"Because I believe that Americans deserve the freedom of choice to drive whatever vehicle they choose in the most economical, environmentally friendly and safest manner possible."

In other words: "It is the American way to drive the biggest, loudest, least efficient vehicle you can buy."

Hello--

It's good that you acknowledge that there is research on both sides of the question of the "net energy balance" of ethanol, given the fact that you are already persuaded of the answer; some folks aren't that honest. A "meta-study" a year and a half ago attempted to harmonize some of these studies, bringing all assumptions into line with each other to see if the differing methodologies gave similar answers once differences in assumptions were removed; do a Google search on "EBAMM," the name of the model (I'd give a direct link, but that always causes my posts to get jammed in the spam filters!). They found that studies showing a negative energy balance (more energy needed to make the ethanol than you get out of burning it) generally had neglected to "credit" the avoided energy use to produce various by-products like distillers' dried grains (animal feed, which would otherwise have taken additional fuel to produce), and studies that found a large positive energy balance (much more energy from burning the ethanol than was used to make it) had neglected some of the energy costs, like crushing limestone for fertilizer. When they corrected for all this, they showed a modest (20-40 percent) reduction in fossil-fuel use compared to gasoline production. Moreover, most of the fossil fuel used was natural gas or coal, rather than petroleum, so even today ethanol production cuts oil use.

However, the summary page for the study (linked from the top page) is careful to note that while the energy used for crop production is accounted for, issues like pesticide and fertilizer runoff, land-use questions, etc., are not, and these will have to be taken into account in making ethanol policy. One of these issues is displacement of food crops for fuel crops; I am not as "plugged in" to this issue as I am to questions of energy use, but the issue is not people "starving because of a lack of corn." Rather, because corn demand has gone up as interest in ethanol has risen, corn prices have gone up to multi-year highs, and other crops that might have been planted instead (e.g., soybeans) are also rising in price. There were protests in Mexico recently not because people couldn't get corn tortillas, but because the price had shot up; in poorer parts of the world, one can starve just as surely from a lack of affordable food as from a lack of food, period.

Another knock against ethanol, outside the Corn Belt at least, that was not accounted for in this meta-study is that ethanol is too hygroscopic to transport in pipelines (it attracts water, promoting corrosion), so it has to be transported by tank trucks or or trains. The study only looked at production, but with no corn growing out here in California, there is exactly one ethanol station here, in San Diego, because it doesn't make economic or environmental sense to truck large quantities of the fuel out here from the Midwest.

Of course, cellulosic ethanol, which you mentioned (ethanol produced from switchgrass, or the corn husk rather than the corn squeezin's, say), helps with a lot of these problems: the EBAMM study shows a very favorable energy balance for this ethanol source, it doesn't compete (directly) with food use, and suitable waste-material sources are everywhere, e.g., rice straw in California's central valley, so we wouldn't need to truck it in from Iowa. There are a number of problems with cellulosic ethanol, though, that I have not seen addressed, beyond the fact that it's still in the lab or at best in pilot-scale production plants, and thus very expensive. First, is there enough low-value raw material out there? For example, fossil-fuel natural gas can be displaced by "biogas" from, say, cow manure, and petroleum diesel can be displaced by waste vegetable oil from fast-food restaurant fryers; but all the manure from all the cows in the U.S. could only generate a fraction of one percent of the natural gas we use, and the amount of waste vegetable oil out there even in our "Fast Food Nation" is insignificant compared to our petroleum use. With regard to ethanol, if we use up all the rice straw, sawdust, and corn husks, how much cellulosic ethanol could we make? If it's not enough to make a dent in petroleum use, we'll have to start planting fields of switchgrass, which boosts the energy needed for production, displaces other crops including food crops, and generally brings back many of the problems of corn-based ethanol. Are there any numbers out there on this question? 'Cause I sure haven't seen them.

And finally, ethanol has had substantial political support for a long time, specifically because of the corn lobby; this is the force behind the tax credit of 50 cents per gallon that makes even corn-based ethanol attractive in terms of pump price. Will the economic incentives, tax credits, mandates, etc., remain in place if ethanol production switches to cellulosic? I've never heard of a "switchgrass lobby." And can cellulosic or corn ethanol compete in anything like the near term without this kind of political support? (Eventually, as oil prices rise, yes it will, but we'd better get started displacing petroleum now.) Natural gas for vehicles has made economic sense for a lot of light-duty use for over a decade; however, while natural-gas vehicles are blossoming overseas (e.g., over one million NGVs each in Argentina, Pakistan, and Brazil -- yes, the same Brazil that's touted as an example of how ethanol can save us from fossil fuels), and while they have done well in heavy-duty markets here (buses, garbage trucks, etc.), every automaker except Honda killed their light-duty NGV offerings as soon as they had a hybrid to talk about and hydrogen prototypes to spin promises around. There never was much of an NGV lobby because vehicle use of the fuel is not large enough to be of great interest the natural-gas utilities; if the lobbying muscle behind ethanol dried up, and with it the fuel subsidies and the CAFE credit that automakers get for building flex-fuel vehicles even if they never run on ethanol, will automakers and the government still be interested? Based on the track record, with both Democratic and Republican administrations ignoring the requirements of the Energy Policy Act of 1990 that the Federal Government support the development of alternative-fueled vehicles (including, say, natural-gas and battery-electric vehicles) by buying them for government fleets, I don't hold out much hope.

I agree that ethanol is one way of reducing oil use that we can implement right now. Sure, the Volt and E-Flex will provide an even greater oil consumption reduction once the battery technology advances enough, but a Flex Fuel vehicle can make a difference today. Just because it isn't the total solution for our imported oil dependency doesn't it mean it can't be part of the solution. Today.

Donna McLallen said, "I must admit that I am just learning the ins and outs of ethanol production..."

Ms McLallen,

First, a tip my hat for responding - that puts you head and shoulders above other GM execs.

Second, I applaud you for being honest enough to admit you are just learning about ethanol production. So fasten your seat belt, and we will educate you.

Donna McLallen said, "I know that gasoline production is a negative energy process that is environmentally invasive, and I know firsthand that it is a process that can be toxic not only to the environment, but to refinery workers, as well."

The energy return on energy invested (EROEI) of gasoline is not negative as you said. The best estimates for the current EROEI of gasoline range from about 5:1 to 9:1. The difference depends on from how deep you have to pump the oil, how far you have to transport it from well to refinery, and how sweet or sour it is.

In the very early days of the oil business, when oil squirted out of the ground under its own pressure and was found at shallow depths, the EROEI of gasoline was as high as 100:1. That is the main reason gasoline quickly became our dominate motor fuel -- it was an energy dense, portable liquid fuel that was easy to find and retreive.

Of course the EROEI will continue to drop as oil becomes more difficlut to find, and we have to drill deeper and deeper, and transport it longer distances. But even so, the EROEI of gasoline is still better than that of corn ethanol by about a factor of five.

EROEI of corn ethanol

There is much debate about this and there are many competing studies (the results usually depending on who funded the study), but the accepted value for the EROEI of corn ethanol seems to be settling around 1.2 to 1. (That is, someone has to invest 100 units of energy to get 120 units in return.)

Don't confuse EROEI with efficiency

The people who say gasoline has an EROEI of less than one, do that by confusing (some deliberately) the effiency of the refinery process with energy return on energy invested. It is true that if you put 100 barrels of crude in a refinery, you will get about 80 gallons of fuel in return. But that is an efficiency ratio of 80%, not a negative EROEI.

Mother Nature did the heavy lifting for crude oil

The reason the EROEI for gasoline is so much better than the EROEI of corn ethanol is that Nature did all the heavy lifting of converting organic matter to crude oil. Algae and phyto-planktons lived and died millions of years ago, and then after a long period of free heat and high pressure underground, that organic material slowly turned to oil. A lot of energy went into that process, but we didn't have to invest any of it -- it was all free, courtesy of Mother Nature.

On the other hand, when the ethanol industry grows corn and converts it into ethanol, someone has to pay for (invest) all of the energy needed to convert that organic matter (corn) into a liquid fuel. Unfortunately, it takes massive amounts of natural gas, diesel fuel, and often thermal energy from coal, to cultivate, fertilize, harvest, transport, mill, ferment, and distill corn into ethanol.

The ethanol industry has to pay a huge penalty in energy invested to accelerate into a few months a process that took Nature millions of years. (The best EROEI for corn ethanol would be if our corn farmers buried their corn and then waited 150 million years for Nature to do its thing. Obviously that is ridiculous, but I hope you get the point -- it costs both money and energy to accelerate that process.)

Adverse environemtal effect of corn ethanol

You also said that gasoline production is environmentally invasive. Of course that is true, but don't for one second believe that corn ethanol has no adverse enviromental effects.

Growing corn on indusrial farms has a huge adverse effect on the environment. Farmers have to dump millions of tons of nitrogen fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides on their field to get a crop. (All of it made from natural gas and petroleum by the way.)

Much of those ag chemicals run off the fields into the watershed, all the way down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. Just as an experiment, Google "Gulf of Mexico dead zone" and the "Des Moines blue baby syndrome" (happens every spring when the chemical residue from cornfields runs into the Des Moines River) and let me know what you find.

One last question

Do you really believe it is correct to call corn ethanol renewable when at every step of the process, making ethanol is utterly dependent on the consumption of unrenewable, irreplaceable fossil fuels?

More to follow tomorrow when I will explain why one of GM's flex-fuel vehicles actually uses more total energy burning E85 than it does when burning gasoline.

Regards,

Gary Dikkers

I suppose the word “Ethanol” is politically correct but it is killing me, in the pocket book that is. Ethanol is not an alternative, it does not have the energy density therefore I get many mile less per gallon and I’ll pay more for it. The only thing your industry is accomplishing with Ethanol is raising the price of corn which raises the price of cattle feed which raises the cost of milk, and on and on. Thanks a lot.

Donna McLallen said:"What is the true reason I am pushing FlexFuel? Because I believe that Americans deserve the freedom of choice to drive whatever vehicle they choose in the most economical, environmentally friendly and safest manner possible."

Ms McLallen,

Perhaps I'm overly cyncial, but I suspect the real reason you are pushing FlexFuel is because of the CAFE loophole GM is allowed take advantage of whenever a customer drives a FlexFuel vehicle off the showroom floor.

It's interesting you mention the "economy" of FlexFuel vehicles. But did you know that one of GM's FlexFuel vehicles actually uses more total energy when burning E85 than when burning straight gasoline. Here's an example:

Using the EPA figures for a GM FlexFuel 4WD Chevy Tahoe I found the following:

Now let's imagine a hypothetical trip of 210 miles in that FlexFuel Tahoe.

Now the big question — how much energy does burning 14 gallons of E85 consume? Is it more, less, or the same as the energy in 10 gallons of gasoline?

How much energy was consumed making those 11.9 gallons of ethanol?

The EROEI of making corn ethanol

The generally accepted value for the energy return on energy invested (EROEI) of making ethanol is now about 1.2 to 1.

That means to make the 11.9 gallons of ethanol in those 14 gallons of E85; someone had to invest energy equivalent to 9.9 gallons of fossil fuels. [9.9 x 1.2 = 11.9]

Now here's the kicker: If a Tahoe burned 14 gallons of E85 on that hypothetical trip, it would have actually burned 2.1 gallons of gasoline plus the energy of the 9.9 gallons of fossil fuel used to make the 11.9 gallons of ethanol. [2.1 + 9.9 = 12.0]

Summary

Best regards,

Gary Dikkers

Donna McLallen said: "It is true that GM research shows a 15-20 percent loss of fuel economy with E85 versus gasoline, but E85 remains an economic benefit to the customer, as long as it remains sufficiently cheaper than gasoline."

Ms McLallen,

OK, let's explore your premise that E85 "...remains an economic benefit to the customer..."

I live in Wisconsin and just checked the price of both E85 and regular gasoline here. As of this afternoon, regular gasoline is $2.88 per gallon, while E85 is $2.20 per gallon.

It certainly appears that E85 would be an "economic benefit" doesn't it? Well, not so fast. It turns out that when we compare how much actual energy a customer's fuel dollar would buy, E85 is no bargain.

A gallon of gasoline contains about 115,000 Btu of energy, while a gallon of E85 contains about 83,260 Btu. So why don't we compute the price of each fuel in the terms of the energy it delivers?

Result

Because of its lower energy content, the energy E85 delivers actually costs more, even though its price per gallon is lower.

In fact, E85 doesn't provide the same economic benefit as gasoline until its price per gallon is 72% or less than the price of gasoline.

A rough rule-of-thumb

An easy way to know which is the better buy is to remember that it takes about four gallons of E85 to do the work of three gallons of gasoline.

Therefore, E85 becomes a better buy only when four gallons of E85 cost less than would three gallons of gasoline.

Best regards,

Gary Dikkers

It's lunacy to convert food and sugar cane to fuel. Are we that addicted? E85 is a gimmick and it always will be, because if we turned every growing plant to E85, we still wouldn't have enough to meet 1% of our daily demand. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Doesn't it seem more ethical than to turn food-- maybe another country could use to feed its people-- than to focus on short term gimmicks? Oh yea, have you checked the price of corn lately?

Ethanol fuel is not an effective or permanent source of energy, because it is not abundant. Hydrogen is abundant.

Donna McLallen said: "I think everyone on GM’s E85 team is aware of the current challenges facing widespread acceptance of the fuel."

Ms McLallen,

There is a very good reason for the "...current challenges facing widespread acceptance of the fuel."

That reason is that ethanol -- particularly corn ethanol -- makes very little sense if one looks at it analytically with some knowledge of thermodynamics.

Donna McLallen said: "Also, FlexFuel vehicle owners are seeing the satisfaction of not having to depend on foreign oil."

Why do you think, or assume, or believe that making ethanol is not dependent on fossil fuel or foreign energy sources?

Unfortunately, most people do not know that making ethanol is completely dependent on consuming unrenewable fossil fuels -- the primary being natural gas.

Corn ethanol is reformed natural gas

In fact, the hard truth is that corn ethanol is little more than reformed natural gas.

Natural gas inputs to corn ethanol

Modern, industrial, monoculture corn farming would not be possible without synthetic nitrogen fertilizers made by the Haber-Bosch process using natural gas as a feedstock.

Unfortunately, more and more of that synthetic fertilizer is now made overseas (from foreign natural gas) and imported to the U.S.

The latest statistics I've seen say that over 90% of the nitrogen fertilizer corn farmers use is synthesized from natural gas, and that over 60% of that fertilizer is now imported.

That means that growing corn for ethanol is becoming dependent on foreign natural gas.

I don't know about you, but I see little advantage in using a fuel that is dependent on foreign natural gas rather than a fuel dependent on foreign oil. (Both are bad, except ethanol is worse because of the thermodynamic inefficiencies of making it.)

The better way to use natural gas

The fact is it would make more sense to use natural gas directly as an auto fuel, instead of converting that natural gas into ethanol through the inefficient process of turning natural gas into synthetic nitrogen fertilizers; then using that fertilizer to grow a corn crop; then consuming more fossil fuels to harvest, transport, and transform the corn into ethanol.

Of course, were we to do that, it would create many angry corn farmers and Corn Belt politicans. Despite making great sense from an analytical perspective, it is probably a political impossibility.

A question for you

Would you like to explain the CAFE loophole GM takes advantage of when you sell FlexFuel vehicles, or will you wait for me to do it?

Best regards,

Gary Dikkers

Ethanol is the best answer for now, not just an answer, and not just from Corn.

As cellulostic ethanol becomes more available, the complainers will have something to do instead: Offer ethanol in their States.

Paul, altfuels, Gary Dikkers, Bob:

Arrrrrgh!! The truth!! I can't stand it!

Reminds me of the simpler days of politics, when the counter-spin guys used to follow the candidates around on the train. They called them the "Truth Squad".

After reading a few of your comments, I got my consciousness raised. I started noticing the Flex Fuel (or whatever it is) badges on the back of dozens (hundreds?) of Tahoes, Suburbans, et al. Then, lo and behold, I found a little sticker on my S-10 that said it would run on E85.

I started hunting around on the internet for E85 stations. There is 1 (one) in Los Angeles County, 26 miles from here. The next closest is the 1 (one) altfuels mentioned in San Diego, over 100 miles away. How many "Flex Fuel", CAFE spoofing, vehicles to you think must be in such a huge, car centric, geographic area?

Every time I hear about this scamming of the CAFE laws, It just makes me furious. My suggestion to GM, if they don't have the decency to stop exploiting this loophole, is to at least shut up about it. Take warning - when people figure out that they are being spun, they get mad.

I swore that I wouldn't get involved in another blog but, if some of the action is shifting here, oh well.

You guys are great! Keep it up.

Actually about ten years ago, Ford was making E85 compatible vehicles. I believe the Taurus S was one and some Rangers equipped with the 3.0v6. Their campaign continued for about five years. And someone brought up the point about CAFE loopholes. It makes you wonder if an E85 conversion is cheaper to escape CAFE than to modify vehicles to get better fuel economy like Toyota and Honda have done with hybrids. I hope GM turns around and comes to the reality that when other foreign auto makers can meet CAFE and GM decides not to, it will only be bad publicity. Compliance isn't easy either with the types of vehicles being produced, but what happened to American ingenuity? Aside from the E85 conversions that is...

Ethanol is stupid because it causes a shortage of corn for cows which means price of beef and the price of milk goes up. it also polluts just as much as gas does.