Ethanol would be nice I suppose, but I doubt it would keep BAU floating along much. Plus, it's ground you are not using for food production. However, I'm sure something could be grown that does not require much fertility that could then be transformed into ethanol. Maybe a restoration agriculture type scheme where you heal the land by growing plants for ethanol?
I read an article (offline) that demonstrated that Pennsylvania could grow all the energy it currently uses, with switchgrass being the primary energy crop. The one conclusion that was implied in the data but that they failed to point out, however, was that the cost of doing so would be that would mean that the state would grow NONE of its own food. Not exactly the trade-off I would want to make.
Lucid and JD,
The truth about the ethanol program that Trump wants to permanently interrupt is that it competes quite successfully, even with growing corn, against gasoline. So the producers of gasoline want to kill ethanol production, period. This is not hard. This is not a conspiracy "theory". The fossil fuel industry is rather open about their hatred of competitors. So, they publish a lot of half-truths about crops for food versus fuel. The bold faced lies mixed in there are enough to make any scientist gag. But that's the history since right before Prohibition.
Eddie claims ethanol is a "bad" idea AS IT IS NOW OBTAINED FROM CORN. Well, as opposed to obtaining it from low lignin crops, of course. But NOT as a replacement for gasoline! Ethanol is a GREAT IDEA as a replacement for gasoline. That's a rather salient difference.
But Eddie is right IF he believes that ethanol production can be viable and sustainable.
Lucid, you do not need ANY of the land now used for absolutely everything that crop land and grazing land is used for to completely replace gasoline and diesel fuels with ethanol. Yes, you need land that, though considered "barren' (i.e. thousands and thousands of acres of desert in North Africa, the USA, Mexico, South America, Asia and Australia), has a desert biome which must be preserved.
But the amount of ponded land you need to produce ethanol from duckweed (wide temperature tolerance, virtually no root systems, over 40% low lignin starch, no plowing, recycled water, tilapia poop fertilized, low energy required for harvest, crop doubles in size EVERY 48 HOURS - over twenty times the growth rate of grass, never mind slower growing crops like corn) can do the job sustainably WITHOUT impacting the desert biome negatively (ALL the growth medium is in covered ponds).
YES, it would cost billions of dollars to ramp up to a worldwide production from deserts of 23,000 barrels of ethanol per day (approximate present world gasoline consumption). SO WHAT!!!?
Do you have any idea what those ocean going oil rigs cost to build AND maintain in rough oceans!!!? Well, you SHOULD! AND all those tankers? AND all those severely polluting refineries? AND the polluted spent wells and ruined land? They ARE NOT cost effective! They are "subsidized" out the Wazoo, and YOU AND I ARE FOOTING THAT BILL!
A massive worldwide desert ethanol production operation would have nearly unlimited solar energy (PV AND CSP) available to process the product in specially built duckweed refineries (The Chinese estimated they were competitive at $72 dollars a barrel of oil a few years ago - BUT that totally excludes the oil pollution costs AND the
duckweed NET ZERO CO2 pollution).
I've got a very lengthy thread on ethanol and why and how we-the-people have been suckered out of replacing gasoline with it. It includes a lengthy back and forth with a closet fossil fueler here that shall, for the moment, remain nameless. The published ERoEI numbers for ethanol (yes, even CORN ethanol) are SEVERELY low balled. The gasoline ERoEi numbers are a HAPPY TALK JOKE!
Read more here:
http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/renewables/ethanol/
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