was a huge part of Colorado's economy historically, and can be grown just about anywhere in the grain belt.

Sugar cane does require warmer weather, though it can be grown in the South.

But switchgrass does intrigue me.

Personally, I don't think there is one magic bullet that will meet our energy needs while being totally green. We'll need multiple solutions to take the place of fossil fuels. Ethanol is one of them. We also need wind power, solar power, biodiesel (I hear algae-derived biodiesel has good yields without causing a huge environmental mess,) and next-generation nuclear technology, as well as whatever other green energy technologies become available.

[frogcycle]

26. yes, a comprehensive strategy will include many methods/sources

I just think the investment in, and potential payback from, getting a national switchgrass crop started is a no-brainer. As i said, even if you don't make ethanol from it, it STILL helps with the CO2 problem.

Algae is another high-value crop. Needs bodies of water and harvesting is cumbersome, but it yields more anergy than it costs. And of course, Algae is what started it all! We would never have developed our oxygen-rich environment without it. Check this out: Algae Awards

[wordpix]

21. how about fuel from invasive plants? We've got tons of the stuff just in one lake in my town

We could really get the economy going on this one if someone could figure it out. Think of it: an unending source of fuel from the despised alien invasive plants and it would help our native plants and animals as we clear out the invasives...

I can dream, can't I? :think:

[trogdor]

16. Or yard waste.

I bet if you mashed the grass clippings you wind up raking up and piling somewhere, you'd get a decent yield of ethanol for fuel use. I wouldn't recommend drinking it.

[Chemical Bill]

20. That "fact" was made possible by big oil money.

You are recalling a study from Cornell, whose author (Pimental) works with another (Patzek) who is funded by oil companies. They arrive at the conclusion that ethanol requires more energy than it gives by, among other things, adding the energy required to make tractors, and assuming that all farm machinery will be replaced every year or two. Suffice it to say that the studies are not peer reviewed.

So, although corn is not the best source of ethanol, it does stretch our energy supplies by up to 2/3rds according to the DoE.

Bill

[RedEarth]

10. The air in Los Angeles now is so polluted now I don't know how anyone lives there

...and now ethanol posing a equal or greater risk than gasoline....doesn't sound too good. The information in this article combined with what I've read about ethanol in other articles, it sure doesn't sound like it's a very good option to gasoline.

[CRH]

12. Crops grown for he purpose of conversion to energy, ...

by the Second Law of Thermo Dynamics, are net energy losers by definition, and in practice. The politics behind corn for fuel needs serious education, to remove this issue from the pork barrel

[frogcycle]

27. wrong on the generalization; right on the corn

[benld74]

13. WATER is also effected!

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/nation/story/2CE7802268EB6382862572BD001D245F?OpenDocument&highlight=2%2C%22ethanol%22

[Gregorian]

14. It's the population.

We can't do anything in these numbers. Water. Food. Energy.

And the reason I don't say it's a combination of the numbers of people AND modern living is because we aren't going back to the prior lifestyle. We take hot showers, we ask for our farming to be done for us, and on and on.

We absolutely must get the numbers down to half of what they are, at the most.

[The2ndWheel]

17. Can any one thing go back and not alter everything else?

[Gregorian]

18. Well, we are going to go back in a sense.

But the problem is that we can't go back in the majority of cases. Refrigerators. Cars. We will begin to phase out of petroleum combustion. But half of the oil we use are killing people to get, is used for making things. Not for gasoline.

And population will decrease. I'm not worried about planet earth. I'm saying all of this for those who will be here in the next generation or two. We already fucked this generation. Well, some people don't mind. I do. I'm sick of moving to one place and the next as they get destroyed. Fortuna, California is about to get a wonderful Walmart. The logging mill closed, and the next step is to shit on what was a beautiful town. One less place I want to visit. But that's totally another subject. Aesthetics and economics.

[Chemical Bill]

22. We can almost eliminate ozone now.

There is technology now available to cut ground level ozone. It is a catalytic coating on the car radiator, which cleans the air that cools the radiator. This could be compulsory on all cars.

If you want to do even more to clean the air, consider a vehicle that comes with a PremAir catalyst on its radiator. The catalyst converts as much as 80 percent of the ground-level ozone it contacts into oxygen. The hotter and more polluted the air, the more smog-forming ozone PremAir destroys. PremAir catalysts currently are installed on all Volvos, as well as on the BMW 3 Series, Mercedes-Benz E-Class and Mitsubishi Galant.

http://www.edmunds.com/reviews/list/top10/105562/article.html

Anyway, this Stanford PR is big oil trying to scare us from using anything but their poison.

Bill

[Vilis Veritas]

25. Totally off topic...but,

I seem to remember reading that all of the corn used for ethanol production is GMO corn. Which could be killing the bee populations.

I think GMO based fuels should be banned!

What about walking? No bees die, however, there is that nasty by-product of breathing... ;-)

[MayorCandidate08]

28. One of my key issues is that we need a Ethanol plant

I am running for mayor of a smalled size city. Under republican control for the last 29 years. I am holding my own on this key issue. We are number 2 in un-employment in the state of Indiana, and corn and lime stone are our only key resources as it stands now. I am also pushing for a military contractor to look at our city, we are 5 miles south of CRAIN navel munitions base. I know that most of our military contractors prefer employees who speak Korean or Mexican and work for .50 a hr. But I have to at least try for my people.

[MayorCandidate08]

29. Please let me add....

I am also pushing to make the city a green city. Hybrid cars for police force, water, parks and some street dept's. We can make it work if we try!