As I opened today’s LA Times, yes, I do read the Times every day, I see that they follow our coverage on the impact of converting acres of farmland from producing corn for food to Ethanol production. Their headline. “Food or fuel?”
On Feb 9th of last year we blogged a Juice report entitled “is ethanol the panacea for our energy independence?”
I have also posted a follow up on Feb 21st that says “I told you so..been to a grocery store lately?”
The sub headline of today’s Times story reads: “As global starvation worsens, the US plans to devote vast amounts of grain to producing ethanol.” The story opens as follows: “Something is very wrong with this picture: The United Nations World Food Program has been hit so hard by skyrocketing grain prices that it may be forced to cut off food aid to the world’s poorest countries, while the United states is planning to turn record quantities of corn into automotive fuel.”
At this point I will let you check out the balance of this Times editorial for which I do not have a link (at this time).It can be found on page A-14, February 26, 2008.
Where do we go from here. Larry, you point out a problem but what about a solution?
For starters our state and federal government should immediately approve more nuclear plants. Second. Open ANWAR for exploration no matter how long it takes to get some of that untapped fuel supply into a pipeline heading south.
Yes, I expect Juice readers to blame president Bush for starving third world nations. However, before you do, consider the fact that you enjoy a majority in both houses of Congress. As such the buck passes over and through your house.
As always your comments are welcome.
email response:
This is a new form of Farm Price Supports (an undelcared tax increase on food). You remember that both Presidents Bush and Clinton advocated this when the price of fuel went up. Their seeming thrust was to cause the price of fuel to go down, but actually it was to make the market price of corn go up. I once talked to an ethanol advocate who declared that ethanol could be made from sugar beets which would grow nearly anywhere and wouldn’t have to take away valuable farm land. I suspect that my cousin who is a dairy farmer isn’t profiting from this, but is just paying higher feed prices.
Sorry. I got carried away.
Henry
Larry,
You are not doing your homework!
1. Nuclear power costs more than wind, solar, bio-waste, geothermal…
2. Levels of wind and solar use have increased up to 30% from 2003. That is 30% over gas, oil, coal and nuclear.
3. Nuclear energy will never pass (costing $billions) while wind generated energy can be in place immediately.
4. Both short and long term effects of Nuclear energy create tons more carbon dioxide than wind and solar.
5. Urnaium is finite like oil, gas and coal.
6. Natural disasters or terrorist attacks in an area with windmills or solar panels will have far less effects than such an occurance with a nuclear plant.
I can go on,
I suggest the following for your reading pleasure:
http://www.acfonline.org.au/news.asp?news_id=582&c=24394
and, as far as solar in not-so-sunny-places goes…
“Seattle gets more sun than the prime solar power sites in Germany, one of the world’s most prolific solar power generators…”
http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2005/03/14/story3.html
and…
“A solar plant made by SolarReserve will be able to produce up to 500 megawatts of peak power comparable to a regular coal power plant without harmful greenhouse gas emissions. A typical one megawatt energy will be able to supply more than 1,000 households.”
http://hubpages.com/hub/Solar-Power-with-Molten-Salt
The simple truth is that we can harness natural energy from anywhere in the world. We should be tapping into Mother Nature (wind, solar, tidal…) as our main source and keep whatever is left of the oil as our back-up supply. At least, then maybe, there will be peace of mind for all.
Nuclear energy is not peace of mind, ever.
Mary
Larry,
I agree. Let me add to your list.
Start drilling offshore in California waters. With known reserves, it is far closer to the need than ANWR. Let the people see the results of their consumption.
While I agree with the points Marry makes about solar energy, wind generation kills raptors and other birds everyday. Solar should be utilized on every roof and I am sure as prices come down on the new method of producing solar power by flexographic printing we will see solar roofing tiles made by this method nearly as cheap as conventional roofing materials. But all of this takes time and technologies’ that are emerging, oil, gas and nukes are usable now, as is our need.
Bring back grain as food (or drink) not fuel, it’s a total waste.
Good morning readers.
It appears that the OC Register is also following this issue.They published two guest columns in today’s editorial page.
Good morning Mary.
Although I will not debate the higher cost of nuclear power, in my lifetime I purchased 100 octane gasoline at twenty five cents a gallon. From what we are hearing regular gas will hit $4.00 this summer.
I will not rule out any form of energy to break the stranglehold OPEC has over our heads. Ethanol does not burn the same as the fuel we are now using. At the end of the day you have a wash. Twenty percent less dependence and twenty percent less mileage with Ethanol. What genius, inside the DC beltway, failied to share that trivial data with George?
America will never approve nuclear energy. Just the politics of getting it approved = more wasted cash. $Billions have already been invested since 1950s(?) in nuclear energy. And the shift has been remarkedly toward mother nature.
Larry,
The reason we are not consuming such a volatile substance is not only because of the inherent dangers but also because of the upkeep of working and non-working facilities. The costs are too high. We are seeing a significant shift in research toward harnessing green renewable energy.
The solution of changing oil for nuclear is like changing heroin for morphine. We need to ditch the junk.
Larry,
The rest of the world is vying to be the leader in green energy. That includes China. Isn’t it about time our nation has a clean sustainable future? Don’t you think it is in our own best economic interest to charge forward?
Larry,
I figured out why you are pushing for nuclear energy. You invested in it, right? Well, we all make bad investments from time to time. I sincerely suggest you accept your loss and move on before you lose any more money. Nuclear energy is a boondoggle.
anon 1:26 pm
Sorry to disappoint you but I have ZERO investments in nuclear energy
Nor do we own a farm growing corn for Ethanol
The only “bad investment” I have made is in the members of our current Mission Viejo city council whom I supported in their elections.
Mary. Wikipedia offers the following list of “green energy sources” some of which I have already mentioned such as solar and wind along with “nuclear.”
“Green energy includes natural energetic processes that can be harnessed with little pollution. Anaerobic digestion, geothermal power, wind power, small-scale hydropower, solar power, biomass power, tidal power and wave power fall under such a category. Some versions may also include power derived from the incineration of waste.
Some organizations have specifically classified nuclear power as green energy such as cleantech.com. However, even the Nuclear Energy Institute has avoided the issue of directly classifying nuclear as green energy – a public awareness campaign launched for nuclear power uses the catch phrase clean air energy.”
Mary. To repeat what I have stated before. The US must seek fuel/energy alternatives so that we can break the 35 year stranglehold now held over us by OPEC. I will agree with you that your go “green machine” is part of the solution. Don’t be so quick to eliminate nuclear energy which provides perhaps 80 percent of the power in France.
Folks Having written three posts on the impact of Ethanol this past year let me simply add today’s Washington Post article that includes another downside to the Bush mandate:
The Problem With Biofuels
More proof that there are no easy solutions to climate change
Wednesday, February 27, 2008; Page A16 Washington Post
AS THE United States searches for alternative ways to feed its addiction to petroleum, ethanol and other biofuels derived from organic material have been considered a miracle motor vehicle elixir. The energy bill signed by President Bush in December mandates that at least 36 billion gallons of biofuels a year be used by 2020. Yet separate studies released this month by Princeton University and the Nature Conservancy reveal that biofuels are not a silver bullet in the battle against global warming. In fact, they could make things worse.
Corn and sugar cane are common sources of ethanol. Aside from emitting fewer greenhouse gases than coal or oil when burned as fuel, these biofuel crops remove carbon from the atmosphere while they are growing — thus making them nearly carbon-neutral. But the studies show that ethanol may be even more dangerous for the environment than fossil fuels are. As the Princeton study points out, clearing previously untouched land to grow biofuel crops releases long-sequestered carbon into the atmosphere. While planting corn and sugar cane in already tilled land is fine, a problem arises when farmers churn up new land to grow more fuel or the food and feed displaced by biofuel crops.
The impact of these land-use changes is enormous. As the study from the Nature Conservancy warns, “converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia and the United States creates a ‘biofuel carbon debt’ by releasing 17 to 420 times more carbon dioxide than the fossil fuels they replace.” There are other negative effects. Massive amounts of water are needed to irrigate cornfields, setting up potential competition between farms and homes. The runoff of pesticides and nitrogen-based fertilizers used by farmers could lead to increased pollution and oxygen-depleted waterways. The natural gas used to make the fertilizer adds to the carbon deficit created by biofuels.
An essay in the May-June 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs by two professors from the University of Minnesota highlighted still another problem: The biofuels craze could starve people. “By putting pressure on global supplies of edible crops, the surge in ethanol production will translate into higher prices for both processed and staple foods around the world,” they wrote. “If oil prices remain high — which is likely — the people most vulnerable to the price hikes brought on by the biofuel boom will be those in countries that both suffer food deficits and import petroleum.”
The problems with corn-based ethanol, long regarded as a transitional fuel source, have been debated for years. One alternative is to squeeze ethanol out of cellulose from switch grass, cornhusks and other biomass sources. But because cellulosic ethanol remains experimental, it might be years before it makes it from the laboratory to the gas tank. It all adds up to another example that there is no quick, cheap and easy way to confront the menace of global warming.
Nuclear energy is not green!
Nuclear energy is a finite source!
Nuclear energy is toxic waste!
Larry,
There are “loads” of products being developed with the use of our “natural forces” making any thought toward nuclear energy obsolete in this country.
Technology means moving forward.
Nuclear energy = moving backward.
Mary and Anon 3:22 p.m.
I guess you need to challenge Wikipedia on their inclusion of nuclear energy as one form of GREEN ENERGY. They generally are dead on with their definitions.
Anon. Perhaps you can list the
“loads of products” and define your “natural forces” for those of us who are not as knowledgable as you seem to be on this topic.
Thank you!
Larry,
Wikipedia! Can’t anyone write in a definition? Didn’t Steven Colbert prove this on The Colbert Report?
Natural forces are wind, solar, tidal, geothermal…
Nuclear energy plants that power other nations cannot be dismantled even if the switch is to Mother Nature. It is too dangerous to shut them down completely. In other words, once a plant is in place, it must be attended to forever.
That is another reason why America is investing much less reasearch in Nuclear energy opting to invest more in cleaner and sustainable Natural energy that can be in place immediately with little to no future waste.
Mary
Larry,
You can learn more about the “loads of products” being developed at such sites as http//www.inhabitat.com and http//www.treehugger.com
http://www.inhabitat.com and http://www.treehugger.com
Mary and Anon 1:48 PM.
From the Juice rolling reports this post is headed for the archives with the next story.
Let me share data from the IEEE Industry Applications Jan/Feb 2007issue that includes data on the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
The report contains four pie charts as follows:
Installed generation capacity (%MW) by fuel
Natural Gas including dual fired 42%, Coal 32%, Nuclear 11% and Renewable 11%
Chart #2 Energy production (% KWh) by fueld type
Coal 54%, Nuclear 21%, Natural Gas 12%, Renewable 10% and Petroleum 3%
Chart #3 installed renewable generation capacity (% renewable MW by fuel
Hydroelectric 86%, Wood 5%, Wind 4%, Landfill gas 3%, Geothermal 2% and Solar 0.4%
Chart #4 Energy production (% renewable kWh) of renewable sources.
Hydroelectric 75%, Wood 11%, Landfill Gas 6%, Geothermal 4%, Wind 3%, Biomass 1% and Solar 0.2%
As these numbers clearly point out biomass, geothermal, solar and wind
are a very small percentage of the energy production charts.
In fact bar chart #5 shows nuclear plants having the highest capacity factors for all generators in the US by fuel type at 83%. Nuclear is followed by wood, geothermal and coal.
Or said another way you cannot eliminate a nuclear component of the energy mix in any debate as we have established a goal to be energy independent by 2025.