US Senate Votes For Repeal of Ethanol Subsidies 395
T Murphy writes "Although the measure is not expected to become law, a Senate vote 73-27 in favor of repealing ethanol subsidies and tariffs means a lot for future legislation. The White House stands opposed to changes in the subsidies or tariffs, so they will likely go untouched before they expire at the end of the year. Even so, this is a strong indication that such government support for ethanol will be reduced if not eliminated. The response to the Senate vote has been mixed, from corn prices falling, to the World Bank encouraging lower food prices, to concerns over reduced funding for alternative energy, to supporters of such budget cuts."
Re:Do you think they know what a thermodynamic is? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good -- Ethanol's a Joke Anyway (Score:4, Informative)
You hit the nail on the head. The real problem with this wasn't that ethanol itself is a bad idea. It's not. It's that CORN is a very bad way to make ethanol because there's not much energy in it. That only happened because Iowa is the first primary and thus gets highly disproportional attention, and they decided to suck money out of taxpayers for the corn industry.
Sugar based ethanol has proven to do far better because the energy content you get out of growing sugar gives a viable product at the end. Last I heard corn ethanol wasn't even energy positive.
Re:Physics: an alternative political spectrum (Score:5, Informative)
Your 74 charger would be referring to the "gasohol" movement, which was immature but just emerging back when this car was produced in 1973. There were no standard blends back then (and few filling stations); people could mix anywhere from a couple percecnt ethanol in to a majority ethanol. Your leak almost certainly had nothing to do with the ethanol; the notion that these small percents ethanol are not only damaging, but so damaging that they'd destroy a fuel pump in just a couple weeks, is just absurd.
The lower MPG claim is quite a legit one. Ethanol is a less dense fuel than gasoline, so when you buy by the gallon, you're buying less energy. But at 10-15% blend, you're not buying that much ethanol in that gallon.
Gasoline is always going to be a blend of different chemicals. No one chemical is needed, but a wide variety of different chemicals are needed to yield different properties in the fuel. It's likely that for the forseeable future gasoline will contain at least a few percent ethanol because, all "sustainability" issues aside, it's one of the best substitutes for MBTE, which causes serious groundwater contamination.
Re:Do you think they know what a thermodynamic is? (Score:1, Informative)
hey pikers: the general meaning of a word often strays from narrow definitions when used by morons. don't think you are in a position to correct that. understand you are in a position to learn, for once in your life, what common usage means
FTFY
Re:Good -- Ethanol's a Joke Anyway (Score:5, Informative)
It's not just a choice based on how it's manufactured... I'd dare to argue that we don't have as much area to grow sugar cane as brazil. It's a tropical plant. It needs somewhere north of 125cm/year of rainfall to grow, high humidity and lots of sun. Unfortunately most of our agriculture land does not support those conditions. Brazil is MADE for cane. Where we grow stuff, it's made for corn, and maybe switchgrass? Compare Iowa/nebraska, indiana, illinois, where corn is grown, to Louisiana, Florida and Hawaii, where we can grow cane. Add to that, hawaii is tiny, florida and Louisiana have a lot of unaccessable swamp, and that florida land prices are at a premium.
http://www.tangail.110mb.com/sugar.php [110mb.com] production amounts
http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/USLA0231 [weather.com] - AVG rainfall/temp of US States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Brazil [wikipedia.org]
http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Iowa/average-annual-temperatures.php [currentresults.com] - Iowa average Temp - high 50s, low 60s
http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Louisiana/average-annual-temperatures.php [currentresults.com] - Louisiana avg temp high 80s
Re:Physics: an alternative political spectrum (Score:4, Informative)
Corn ethanol cannot be made affordable regardless of economies of scale, due to a thing called the laws of thermodynamics. Even if you manage to build a 100% efficient ethanol engine, it will still take more ethanol to grow a crop of corn, that can ever possibly be obtained from the corn. So corn subsidies are the government spending money in order to make things worse. Because the generators and the tractors don't run on 100% efficient ethanol engines, they run on diesel. So instead of just using 100 gallons of petrol in vehicles, you're using 120 gallons on farms to make 100 gallons of ethanol, which then gives a lower MPG than petrol did in the first place*. And no price makes that make any sense, ever, no matter what. Now, there are far more efficient sources of ethanol, but the American corn states had a lot of power, and sort of forced all Ethanol research to be on corn. For one, any grain at all would be a better source by a long shot. Corn is the worst crop in the world to be grown for food in terms of efficiency, and the same holds for fermenting it.
*these numbers are made up, but broadly true.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)