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Originally Posted by absence_of_color
I cant imagine that people that have the money and will to choose one of many options, would end up building an ethanol facility, (which most are locally owned and operated), without having strong confidence in its success. Id say these people have done extensive research on the pros and cons with committees and boards dedicated to the subject. Of course, nothing is certain. This i am aware of.
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These local investors are mostly farmers. They have a big problem - they grow way too much corn. The government subsidizes them NOT to grow corn, but they'd rather grow corn and make money off of it. Trouble is, even though they've managed to infiltrate the ENTIRE food supply with it (I challenge you to find 10 processed food items at the grocery store that do not have some form of corn in them) it's still selling far too cheaply for their taste. So they're looking to invent a new market for it, and ethanol shows promise in making them money.
First off the price of corn will rise because corn that used to go into making high-fructose corn syrup and other corn additives is now being sold to the ethanol plant. And since they own part of the ethanol plant they're also getting money for the ethanol the plant produces.
The local investors have enacted a 20 year snowjob campaign trying to convince the American public that corn-derived ethanol is good for the environment and will make gas cost less.
Unfortunately for them, no one cared for most of that time because with gas at 80 cents a gallon or so, we didn't need cheaper gas.
Now that we'd like to have cheaper gas, people are searching for any solution, and they're willing to listen to promises of cheaper fuel. This would be great if those promises had a prayer of coming true.
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As it is, yes, but in time, inefficiencies could and may be cleared up, as with any product ever marketed.
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And that's exactly my point. Sure, maybe some time way in the future we'll figure out how to make ethanol without using more energy than we get out of the final product. Hell maybe we'll figure out how to build a cold-fusion plant too. Maybe. If and when the day comes that we can get more energy out of a corn cob than we put into it, I'll be its most fervent supporter.
But that day is not here, and so far there aren't any signs that it will be here any time soon. I have defiinte issues with forcing a fuel that does not work and has no promise of working in the near future on the American public.
If you invest in this fuel you are taking the gamble that the ethanol industry will figure out how to make it a legitimate fuel BEFORE the public realizes it is not a legitimate fuel and abandons it. If the public figures this situation out before the science can catch up, then the science won't have the funding to catch up, and you'll lose your investment.
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But as for my personal, wild-assed guess, I am an american, and if your suggesting that making and using a product like ethanol on the homefront is more expensive than the cost of our precious oil, its absolutely ridiculous.
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It's more *energy* expensive. If you use more energy to produce a fuel than you get out of the fuel, you are wasting your effort. You may as well take the energy used to make the fuel, and run the cars off of that. It simply does not make sense, from an environmental AND economic point of view, to produce ethanol at this time.
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The governments sure as hell arent doing it because they "just want to help". Its mainly all over oil, with an exception of a few obligating prior commitments. It will never stop as long as there is a petroleum crisis.
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And ethanol isn't going to stop it either. We would require more than the entire United States' land to make enough corn to produce the ethanol required to fuel the country's fleet of cars. Clearly this is not workable so if we rely on ethanol we will still have to rely on oil.
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If ethanol is more expensive than all that, ill eat my hat!!
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Want some barbecue sauce with that?
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I am looking to invest to make money, but unlike most, I would like to invest in something that is good all around, not to make a quick buck without thought to anything else. I do care about the farmers, if this goes through, and it continues to raise farm income, it will also put interest back into farming, which is at a low. Agriculture makes life possible!
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And agriculture is a huge boondoggle in this country. We pay our farmers NOT to grow things. That's asinine. It clearly points to the idea that we don't need as many farmers as we have. Any other industry, you'd have the extra workers looking for jobs in another field of work, but for some reason that's considered terrible for farmers to have to do.
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No, not yet, but it could be possible in the future.
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Great! When it's possible, come find me and I'll invest with you.
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A nonworkable fuel? I agree that its not the perfect solution and definately has its quirks to be worked out, but non working? Its like you have stamped the entire idea as a failure.
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It IS a failure. They're marketing it as the answer to the oil crisis. They're not saying "maybe in the distant future if and when we've figured a bunch of stuff out that we have no clue about yet, it'll be the answer." They're saying it's THE answer. So not only is it, currently, a failure, it's also a big lie.
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Talk about comparing apples to aardvarks. The success of a donut compared to an alternative fuel..
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Actually I was comparing one industry's overrapid expansion to another industry's overrapid expansion.
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The Earth's fossil fuel budget is a finite amount, no matter how you stretch it. One day it will be done.
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You're proving my point for me. If the earth's fossil fuel supply is finite (it is) then it is rather stupid to waste it making a fuel that gives us less energy than using the fossil fuels in the first place would. If we'd just fuel the cars off gas until either we made ethanol workable OR we found a whole new method of propulsion, we'd make the oil stretch longer, giving us even more time to solve the problem. What we're doing right now is just making the end come faster.
If you want a real solution you have to look into REAL renewable energy. Wind, solar, hydroelectric. Get a bunch of electric cars with solar panels, that can plug into the wall of your wind/hydro powered house for those cloudy days, and you have a REAL renewable energy source that doesn't pollute (execept in the initial manufacture of the energy collection devices) and will not be extinguished until the death of the sun.
Wouldn't it be better to concentrate our efforts toward that goal than to concentrate on making yet another hydrocarbon fuel that pollutes and isn't even as efficient as the original hydrocarbon fuel?