i wonder if they also include the opportunity cost for the land used to grow switch grass.

ie which ends up with less CO2 in the air:

i use land and industrial farming to produce switchgrass, convert it to fuel to drive my car

or i use petrol in my car and cover the land with forest

shaun:

Mature forests are CO2 neutral; only young forests take up more CO2 than they emit.

What would a Katrina style weather disaster, wet or dry, do to these numbers and the availibility of ethanol year around. Remember corn has a limited growing period window. It will not grow under snow.

Cellulosic ethanol has "promise". It has had "promise" for decades. Is cellulosic ethanol the new nuclear fusion or the new hydrogen?

The title of this article is misleading. The study did not confirm the benefits of ethanol, demonstrating that it's benefits are marginal at best and hardly worth doing unless, of course, you receive massive subidies which is the case at present.

Also, we should not gloss over the systems boundaries issue. I still do not think that anyone has made a convincing case that we should ignore, for example, the energy input contribution of farm equipment. If the farmer was doing financial accounting, he would damn sure include the costs of this farm equipment. So why should the accounting be different in the case of energy inputs?

And how will we make the transition from corn to cellulosic ethanol? Do we eliminate the subsidy for corn and provide it for cellulosic?

From a balance of payments perspective, the use of coal for ethanol is an improvement to the extent that it substitutes for imported petroleum. From a carbon intensity standpoint,however, it is a step backward.

In the mean time, the most egregious feature of this whole ethanol sham is the CAFE standards loophole that the auto companies are getting. Worse, they are mainly using this loophole on their biggest gas guzzlers.

And while we are considering the benefits and costs of ethanol, let us also consider the impact of increased corn costs and reduced food supply.

Even assuming the EROEI of corn ethanol is slightly better than one, considering all the other negative impacts, it is something not worth doing, unless you are receving subsidies or making your CAFE look better. Otherwise, we could just ignore this enterprise as just the folly of a bunch of delusional corn farmers and ethanol investors.

Unfortunately, it is creating the comfortable illusion amongst politicians and consumers that we can continue easy motoring without having to cut back one iota from our wasteful ways.

If my energy return from farming was equal to ethanol, I would be dead or at least in extreme poverty very quickly unless, of course, I had an outside source of income.

"The results show that everybody is basically correct," she said. "The energy balance is so close that the outcome depends on exactly how you define the problem."

This came from MIT?
Defining the problem accurately with information available today is what makes an analysis valid.
"One assumption is that the availability of that feed will enable traditional feed manufacturers to produce less, saving energy"
An analysis would validate/invalidate this assumption - is this occurring today?

If E85 from corn is a stepping stone, let us not allow this subsidized/loopholed pebble to trip us up in pursuit of global sustainability which requires consumption control (carbon tax).

"This research was supported by BP America." Interesting...Is this part of an alternative fuel fact find mission assigned to BP by the predatory American Oil Cartel? Don't laugh, it could very well be the truth. The sooner you realize that these companies must continue to control all the forms of energy to stay profitable, the closer to the truth you get.

The BP disclosure should cement the doubt. Curious too that there is little about the century of energy inputs to build the petroleum infrastructure. Costs of drilling (onshore, offshore, slants, five mile, etc.) refinery, e-disaster cleanup, Superfunds, aging refineries, long distance transport, conflict costs (two World Wars, two Iraq wars, Middle East unrest) environmental impacts, health impacts, loss of alternative business economies, etc. etc.

I'd like to see a non-oil industry study. Shame on MIT for not going the distance to consider their sponsor's "variables."

Studies showing tobacco was not harmful or addictive were common 50 years ago. These studies were full of endorsements by real doctors and various experts. Some even claimed smoking was healthy. Celebrity endorsements were the rule. Tobacco production was even subsidized at the state and federal levels.

Eventually people figured out these studies were directly or indirectly funded by big tobacco and related interests. Today, we may marvel at how foolish people must have been to believe any of that nonsense yet people continue to accept the propaganda of big oil.

The fact is the oil industry is the most heavily subsidized industry in the US. They are a huge sinkhole of public money and manipulators of public policy. Petrochemicals are also known carcinogens.

The ethanol price in the US is artifically high (not low!) due to heavy taxes. Worldwide prices of ethanol are less than $1/gal with no subsidies. In 2005 ethanol hit $0.45/gal while gas was topping $3/gal. What's happened in the US is the large oil companies and the largest agribiz companies (ADM, etc) have colluded to keep prices high.

Last time I looked, ethanol was about $1.50 per gallon wholesale, you get 2 1/2 gallons of ethanol per bushel and a bushel costs about $3. So if the feed stock costs $1 per gallon, I don't see the price at $.50 as quoted. I would guess that most of the energy is in the processing of ethanol. Boiling the mash and distilling the ethanol. Since water comes with the distill and that is unavoidable, you have to put it through membrances that have a lot of pumping costs. So you have lots of electricity and heat. They get the heat from coal or natural gas. We could run our cars on NG and turn the coal to fuel with CTL or as some have pointed out IGCC and BEVs. The fact of the matter is then, you have the energy costs whether you use cellulose or corn. It would be nice to see a study of the costs of gasification of the cellose instead of distill. I have several in my computer and there are several on this site that say it is twice the yeild from a ton, but I have not seen the energy balance yet.

Gents,
Corn ethanol is already a loss cause for transportation fuel, scientifically speaking.
I move that we should all have a party and drink all those moonshines, Scotch, Jack Daniels or Jimmy Beam...your choice, ...and in the mornin'...*burp* (after the hang over)... figure out a way to urge Congress into considering turning waste biomass into biogas or H2 for transportation. This is the only quick way to achieve energy security AND to reduce global warming!

Roger,
Make that converting biomass (waste) into liquid fuels (no changes to existing vehicles or fuel pumps) and I'm in.

MrX,
Did you perhaps mean to say $0.45/liter or $1.70/gal? Perhaps that is a big part of the problem in the US: you can't develop the fuels of the future using Queen Victoria's units of measurement...

Nah Engineer, please check the link.

The production price of the sugar used in Brazil was less than $0.08 a liter and it's not subsidized.

Pint o Shine is right but the sugar politics in the US actually go back to the war of 1812 and restrictions on ethanol production go back to 1791, right before the Whiskey Rebellion. Showing that history repeats itself, large producers only had to pay 6 cents a gallon on credit while small producers had to pay 9 cents and in cash only at a time when many farms had little or no hard coinage.

The government makes a big deal of how the farmers just wanted to get drunk but in reality alot of that alcohol was for lamps because the whale oil cartel from new england charged very high prices for their lamp oil which doesn't burn as clean.