U.S. House narrowly passes major energy-climate bill

Quoting from the Associated Press, "In a triumph for President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives narrowly passed sweeping legislation today that establishes the Unites States' first limits on pollution linked to global warming and aims to usher in a new era of cleaner, yet more costly, energy.

The vote was 219-212, capping months of negotiations and days of intense bargaining among Democrats. Republicans were overwhelmingly against the measure, arguing it would destroy jobs in the midst of a recession while burdening consumers with a new tax in the form of higher energy costs."

As can be seen from the closeness of the vote, a significant number of democrat congress members were against this sweeping bill. One of those was democrat Charlie Melancon from Louisiana. Charlie was formerly top dog at the American Sugar Cane League, holding the position that Jim Simon now holds. Charlie represents south Louisiana whose economy is heavily dependent on the success of the oil and gas industry, so he was obligated to come out against the bill. Charlie had to have had some mixed emotions about this, in that the sugar industry would benefit by legislation that promotes green energy, and the fact that there is no other area in the U.S. more severely impacted by global warming than southern Louisiana.

I will admit that I have mixed emotions as well. We are surely moving into a brave new world with the passing of this legislation. Here is a useful Q&A website relative to this bill.

With this legislation, we are almost certainly going to hear more in the news about "cap and trade," so it is probably going to be useful to become more familiar with what this term means.

Verdict on crop-based ethanol

There is a lot of controversy surrounding ethanol these days, and it will be interesting to see how all of this plays out. Two scientists from our Sugarcane Research Unit just returned from Brazil. They were obviously impressed by what they saw and were told while they were there. Sugarcane continues to be the model crop for ethanol production, with its impressive energy output/input ratio. The Brazilians claim a ratio of 8:1, which is far superior to the less than 2:1 ratio for corn in the midwest. Apparently the Brazilians are continuing to increase their ethanol production capacity from sugarcane, building new ethanol plants and increasing acreage. The Brazilians are quick to point out that these increases are in non-Amazon regions of Brazil. So what we see happening in Brazil could be thought of as THE best case scenerio for ethanol production from a crop.

Chief among ethanol detractors are David Pimentel and Tad Patzek. One question I am sure has been frequently posed to them whenever they have argued against ethanol production from a crop, is this. "What about Brazil? You say it can't be done, yet Brazil is successfully doing it on a grand scale!" Pimentel and Patzek have taken the 8:1 output/input claim head on, presumably with the expectation that if they can debunk the 8:1 output/input claim, they can pretty much take the wind out of the the sails of any argument for biofuels. They recently published a paper basically aimed at raising doubts about the Brazilian sugarcane output/input ratio. Based on their own calculations, they reported the output/input ratio for sugarcane-based ethanol industry in Brazil to be no better than 1.38:1, claiming that important energy inputs were not accounted for, to get the 8:1 ratio. Most of the unaccounted for energy costs that Pimentel and Patzek allude to are associated with the factory component, rather than the field component. Using their numbers, it wouldn't matter what the yields are in the field; you couldn't improve much on their ratio even if the cane and sugar yields were triple or quadruple what they are today. Personally, I think their numbers in the factory component need a closer inspection. From the massive amount of fibrous residue (bagasse) produced when sugar is extracted from sugarcane, mills around the world today provide all of their own power and feed excess power into the electric grid of the surrounding community, and in some cases, a lot of excess power into the electric grid. There are huge differences in boiler efficiencies. It makes a huge difference if the factory energy input numbers were meant for production of crystallized sugar rather than production of ethanol. So I am skeptical of the Pimentel and Patzek numbers, especially knowing that they have an agenda to begin with. I don't believe they adequately account for the energy output potential of baggase in their calculations.

The 8:1 ratio may be inflated, but 1.38:1 when factories are net exporters of energy before the energy from ethanol is even factored in...you've got to be kidding!

We had a field day on Friday. I was asked to discuss some of the energy crop activity we are involved in. We highlighted sugarcane, energy cane (behind me in the photo), sugarbeets, sweet sorghum, and tropical maize (non-flowering tropical maize in my right hand; a so-called sugarcorn hybrid from Illinois in my left hand). The corn I was holding for demonstration purposes was planted only 60 days ago (April 8). Needless to say, the topic stimulated a lot of interest and questions. When I passed the tropical maize plant around, people couldn't believe how heavy it was. It will be interesting to see how tall our tropical maize gets before it finally decides to flower. Right now, it is about 8 feet tall. Believe it or not, it was only 18 inches tall 30 days ago.

Designing engines to exploit ethanol's important advantage over gasoline

In the January 20, 2009 post of Robert Rapier's R-Squared Energy Blog (one of my energy-blog favorites), Rapier makes a compelling case that ethanol-fueled engines need to be designed to exploit the much higher octane rating, thus greater efficiency of ethanol over gasoline. With its higher octane rating, ethanol does not easily pre-ignite. Thus, if an engine were designed with a much higher compression ratio to exploit this advantage, it is conceivable that cars could actually go further on a gallon of ethanol than on a gallon of gasoline, even though ethanol only has 2/3 the BTU's per gallon that gasoline has. This is an interesting observation from Rapier who has to remind people from time to time that he really isn't anti-ethanol in spite of some earlier posts. This particular post is well worth reading, as is Rapier's entire blogsite. The above picture is of a high-compression ethanol/biodiesel engine built by Swedish automaker Scania.

Obama-Biden Energy Plan for America

I will be following with interest how steadfast the Obama-Biden ticket holds to the energy plan they have outlined on their “New Energy for America” webpage once in office, particularly as it relates to support for ethanol. Obama and McCain have differed sharply on the ethanol issue, an issue that has become increasingly controversial in recent months. Obama represents a corn-growing ethanol-producing state, Illinois, and to this point, supports the continuation of ethanol subsidies. He sees the need to move in the direction of cellulosic ethanol (2nd generation biofuel) that has been touted as being more sustainable, more environmentally friendly, and less controversial than corn (food vs. fuel). McCain, on the other hand, represents a desert state, Arizona, and has been critical of agricultural subsidies generally, and ethanol subsidies in particular. During his presidential campaign, when asked about cutting excessive government spending, ethanol subsidies were right at the top of his short list.

The sustainability of cellulosic ethanol is controversial as well, as shown in the following blogsites, Treehugger and R-Squared Energy Blog (Nov 9). When it comes to liquid fuels, do we want to cut research dedicated toward improving the sustainability of renewable resources, such as second-generation biofuels, until non-renewable resources (oil and natural gas) are nearly depleted, or do we continue to support this research irrespective of gas price and public mood swings with the expectation that this research will pay off down the road when non-renewable resources become scarce.

Making better use of disaster debris

In 2004, after Ivan the Terrible made landfall on the Gulf Coast between Mobile, AL and Pensacola, FL as a strong category 3 hurricane, I joined others in assisting in the cleanup in and around Pensacola. I couldn't believe the height that the tree debris was piled up on both sides of street after street as far as the eye could see. On some streets, I couldn't even see residents' homes behind the debris because it was piled so high. After Katrina, the sheer number and height of the piles of tree debris placed in open areas of New Orleans, such as in school football fields, was astounding. When I saw the damage done to trees in and around Houma after Gustav, there was no doubt that the same phenomenon of piling of debris was about happen once again (see above photo). I told some of my friends, watch how much debris gets piled on the streets in Houma, Thibodaux, and other severely affected areas. This leads to the question, "Where does all of this debris ultimately end up? Unfortunately, for the most part, no good use is made of it. Most of it is either burned up or removed out of the public eye to decompose. It is fitting that Biomass Magazine this month has a lead article that addresses this very issue, discussing the possible conversion of debris left behind by catastrophic events to more useful products. Detractors of biomass bring up energy costs associated with growing and harvesting biomass crops to convert to biofuels or to burn for electricity. In the case of debris, we have a readily available biomass source that is already sitting on the side of the road, waiting to be picked up and utilized, if we had appropriate infrastructure in place to deal with it. Another article in Biomass Magazine discusses a venture at Raceland Raw Sugars (a sugarcane milling operation located between Houma and New Orleans) to produce briquettes from excess sugarcane bagasse. Both articles directly address the all-important issue of transportion costs that currently prevents the utilization of potentially valuable biomass products that currently largely go to waste.

Flex-fuel vehicles...what say you?

As a matter of course, at 7:00 pm, I find myself switching between O'Reilly's Factor (Fox News) and Olbermann's Countdown (MSNBC). While I'm not in full agreement with the positions of either of these polar opposites, occasionally I get sucked in to issues I have some passion for. Such has been the case with Bill O'Reilly over the past four days, with his Talking Points focusing on our need to reduce our dependence on OPEC Oil, controlled by Mideastern Oil Barons. I agree with him that these people who really don't like us very much, yet they are benefiting enormously from our consumption of their oil at current oil prices. Bill's answer in part is to mandate flex-fuel vehicles, and follow the lead of Brazil in becoming more oil independent through greater usage of home grown ethanol. Bill has been to Brazil several times and I am very happy that he aggressively challenges those who have jumped on the latest bandwagon to pooh pooh ethanol for various reasons.

From my perspective, ethanol has gotten a bad rap, because our ethanol is derived from corn, which is a lot harder to justify socially and energetically than ethanol from crops like sugarcane that have a much better energy balance, and less impact on world food supply.

Could we produce ethanol profitably from sugarcane in the U.S. at present oil prices? Right now, the sugarcane farmer is barely breaking even at the 20 cents a pound he is getting for the sugar he is producing. So, the simple answer would seem to be that if the farmer were getting more than 20 cents a pound for sugar converted to ethanol, and if the infrastructure were already in place, he would be better off producing ethanol. It takes roughly 12 lbs of sugar to produce one gallon of ethanol, and on an equivalent volume basis, ethanol will only take you about 70% as far down the road as gasoline. Therefore 12 lbs sugar x 20 cents/lb = $2.40/gallon or $3.40/gas-equivalent gallon. How much cheaper it would be to produce ethanol directly from sugarcane juice than from fully processed raw sugar? The Brazilians should be able to answer this question. Apparently, they can produce ethanol at around 85 cents/gallon and I believe that they sell sugar at the world market price which is currently around 10 cents/lb. Could molasses and lower strikes of sugar be routed toward ethanol production, while only the highest strike of sugar (A-strike) be used toward the production of traditional sugar products? Is Brazil's claimed 8:1 energy output:input ratio valid? How much different is our ratio?

The biofuels debate

An increasing number of articles have recently been critical of biofuels. Two that reached wide audiences are in National Geographic and Time. Both were highly critical of corn-based ethanol in the U. S., but viewed sugarcane-based ethanol in Brazil in a much more positive light. Corn is criticized because, as a major food and feed crop, diversion of the grain toward the production of ethanol has the effect of driving up food prices. Also, the energy balance (output to input ratio) is not that attractive (Nat’l Geog.: 1.3 to 1.0). By contrast, the energy balance for sugarcane, at least in Brazil, was cited as 8 to 1. This begs the question as to why sugarcane is not used for ethanol production in the U.S. If the energy balance for sugarcane were only half as good as in Brazil (4 to 1) this is still much better than for corn. If the energetics really do favor sugarcane, why can ethanol be profitably made from corn, but not from sugarcane? I put together some numbers, based on what I found on the Internet, to compare the sugarcane situation in Brazil and the U.S.