SMU energy expert thinks Texas ethanol plants are destined for failure

by PegNews wire

SMU

Bruce Bullock: SMU energy honcho

Bruce Bullock, director of Southern Methodist University's Maguire Energy Institute, thinks that the future of several ethanol manufacturing plants in the Texas Panhandle may be a bleak one.

Here's the rub: if we produce biofuel from corn, we're taking food off the table of a hungry world. But if we plant acreage in non-edible fuel-stuffs destined only for the refinery, we're removing that acreage from the available farmland that could be used to grow food crops. So it amounts to the same thing.

Further, points out Bullock, crude oil can be used to produce a broad range of products (gasoline, diesel, asphalt, jet fuel, etc.) while ethanol is designed to end up only in automobiles; its pricing fortunes are tied to the volatile (and heavily politicized) price of gas.

Sounds like a lose-lose for this particular alternative energy scenario.

posted by JM

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John McClelland, says:

That's why the need to produce ethanol from other sources is key. There are already calls for ethanol to be produced from algae. I don't know anyone who wants to eat algae.

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1 year, 3 months ago
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Pavel Lishin, says:

Whales.

I obviously don't have a Ph.D. in, well, anything, but I recall reading that growing algae on land to produce ethanol is incredibly wasteful - it takes acres and acres and acres to produce anything useful, and lots of energy to harvest the stuff, as well. But like I said, I could be wrong. For all I know it's as simple as setting a bucket in the sun and letting the ethanol drain straight into your tank.

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1 year, 3 months ago
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Scott Doyle, says:

We need ethanol gnomes.

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1 year, 3 months ago
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Scott Miller, says:

I think vertical algae farms are where it's heading.

http://current.com/items/89007056_ama...

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1 year, 3 months ago
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Awiesemann, says:

Here are some interesting facts that people should know about ethanol production from corn:

Less than 2% of the US corn crop is used for human consumption as cereal grain. We use almost as much for pet food as we do for cereal consumption. About 6 to 7% of the corn crop is used to make fructose and sweeteners. (It’s cheaper than sugar, and sugar is surplus)
The corn to ethanol industry only uses the starch portion of the kernel. All of the protein, oil, fibers, minerals, vitamins, and other components remain and are available for utilization as food for either human consumption, or for their traditional use as livestock feed. This remaining portion is commonly referred to as DDGS.
The world is not short of starch for human nutrition. The need is for proteins and digestible fiber. Soybeans traditionally carry as much higher value in the marketplace because they contain a much higher percentage of proteins and oils, and a much lower percentage of starch.
Rice is one high starch cereal grain that is widely consumed by humans directly as a cereal grain. Corn acres and rice acres are not fungible. One is not produced at the expense of the other.
Since the early 1970’s, the Consumer Price Index for food, meat, and poultry has risen at a steady rate of 3.5 to 4% per year. (About 4.5% during the 80’s”. That is about the same as the current rate of increase. During that entire 40-year span of time, we have experienced both world hunger and such a consistent surplus of corn that the US government had to invent a variety of different methods to keep the surplus manageable.
From 200 to 2005, there were 11 countries in the world in which 46% or more of their populations were listed as undernourished. Those countries received less than one hundredth of one percent of US corn exports. If we broaden that to include the 24 countries in which at least a third of the population is considered undernourished, the number is still less than one tenth of 1% of US corn exports.
In the dry mill ethanol industry, less than 2/3rds of the energy in a bushel of corn ends up as a liquid fuel. The remaining Btu’s/calories are in the protein, fiber, oil, etc. (DDGS). When those products are priced by the marketplace, it pays four times as much liquid fuel as it does the food portion.