Kansas’ GOP gubernatorial candidates and other politicians are pushing ethanol as an energy alternative and a potential economic development boon. But Julie Olmstead of the Land Institute in Salina has a commentary on today’s Opinion pages warning that biofuels are no magic bullet. She notes how much energy it takes to produce ethanol and biodiesel, and argues that the United States can’t produce enough crops to make much of a dent in our fossil fuel consumption. Her advice: “Rather than chase phantom substitutes for fossil fuels, we should focus on what can immediately both slow our contribution to global climate change and reduce our dependence on oil and other fossil fuels: cutting energy use.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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30 Comments
Julie Olmstead’s article on today’s EAGLE editorial page is a well thought out article. It raises alarms on the dangers of the growth of the ethanol industry in Kansas.
Yet, on other pages in the same EAGLE issue, three candidates for Kansas Governor were quoted as saying they encourage growth of the ethanol industry in Kansas.
The use of the underground acquifers in central and western Kansas for ethanol production severly endangers the water supplies of many communities including, in my opinion, Wichita.
I don’t know the percentages, but Wichita gets a portion, perhaps 50%, of its drinking water from the Cheney Reservoir. Cheney Reservoir, in turn, gets its water from the north branch of the Ninnescah River which starts up out in the Stafford County area. This water source is probably from the natural Ogalala underground reservoir which is rapidly being depleted.
Wichita’s other water source is from underground wells into an acquifer up around Halstead. This could be similarly endangered.
Someone needs to be examining this critical situation with the proliferation of ethanol plants in Kansas to determine if they are sustainable … quick before its too late.
You are exactly right. We constantly talk about reducing our demand upon foreign oil, but we seem to be blind to our outacontrol demand on domestic water. Raising more corn in SW Kansas to supply the ethanol plants is only going to exascerbate the problem. We need to increase fuel efficiency in autos – first and foremost – and then the demand for ethanol might abate. But we must also stop the mining of aquifer water at such ridiculous rates. This was one of the objectives of Wildlife & Parks buying the Circle K Ranch – to shutdown 42 water wells on the ranch. But myopia in the Kansas Legislature prevents any progress on that important objective.
While there seems to be wide differences of opinion about the cause of global warming, the fact it is occuring should be enough to force this country into making some serious decisions regarding the energy of the future.
Bear with me here: Nuclear plants should be built, and should be built asap. All other forms of energy production, sans coal and oil, should be exploited on a manhatten scale project.
The new, Type 4 nuclear plants work on a gas principle, not a water principle, so using water as a coolant is not needed. That makes it much easier to build plants in out of the way places. If they were built in clusters, they could be built with outputs rated at 10 gigawatts or more.
The main problem we will be running into, though, is the fact our energy grid is completely outdated. It casnnot carry the energy needed. At one million volts, the insulation on the carrying wires burns off. At the high currents needed to carry feed energy, wires get hot, stretch and sag.
A recent article had an answer for all those problems, and then some: Superconductors. Superconductors carry energy at little or no line loss. The current system we use losses 10% of the energy it carries by line resistance.
Superconductors need to be kept cold in order to superconduct. The supercables proposed would be cooled by hydrogen, which is also an energy source.
How do you produce hydrogen? By thermal crackers run off the excess heat generated by nuclear energy production. Also by using the energy not needed, at certain times, for hydrogen production.
So you get two sources of energy, electrical and hydrogen, and the capacity to carry the huge amounts of power needed for this country. That sure sounds like a step in the right direction.
Plus we could then put the land back to growing food instead of some ridiculous energy hungry bio-fuel.
Ethanol can be made from any biomass material – corn stalks, sawdust, lawn clippings, etc. It doens’t have to be just edible corn.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/ethanol.html
But still, the future is electric and that electricity should be generated through nuclear endergy. We don’t have any *real* alternative options.
Didn’t you say you were an ENGINEER, LRB?
Ethanol is alcohol. To brew alcohol, you need sugar and yeast.
I know this because I make my own wine.
Wood and grass clippings don’t have that much sugar in them so the cellulose has to be converted to sugar. That’s a big sticking point.
Also, had you read the article, Olmstead points out that there isn’t enough plant life in all of the United States to meet our enegry needs even if you included the forests.
This is exactly the kind of factual analysis we need from our paper. Garbage recycling is good, but it’s not going to solve our energy needs. Ethanol could be good for some applications in some ways, but it’s not going solve our problems.
I agree with your nuclear energy stance though. And FUSION technology should be funded to the max with all possible speed.
I think coal can also be cleaned up and “gasified.” We have plenty of coal, so this might be a transitional technology we could use until we get something better, like nuclear fusion.
“Ethanol is alcohol. To brew alcohol, you need sugar and yeast.
I know this because I make my own wine.”
Then you know that you *brew* beer and ferment alcohol.
“Wood and grass clippings don’t have that much sugar in them so the cellulose has to be converted to sugar. That’s a big sticking point.”
You need to actually read the article. Here are the main points.
—-
Corn and other starches and sugars are only a small fraction of biomass that can be used to make ethanol. Advanced Bioethanol Technology allows fuel ethanol to be made from cellulosic (plant fiber) biomass, such as agricultural forestry residues, industrial waste, material in municipal solid waste, trees, and grasses. Cellulose and hemicellulose, the two main components of plants-and the ones that give plants their structure-are also made of sugars, but those sugars are tied together in long chains. Advanced bioethanol technology can break those chains down into their component sugars and then ferment them to make ethanol. This technology turns ordinary low-value plant materials such as corn stalks, sawdust, or waste paper into fuel ethanol.
Fusion is the best way of nuclear generation. The science community understands this and has set up a world-wide project, ITER, to develop commercial fusion technology.
http://www.iter.org/
The bad news is that this project is run by the French. The same folks that can’t even figure out how to build a Jumbo Jetliner. Needless to say there has been no measurable progress in the last 5 years.
http://www.gm.com/company/onlygm/fastlane_Blog.html#EV1
There may be hope for an american all electric car yet. Be nice to be able to power up at home. Install a few solar panels on the roof.Wall la no more oil companies for .morg
We need just about all of the above. Ethanol should be produced where it can be done economically and environmentally responsibly – growing corn in western Kansas is neither. We have vast deposits of coal, they just need to be used responsibly. Nobody has said anything about windpower, it needs to be part of the mix also. Nuclear – has anybody really done anything about our fission wastes? No more fission plants in my book.
The most important item though, is conservation. It’s simple. Don’t drive your car any more than necessary. Carpool when you can. Make a vow to not drive your car, except to work and back, at least one day a week. Stop at the store on the way home from work, rather than making a separate trip.
And lastly, vote for the people that will make the right choices in government – if given a choice.
Lots of good information in the above postings. Too bad very few of our politicians are listening. There must be a better way to influence the direction our society is going.
Solar energy might be a good clean abundant supplier for our energy needs. No byproducts.
Ethanol was touted as the saviour back in the 1970’s. So it isn’t like Ethanol or other biofuels are anything new. They just weren’t economically feasiable or cheaper than oil, without the huge subsidies that goes into the system.
They keep on saying Brazil is using mostly ethanol, and that’s because they extract it out from Sugarcanes, which you can get more ethanol out of that than corn, I’ve heard up to 10 to 15 time more. But I haven’t read any diffentitive evidence.
Many people tried to get into ethanol is the 70’s, and many people people went broke. I suspect the same is going to happen this time around again.
I haven’t notice any energy companies getting into ethanol. You would think they would if it was lucrative, but they don’t. So all these ethanol plants are being built by Farmers Coops, and small local companies from wildcat investors hoping to cash in on the subsidies of ethanol.
Sure! You can extract ethanol from switch grass and saw dust, but you can’t extract all that much out of it.
I agree with the others on here. Electric vechiles and Nuclear Energy is probably one of the best ways forward.
Jwink, our politicians are listening….to Big Oil.
I agree with Walker that nuclear needs to be exploited – both to make electricity and to generate H2. I suspect, however, that thermal cracking of water, although possible, will be difficult. It will require tremendously high temperature to reach the point where entropy trumps enthalpy and reverses the free energy of the reaction. However, it IS theoretically possible.
Ethanol is not the answer. It burns at a faster rate.
Should fusion reactors become a reality, thermal cracking of water to produce H2 should be very possible. If that were to happen, with the use of supercables, both electricity and Hydrogen would be manufactured at the same site, making transportaion of both that much easier. Win/win for a change.
I agree with RD. Ethanol is not an answer, only a speed bump in the road to better fuels (read hydrogen).
Fision yes. Keep in mind though that materials will have to be able to withstand very high temperatures.
OOPPS – fUsion … (my lousy typing)
Ben,The containment of the cracking process may be possible using magnetic containment, something superconductors are making possible. High temp containment vessels may not be necessary. That would be a major barrier broken.
I agree that it is definitely a goal worth pursuing. My only issue is a caveat to not see this as the magic bullet either. We have been watching both fusion and fuel cells as being “a couple of decades away” all my life.
Ethanol has and always will be a scam. There is not enough arable land in the entire US to furnish the amount needed. People tout Brazil as being a model. They only produce 20% of their needs from Ethanol from Sugar Cane. Not corn. Corn is used only as a kiss for ADM Corp. They support high sugar prices so sugar wont compete with their corn based Fructose. They want Coke to have to purchase Fructose rather than use Sugar. We pay 3 times the world price for sugar due to subsidies, 7-9 cents per pound vs. 2-3 world price just to keep ADM and a few rich Cuban refugees, now big sugar owners in Florida happy.
The rest of Brazils energy needs are plain old Oil produced from their own offshore. They may be self sufficient but it is not from Ethanol only.
The new Nukes with Pebble bed technology are the way people are going nowdays. China is supposedly in line to build 1000 new plants in the coming years. They will have to if they continue to grow at the rate they are now. They are one of the culprits in the price of oil. They are traveling the world buying up rights and oil at ANY price to keep us from getting it and getting drilling rights. In Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela,Somalia etc.Better get the Nukes up and running to break up the water into H2.
Mrbill! Problem!
NIMBY!
Dilithium Crystals! This is the only energy source that will save us. I don’t care if they’re mined or artificially created. They are the wave of the future…
In all seriousness, our city also needs to improve our mass-transit. While they’ve had Kellogg torn up for the past several years it might have been a good time to add a light rail track down the center of the lanes. Park and rides at Andover, Goddard, Bel Aire, and Maize would also help. The buses could make non-stop treks to the three aircraft plants, downtown and the north Rock Rd. business corridors. These buses should run every 30 minutes and until at least 10pm. Bike racks on the fronts of buses would be nice also.
It’s not just about reducing our depedence on foreign oil any more. It’s about standing on the top of Hubbert’s Peak and planning for the post-petroleum economy.
On the front page of Sunday’s Eagle was an article about $184 million worth of renovation being planned for Midcontinent airport. Is there an ethanol-based jet fuel? I think not. Perpetually high jet fuel costs will doom Midcontinent to high-cost, low-volume traffic. The answer is trains: High-speed, electric trains powered by wind.
Forget fusion. It’s an overhyped, imaginary pipe dream, just like ethanol and dilithium (thanks for the laugh, BizSnype!). In contrast, wind, with minimal research, has already tied coal as the second-cheapest form of electricity. Couple wind with solar and pumped-storage hydro and you’ve got proven, cheap, reliable, renewable solutions for all your energy needs.
The days of driving 40 miles one way to work alone in a car, or packing up the brood for a cross-country family vacation are almost over. Enjoy it while you can, your car will soon be a dinosaur. You’ll have a nice electric car with (on a hot day) maybe 30, 40 miles range, tops.
A radio news report said railroad traffic is increasing due to competition with truck traffic because of high fuel costs.
So, I wonder if its too late to replace the railroad tracks that were pulled up here in Wichita during the past five years?
I also agree that passenger air traffic will continue to decline due to shortage and high cost of fuel. Part of the present Wichita Mid-Continent Airport might have to be closed rather than expanded.
There are some legitimate concerns raised and also some misinformed ones.
First, water is a serious issue to anyone in Kansas government. It may not make sense (and doesn’t) for every county in Kansas to build an ethanol plant. But technology is such that these plants don’t use much water. All new plants have to meet KDHE permitting requirements.
Second, the fact is there is an abundance of feedstuffs to make alcohol. The plants don’t care what is used to make the stuff–only what is cost effective. Right now, that is corn and especially sorghum in Kansas.
Finally, not all the plants you are reading about will get built. But the ones that have the necessary synergies (being cited close to feedlots for example to feed DDGS) have a good chance.
I’ve yet to hear any ethanol proponent say this is a silver bullet. But I’d like to hear an “opponent” call it part of the solution!
jesse – I am one of those ’skeptics’ who will say that biofuels are not ‘magic’ but are a part of the solution. Similarly I do not consider nuclear as ‘magic’ but do consider it as ‘part’
I heard the ethanol plant out by Norwich is looking for workers.
And I’ll say it again. Ethanol burns at a faster rate. It is not the answer.