Comments on: Irrationally Exuberant Ethanol

By: Brian DeWitt

Brian DeWitt — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:03:23 +0000

Thanks for the snippet and link. I’ve been a big arguer on the side that we’ve tried ethanol once in the 50s (i think) and it didn’t work then. Those who fail to learn from history…

Both Wired and National Geographic have articles about ethanol this month. I have only read the Wired article and am about to start the National G one. In Wired, it is pointed out that we do not have near enough farmland in America to create the amount of ethanol we need. Cost is another issue and so is the energy netted after accounting for the energy necessary to grow and create ethanol. I’ll give you a hint, best case its still as polluting as regular petroleum based fuels.

The cost issue is being worked on but all that money would be better spent on a technology that is proving much more viable (and economical to produce). That “tech” is reclaiming and then cleaning all the used cooking oil.

MAKE: magazine covered bio-diesel in their first issue, Dirty Jobs (on the Discovery Channel) featured a man that makes his own – 55 gallons at a time, UC Berkeley has a Bio-Diesel Oasis and there are myriad sites on how to convert a diesel to bio-diesel.

By: Tony Arcieri

Tony Arcieri — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 05:51:52 +0000

There’s a Boulder-based startup trying to create a closed-cycle process to convert algae into biofuel, using CO2 from coal power plants to boost algae yields (and O2 produced by the algae to boost the burn efficiency of the coal):

http://www.solixbiofuels.com/

Sounds like a lot better approach than corn ethanol…

By: Martin Edic

Martin Edic — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:23:27 +0000

The focus on corn as a source for ethanol in the US is entirely driven by corporate interests, specifically ADM and the sugar industry. ADM owns the corn refining and commodity business. The sugar people have received ridiculous price protections that have kept cheap cane out of the US for a hundred years. In South America they’re making ethanol much more efficiently with cane.
The trickle down with corn is that virtually every processed food product in the US has a corn component. Corn prices rising because of diversion of corn into ethanol mean that our fantasies about ethanol are being paid for by those least able to afford it.

By: Nari Kannan

Nari Kannan — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 14:58:35 +0000

If the Government does not spend money on Ethanol incentives it will spend it on price supports for Corn. I would buy Ethanol stocks and hold on to them for five more years. When oil is $100 a barrel, there will be more flex cars that can switch between gasoline and ethanol!

By: Don Jones

Don Jones — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 06:17:40 +0000

I read a recent interview of Bob Metcalfe where he says (paraphrasing) “Bubbles are good – they speed innovation by attracting lots of investment.” Too much investment…

This concept sits well with me, harsh as it may seem because most of the participants (and their investors) in bubbles will lose. Look what it did to the nascent car industry decades ago, or to the Internet, or to the telecom industry, or to Web 2.0 companies, or what it will do to ethanol/energy sources here in the U.S.

My belief is that bubbles only hurt the economy in two areas where the result is not technology advancement – real estate and the stock market. Breaking bubbles in those two industries don’t really leave pieces to be picked up and reassembled into something greater than before.

The U.S. has always been a boom and bust kind of place, taking two steps forward and one and a half back in whatever industry you want to name.

By: Jay Parkhill

Jay Parkhill — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 01:45:54 +0000

A client of mine- who makes organic Indian food, not fuel- told me recently that her biodegradable packaging is “corn free”. Enter the corn backlash on the heels of the ethanol backlash.