Obama and Ethanol: Is it Just About Winning Votes?
Obama is the first candidate in a long time that I have believed in and thought might actually be above politics as usual. With the Democratic nomination cinched, I fear his campaign has moved into tactics designed to win votes that may not truly express his my ideals. From faith-based reform to liquid coal, Obama is making blunders that are shaking his liberal base in order to appeal to more moderate voters. His long standing support of corn ethanol subsidies is another example that appears he is selling out for votes, or maybe I have misunderstood him from the start and created an ideal candidate that does not exist.
Ethanol is an alternative biofuel that can be made from corn, sugar cane, or switchgrass. In fact, Henry Ford’s first mass-produced automobile was designed to run off of 100% ethanol, so the fuel has a long history in the car industry. When added to gasoline, ethanol reduces ozone formation by lowering volatile organic compounds and hydrocarbon emissions. This all sounds good, but there is controversy surrounding corn-based ethanol. Michael Grunwald of Time reports that one person could be fed for a year “on the corn needed to fill an ethanol-fueled SUV”. Some research demonstrates that the production of corn ethanol consumes more energy than it yields, and there is concern that corn-based ethanol is raising the price of food, although the USDA denies the increase is significant.
If you’ve ever driven through the midwest, you’ve seen acres upon acres of corn growing in this fertile land. Obama reigns from Illinois, the second largest corn producing state. He has been cozying up to the corn ethanol industry for quite some time. According to Plenty Magazine:
When Obama campaigns in the corn belt, the Times reports, he often brings along his friend Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader, who now serves on the boards of three ethanol companies… And Obama himself has cozied up to corn ethanol, courting controversy early in his Senate career by accepting subsidized travel on jets owned by Archer Daniels Midland, the country’s largest ethanol producer.
I don’t have a problem with ethanol per se, but I am concerned that Senator Obama favors corn-based biofuels over other alternatives. Obama supports multibillion dollar subsidies for corn ethanol, as well as a steep 54-cent-a-gallon import tariff on the cheaper and more efficient sugarcane ethanol. This sounds just like politics as usual, instead of looking at what is best for our environment. Obama admits, “Look, I’ve been a strong ethanol supporter because Illinois … is a major corn producer.” Despite these concerns, I still believe Obama is the best candidate.
Image: Kables on Flickr under a Creative Commons License
Related posts on Obama’s energy policies and Ethanol:
- Low Impact Living: Who’s the Greenest? Obama vs. McCain
- Bill McKibben Discusses Obama, the Dems, and the Environmental Movement [video]
- Obama: Blame the Iraq War for Lack of US Climate Change Leadership
- Which is Worse: Exporting $1 Billion Per Week or Growing Fuel?
- 2015: 30% of US Corn Harvest Will Be Gasoline
- How Green Are Biofuels? Comparison Chart [PIC]
My dislike of ethanol aside, producing ethanol from corn or pretty much any other major crop is a bad idea. First, it’s their crop, let them use it for whatever they want. Second, it IS having an adverse effect on food prices. Third, because its lower energy density its a poor supplement and an unlikely replacement for gasoline.
The best “fuel replacement” I’ve seen to date is biofuel from algae, which may soon be more economical than fossil fuel even.
[...] Obama and Ethanol: Is it Just About Winning Votes? [...]
I would rather spend my American dollars with American farmers, agribusinesses, etc. on ethanol and other domestically sourced biofuels than sending them to corrupt nations that support terrorists. REGARDLESS of all the competing quibbling about relative energy efficiency, and all the other hyperbole that is thrown out by BOTH sides of the argument.
The fact is that America has turned a blind eye to the future for far too long, and remained dependent upon petroleum based fuels that we do not have rights to…
Since 1973, EVERY American President has squandered the opportunity to encourage domestically produced fuel – it’s high time to get cracking, and THIS Republican is putting his support behind the Senator from Illinois this time….MY team has dropped the ball for the last eight years…it’s time to give the OTHER team a chance…
[...] Obama and Ethanol: Is It Just About Winning Votes? [...]
[...] Obama and Ethanol: Is It Just About Winning Votes? [...]
[...] Obama and Ethanol: Is it Just About Winning Votes? [...]
ETHANOL-PRODUCTION WITH BLUE-GREEN-ALGAE
A SOLUTION AFTER PEAK-OIL AND OIL-CRASH
University of Hawai’i Professor Pengchen “Patrick” Fu developed an innovative technology, to produce high amounts of ethanol with modified cyanobacterias, as a new feedstock for ethanol, without entering in conflict with the food and feed-production .
Fu has developed strains of cyanobacteria — one of the components of pond scum — that feed on atmospheric carbon dioxide, and produce ethanol as a waste product.
He has done it both in his laboratory under fluorescent light and with sunlight on the roof of his building. Sunlight works better, he said.
It has a lot of appeal and potential. Turning waste into something useful is a good thing. And the blue-green-algae needs only sun and wast- recycled from the sugar-cane-industry, to grow and to produce directly more and more ethanol. With this solution, the sugarcane-based ethanol-industry in Brazil and other tropical regions will get a second way, to produce more biocombustible for the worldmarket.
The technique may need adjusting to increase how much ethanol it yields, but it may be a new technology-challenge in the near future.
The process was patented by Fu and UH in January, but there’s still plenty of work to do to bring it to a commercial level. The team of Fu foundet just the start-up LA WAHIE BIOTECH INC. with headquarter in Hawaii and branch-office in Brazil.
PLAN FOR AN EXPERIMENTAL ETHANOL PLANT
Fu figures his team is two to three years from being able to build a full-scale
ethanol plant, and they are looking for investors or industry-partners (jointventure).
He is fine-tuning his research to find different strains of blue-green algae that will produce even more ethanol, and that are more tolerant of high levels of ethanol. The system permits, to “harvest” continuously ethanol – using a membrane-system- and to pump than the blue-green-algae-solution in the Photo-Bio-Reactor again.
Fu started out in chemical engineering, and then began the study of biology. He has studied in China, Australia, Japan and the United States, and came to UH in 2002 after a stint as scientist for a private company in California.
He is working also with NASA on the potential of cyanobacteria in future lunar and Mars colonization, and is also proceeding to take his ethanol technology into the marketplace. A business plan using his system, under the name La Wahie Biotech, won third place — and a $5,000 award — in the Business Plan Competition at UH’s Shidler College of Business.
Daniel Dean and Donavan Kealoha, both UH law and business students, are Fu’s partners. So they are in the process of turning the business plan into an operating business.
The production of ethanol for fuel is one of the nation’s and the world’s major initiatives, partly because its production takes as much carbon out of the atmosphere as it dumps into the atmosphere. That’s different from fossil fuels such as oil and coal, which take stored carbon out of the ground and release it into the atmosphere, for a net increase in greenhouse gas.
Most current and planned ethanol production methods depend on farming, and in the case of corn and sugar, take food crops and divert them into energy.
Fu said crop-based ethanol production is slow and resource-costly. He decided to work with cyanobacteria, some of which convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into their own food and release oxygen as a waste product.
Other scientists also are researching using cyanobacteria to make ethanol, using different strains, but Fu’s technique is unique, he said. He inserted genetic material into one type of freshwater cyanobacterium, causing it to produce ethanol as its waste product. It works, and is an amazingly efficient system.
The technology is fairly simple. It involves a photobioreactor, which is a
fancy term for a clear glass or plastic container full of something alive, in which light promotes a biological reaction. Carbon dioxide gas is bubbled through the green mixture of water and cyanobacteria. The liquid is then passed through a specialized membrane that removes the
ethanol, allowing the water, nutrients and cyanobacteria to return to the
photobioreactor.
Solar energy drives the conversion of the carbon dioxide into ethanol. The partner of Prof. Fu in Brazil in the branch-office of La Wahie Biotech Inc. in Aracaju – Prof. Hans-Jürgen Franke – is developing a low-cost photo-bio-reactor-system. Prof. Franke want´s soon creat a pilot-project with Prof. Fu in Brazil.
The benefit over other techniques of producing ethanol is that this is simple and quick—taking days rather than the months required to grow crops that can be converted to ethanol.
La Wahie Biotech Inc. believes it can be done for significantly less than the cost of gasoline and also less than the cost of ethanol produced through conventional methods.
Also, this system is not a net producer of carbon dioxide: Carbon dioxide released into the environment when ethanol is burned has been withdrawn from the environment during ethanol production. To get the carbon dioxide it needs, the system could even pull the gas out of the emissions of power plants or other carbon dioxide producers. That would prevent carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere, where it has been implicated as a
major cause of global warming.
Honolulo – Hawaii/USA and Aracaju – Sergipe/Brasil – 15/09/2008
Prof. Pengcheng Fu – E-Mail: pengchen2008@gmail.com
Prof. Hans-Jürgen Franke – E-Mail: lawahiebiotech.brasil@gmail.com
Tel.: 00-55-79-3243-2209