ethanol posts, articles, and infographics

The Biofuel Greenhouse Gas Emissions Labyrinth

May 18, 2012 by Nathanael Baker
with 118 views

As governments roll out public policy directing increased biofuel production for all sectors of the transportation industry, serious questions around environmental sustainability still remain.Although the food versus fuel debate -- should arable land be used to grow energy crops, or food crops be used to fuel our cars instead of our... [read more]

E15: A Fuel Before Its Time

May 4, 2012 by Mark Green
with 492 views

E15 – gasoline containing 15 percent ethanol that has EPA approval – is one of those ideas that looks good on paper but seems headed for problems in the real world. API’s Bob Greco, director for downstream and industry operations, outlined some of them for reporters during a conference call:Testing so far shows the higher... [read more]

Boosting the economy with biobased products

February 22, 2012 by Doris de Guzman
with 271 views

US producers of bio-based products will be happy to know that President Obama signed a presidential memo yesterday that requires the federal government via the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) BioPreferred Program to track and increase its purchases of products made from plants and other renewable agricultural materials. The... [read more]

Biofuels Retrospective: What Lessons Apply to Future Due Diligence?

February 21, 2012 by Gerry Runte
with 280 views

And now for something completely different… Last week I gave a presentation at Renewable Energy World 2012 as a member of a panel entitled “Biomass Due Diligence: How Your Project Can Learn from Failure to Better Ensure Success.” I provided the following retrospective on the biofuels experience and a few recommendations on... [read more]

Loss of Ethanol Subsidy Boosts E85 Prices Significantly

January 11, 2012 by Michael Giberson
with 1,058 views

The basic math is pretty simple: most gasoline in the U.S. has about 10 percent ethanol, so the the 45 cents/gallon VEETC subsidy reduced the price of gasoline about 4.5 cents. The subsidy expired at the end of 2011, so one reason gasoline prices have gone up a few cents since New Year’s Day comes from the loss of the subsidy. (World... [read more]

Ethanol Industry Permits Its Politicians to Allow the Expiration of Its Tax Credit and Tariff

January 4, 2012 by Michael Giberson
with 268 views

The Des Moines Register has one version of the story - the agribusiness industry decided it could do without the subsidy since the renewable fuels mandate seemed securely in place: So established is corn-fed ethanol that the industry allowed the expiration of the 45 cents-per-gallon tax credit for ethanol production, as well as the... [read more]

Biofuel Subsidies Need Reform

December 27, 2011 by Nathanael Greene
with 523 views

Americans want the U.S. to lead the world in renewable energy, but these are screwy times in our nation’s capital. Some people are trying to turn clean, renewable energy into something dirty. The fossil fuel industry and the radical right, including Grover Norquist and politicians looking to score cheap political points, are taking on... [read more]

5 Misconceptions About Peak Oil

November 7, 2011 by Robert Rapier
with 635 views

I have just returned from the annual ASPO conference in Washington, D.C. This was only my 2nd ASPO conference; the first one I attended was in 2008 in Sacramento. There were many familiar faces; some of whom I had previously met and some I only knew by reputation. The mood seemed remarkably calmer than in 2008. That year, oil prices were... [read more]

Key Renewable Energy Subsidies About to Expire

October 27, 2011 by Geoffrey Styles
with 784 views

The US renewable energy industry faces a greatly altered incentive environment next year, as eligibility for two of its largest current subsidies comes to an end at the close of 2011. The corn ethanol sector will likely see the complete withdrawal of the blenders' credit that has fueled its growth for more than 30 years, while new... [read more]

Food for Fuel, Again

October 14, 2011 by Lou Grinzo
with 428 views

The U.S. Now Uses More Corn For Fuel Than For Feed: For every 10 ears of corn that are grown in the United States today, only 2 are consumed directly by humans as food. The remaining 8 are used in almost equal shares for animal feed and for ethanol. And, for the 12 months from August 2011 to 2012, the U.S. biofuels industry used more... [read more]

Energy Policy On The Go

August 29, 2011 by Robert Rapier
with 212 views

There were several energy stories of note in the Energy Ticker last week that could have been fodder for a column. Instead, I will just highlight them here with some brief commentary. [read more]

Energy Issues Could Help Define the 2012 Republican Primary

August 3, 2011 by Silvio Marcacci
with 496 views

Energy and environmental issues, and candidate stances on them, will play a large role in the 2012 presidential election. President Obama’s position on many policy issues may be well known, but for the majority of Americans, the platforms of the Republican candidates are just now coming into focus. energyNOW! interviewed Mother Nature Network reporter Andrew Schenkel about differences in policy stances on some of the major energy and environmental issues taking shape in the Republican presidential primary. [read more]

Biofuels' Potential to Transform the Global Economy

August 1, 2011 by John Daly
with 489 views

Slowly but surely, an extraordinarily important new industry is slowly taking shape, with the potential to transform the global economy.After years of existing largely as an environmentalist's fantasy, commercial production of biofuels for the world civil aviation industry is slowly becoming a fact, with production starting up across... [read more]

The Anthropocene and Other Topics

July 27, 2011 by Geoffrey Styles
with 386 views

For the first four years of this blog I published nearly every weekday, and as time went on occasionally struggled to find suitable topics. Lately, I've been running across more good blog topics than I could conceivably cover. I think more is at work in that than my having scaled back the blog's frequency; energy has become an integral... [read more]

Ethanol's Future Without Subsidies

July 12, 2011 by Geoffrey Styles
with 1,156 views

Given the remarkable longevity of the tax credit for ethanol blended into gasoline, it seems fitting that it would take a problem on the scale of the massive US deficit and $14 trillion federal debt to trigger its demise. Yet despite a widely-publicized Senate vote in June and the announcement of a key compromise among three Senators... [read more]