"In only a few years, Brazil has turned itself into the planet's undisputed renewable energy leader, and the highlight of Bush's visit is expected to be a new ethanol "alliance" he will forge with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva." "Ethanol proponents hope Bush and Silva will nonetheless come up with a framework to sharply boost ethanol production in the nations between Brazil and the United States, encouraging more foreign investment." "At every gas station in this city of 18 million, drivers can fill up with gasoline or ethanol. Ethanol came courtesy of a 1970s decision by Brazil's former military dictators to subsidize production and require distribution at the pumps." "A 1980s Brazilian fad with cars that ran only on ethanol petered out when oil prices fell in the early 1990s. But the fuel came back into vogue in 2003 when automakers started rolling out cars "flex-fuel" cars that run on gasoline, ethanol or any combination of the two." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070304/ap_on_...il_us_ethanol_2
In what way will importing ethanol from Brazil make us more energy independant than importing oil from the Middle East. In what way does burning ethanol mitigate Global Warming better than burning gasoline and oil?
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Mar 4 2007, 06:47 PM) [snapback]400071[/snapback]</div> It doesn't. Depending on whose numbers you use and how the ethanol is produced it is possible that ethanol has a modest advantage in CO2 output over gasoline. It's all a bit dodgy and there's a lot of debate about it. I suppose that cellulose ethanol (or better yet, Butanol, once we figure out how to produce large amounts of it cheaply) and waste-to-ethanol approaches probably have a much better energy balance and therefore lower CO2 emissions.
Would welcome any additional countries as sources of friendly fuel vs being forced to purchase enemy oil. So much the better if the fuel is an alternative to petroleum and if the country is located in the Western Hemisphere vs the Middle East on the journey to energy independence.
At the present time, from an energy security standpoint, yes WH ethanol is better than ME oil. No doubt. However, there are substantial environmental concerns... namely that brazil et al will deforest themselves in pursuit of higher ethanol production. Brazil could go the way of austrailia if they're not careful with their resources. Producing ethanol/butanol in more environmentally benign ways is great but I doubt that it'll play out that way.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(BORNGEARHEAD @ Mar 5 2007, 11:20 PM) [snapback]400693[/snapback]</div> no, worse, because it has less energy per gallon. Some numbers here http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/byfuel/FFV2007.shtml
Until we work out the bugs on celulous based ethanol it is not a viable option due to the landscape destruction that will be invloved with creating the fuel from "fuit" based crops. We eat too much damn meat to make it feasible. :angry:
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Beryl Octet @ Mar 5 2007, 09:27 PM) [snapback]400696[/snapback]</div> That really depends. Engines that are designed for E100 actually do quite well because ethanol has a high octane rating. Engines that accommodate a wide variety of E blends do get worse mileage because ethanol has considerably less energy (about 65%) than gasoline. Butanol, on the other hand, has an energy density much lcloser to that of gasoline and if much more transportable (via existing pipelines) than ethanol. If can be mixed with gasoline in a variety of blends and you don't need a FFV to use it. Of course, the caveat is that right now there's no economical way of producing large amounts of biobutanol. Dow, Dupont, and BP are working on it though. I hope that there's a breakthrough there soon. There are a handful of production cellulose ethanol plants going up soon. Here's a GCC article about these developments.
