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What Does that Ethanol Cost?

E

Econ101

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I am not validating these figures but you can find the whole website at:

http://zfacts.com/p/60.html



Ethanol Production: at $7.87/Gas-Gallon-saved?


Just the Facts:
zFacts favors alternative energy (See Cellulose Ethanol) and likes conservation even more. But, keep your eye on the ball ADM is pitching.

Do this easy math and see for yourself: According to the pro-ethanol USDA,
1) Making 4 gallons of ethanol uses up the energy in 3 gallons of ethanol.
2) So you must make 4 to save 1.

But ethanol has less energy per gallon, so
3) You must save 1.5 gallons of ethanol to save the energy in 1 gallon of gas.

So to save 1 gallon of gas, you must make
4) 6 gallons (4×1.5) of ethanol to save the energy in 1 gallon of gasoline.

Growing corn and producing ethanol are subsidized,
5) Saving 1 gallon gas cost all the subisidies on 6 gallons of ethanol.

Bottom line on subsidies: Net subsidies to ethanol are about 55¢/gallon
6) Cost of subsidies to save 1 gallon gas = $3.30
 
I didn't look at all your information Econ, but it looks like it came from that old outdated study.

Check this site out.
http://www.ethanol.org/talkingpoints.html
 
fedup2 said:
I didn't look at all your information Econ, but it looks like it came from that old outdated study.

Check this site out.
http://www.ethanol.org/talkingpoints.html
Click to expand...

Excellent link!
BTW They dont have to blend ethanol. You can blend it 30% with a stock car but with minor adjustments new cars can burn it straight.
 
I don't know of any car made that burns 100% ethanol, the best I have seen and the highest grade on the market is 85% and your vehicle must be able to adjust the computer to run E-85 or you will do damage to your engine. The problem is right now I only save .01 per gallon over gasoline, so what savings is there for the consumer on 10% ethanol? Also alot of people claim a 2-5 mpg on running ethanol because it doesn't burn at the BTU's of reg unleaded, so at a penny savings you must cost out MPG and in some cases it cost you more than reg unleaded. The price point needs to be lower to have more impact other than the midwest and E-85 must branch out much further as for now there is .26-.35 a gallon savings on this product if your vehicle can run it.
 
fedup2 said:
I didn't look at all your information Econ, but it looks like it came from that old outdated study.

Check this site out.
http://www.ethanol.org/talkingpoints.html
Click to expand...

Thanks fedup2. Your site has ethanol at 2.10 dollars per gallon to produce vs. gas at 1.80:

http://www.ethanol.org/costcalculator.html

Today's Wall Street Journal has wholesale gas at 1.91 per gallon so it is getting close if the 2.10 number is correct.

From the corn burning stove research, I think a bushel of dried corn yields about 450,000 btu s per bushel. I don't know if they get that many btu s out of a bushel in the ethanol process. If they did, every bushel would get about half the btu s out of a bushel based on the 35,000 per 75,000 btu s and that would be around 250,000 btu per bushel.

Unfortunately, the website does not tell us what units of measurement there are in the deal. I had called our state to see if the USDA guy pushing corn ethanol knew the cost of production, but he did not. Seeing how Johannes came from that industry, I don't know why it is a big secret. Seems to me with all the public subsidies and financing we should all know what the current cost is per gallon instead of it being hidden. We seem to be getting more efficient at it but we still have a way to go. Oil has traditionally kept these substitutes out by pumping more when prices are high.

I will ask some people who have been in the business what it costs to produce.

We need to subsidize some of these things just to get the technology down and see if it is a viable energy source and not be so dependent on oil but we need the facts of the deal instead of just the hype.
 
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I was told it costs $1.35 to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. A person must remember that the byproducts of ethanol are also used as feed. The plants sell the ethanol to petroleum companies to blend in. What markup they do I don't know. Also my question is why one gas station can be 10 cents cheaper than another one just down the street with ethanol.
 
Econ101 said:
Thanks fedup2. Your site has ethanol at 2.10 dollars per gallon to produce vs. gas at 1.80:
Click to expand...

Bear in mind that Roper's a fellow Canuck, and ethanol looks pretty attractive to those of us paying 99 cents a litre ($3.70 Canuck/US gal). Even if it is $2.10 US per gallon to make ethanol, that still makes it less than 3 Canuck bucks.

Rod
 
Econ101 said:
fedup2 said:
I didn't look at all your information Econ, but it looks like it came from that old outdated study.

Check this site out.
http://www.ethanol.org/talkingpoints.html
Click to expand...

Thanks fedup2. Your site has ethanol at 2.10 dollars per gallon to produce vs. gas at 1.80:

http://www.ethanol.org/costcalculator.html

Today's Wall Street Journal has wholesale gas at 1.91 per gallon so it is getting close if the 2.10 number is correct.

From the corn burning stove research, I think a bushel of dried corn yields about 450,000 btu s per bushel. I don't know if they get that many btu s out of a bushel in the ethanol process. If they did, every bushel would get about half the btu s out of a bushel based on the 35,000 per 75,000 btu s and that would be around 250,000 btu per bushel.

Unfortunately, the website does not tell us what units of measurement there are in the deal. I had called our state to see if the USDA guy pushing corn ethanol knew the cost of production, but he did not. Seeing how Johannes came from that industry, I don't know why it is a big secret. Seems to me with all the public subsidies and financing we should all know what the current cost is per gallon instead of it being hidden. We seem to be getting more efficient at it but we still have a way to go. Oil has traditionally kept these substitutes out by pumping more when prices are high.

I will ask some people who have been in the business what it costs to produce.

We need to subsidize some of these things just to get the technology down and see if it is a viable energy source and not be so dependent on oil but we need the facts of the deal instead of just the hype.
Click to expand...

I didnt even see where the site said $2.10 a gallon.
What I read was
In the current marketplace, the price of ethanol is considerably lower than the record-high prices of gasoline, so blending this cost-effective fuel with gasoline brings the overall price down.
The U.S. ethanol industry provides more than 4 billion gallons of fuel to our nation's supply each year. Especially when refining capacity is tight, a larger fuel supply means less price volatility.
Removing ethanol from our nation's supply would mean we'd immediately need to find 3% more fuel – that would cause dramatic spikes in fuel prices.


Also go to this link and they are making ethanol look much cheaper than gas.
http://www.ethanol.org/documents/CFAOverABarrel_001.pdf

Econ in all fairness I tried the university of Saskatoons web cite tonight to try to find some info on what we were talking about on the other thread<that TV show I watched about ethanol>.
All I could find was info about this guy from Berkly California giving a lecture at the university in Saskatoon saying that ethanol was not practicle. LOL Who should we believe?
 
RoperAB said:
Econ101 said:
fedup2 said:
I didn't look at all your information Econ, but it looks like it came from that old outdated study.

Check this site out.
http://www.ethanol.org/talkingpoints.html
Click to expand...

Thanks fedup2. Your site has ethanol at 2.10 dollars per gallon to produce vs. gas at 1.80:

http://www.ethanol.org/costcalculator.html

Today's Wall Street Journal has wholesale gas at 1.91 per gallon so it is getting close if the 2.10 number is correct.

From the corn burning stove research, I think a bushel of dried corn yields about 450,000 btu s per bushel. I don't know if they get that many btu s out of a bushel in the ethanol process. If they did, every bushel would get about half the btu s out of a bushel based on the 35,000 per 75,000 btu s and that would be around 250,000 btu per bushel.

Unfortunately, the website does not tell us what units of measurement there are in the deal. I had called our state to see if the USDA guy pushing corn ethanol knew the cost of production, but he did not. Seeing how Johannes came from that industry, I don't know why it is a big secret. Seems to me with all the public subsidies and financing we should all know what the current cost is per gallon instead of it being hidden. We seem to be getting more efficient at it but we still have a way to go. Oil has traditionally kept these substitutes out by pumping more when prices are high.

I will ask some people who have been in the business what it costs to produce.

We need to subsidize some of these things just to get the technology down and see if it is a viable energy source and not be so dependent on oil but we need the facts of the deal instead of just the hype.
Click to expand...

I didnt even see where the site said $2.10 a gallon.
What I read was
In the current marketplace, the price of ethanol is considerably lower than the record-high prices of gasoline, so blending this cost-effective fuel with gasoline brings the overall price down.
The U.S. ethanol industry provides more than 4 billion gallons of fuel to our nation's supply each year. Especially when refining capacity is tight, a larger fuel supply means less price volatility.
Removing ethanol from our nation's supply would mean we'd immediately need to find 3% more fuel – that would cause dramatic spikes in fuel prices.


Also go to this link and they are making ethanol look much cheaper than gas.
http://www.ethanol.org/documents/CFAOverABarrel_001.pdf

Econ in all fairness I tried the university of Saskatoons web cite tonight to try to find some info on what we were talking about on the other thread<that TV show I watched about ethanol>.
All I could find was info about this guy from Berkly California giving a lecture at the university in Saskatoon saying that ethanol was not practicle. LOL Who should we believe?
Click to expand...

Without good info., we are just guessing who to believe.

I hope we do find some good alternatives to mideast oil. We need them.
The price of oil going up will make it more viable and we need the technology to produce it if it is viable. We need some info on how much per gallon it costs to make ethanol without factoring in the price of corn. Then we could really calculate its viability even with corn at different prices.

Sorry about your high gas prices. Ours is running about 2.35/gallon U.S. and the price I quoted above was for wholesale gas. A lot of that is a tax supposedly to build roads. I will look on the pump next time to tell you the amount of taxes per gallon as it is on the pump.

I use diesel and it has been running higher than gas but I know it costs less to make diesel out of oil than gas. Many of my relatives work in the oil industry. I don't think I have ever seen ethanol in diesel.

By the way, there is still a lot more oil in the ground. The easy oil may have been used up but as the price goes up, we can recover deposits that were previously not viable in a lot of the fields.
 
Econ this article is a little out of date but it does a pretty good job of explaining why North Americans are paying to much for oil. But there is more to it than whats in the article. I think we also have a refinery problem.
Read the link, its a good read from the Wall Street Journal.
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_wsj-oil_oil.htm
 
On Farmgate<TV show> they were reporting that the SK provincial government just came out with their budget. Lots of bucks for ethanol in it.
Also apparently their either is or is going to be two ethanol plants in SK. One in Loydminster and the other in Weyburn.
They also mentioned something about the Federal government mandateing a % of pump fuel having methanol.
Anyway according to the guy on there talking about this he said in another few years these fuel crops for ethanol and bio diesel were going to be the thing to plant.
 
Ethanol/methanol hold some promise, at least for near-term energy, however it won't be until engines can burn 100% ethanol that it will become a genuine alternative. We'll also need to give up our power-hungry attitudes, as ethanol simply doesn't have sufficient energy in it to put the kind of horsepower to the ground that we're currently demanding as consumers.

Biodiesel on the other hand is a ways out, at least for todays clean burn diesel engines and in the cold Canadian climates. Its too thick for running through a multi-hole EDMed injector nozzle, and contains too many impurities which will clog and pre-detonate inside the nozzle, causing early nozzle failure. Older mechanical diesels, like pre-90s tractor diesels have better luck with it, as their injectors are low-pressure and generally contain 3 or fewer injection holes. Cylinder temps are also lower in these older diesels, so pre-detonation of impurties is minimized. We also have the same issue with lower stored energy, although not to the extent of ethanol. I think Biodiesel will make a bigger impact than ethanol, as we have the ability to make some horsepower with it, but it needs alot more refining than it currently gets to make it work in a modern diesel engine.

Rod
 
Acttualy Rod, If we could put a little corn dust in a engine ,it would run too.Just look at all of those dust exposions at grain elevators,they are sure powerful from the ignition or spark of grain dust
 

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