As a culture, we really dig on the magic beans. Reality is way too much of a hassle for us - surely, someone in charge has already figured out all that cool Star Trek technology, and is just waiting for the right time to spring it on us. Technology will provide. The market will provide. Somewhere along the line, the magic beans will save us.
When it comes to energy issues, the latest breed of magic bean is ethanol. As the logic goes, all we have to do is move over to corn or switchgrass or algae or some other thing, brew up a big batch of grandpa’s moonshine, and boom - we have a replacement for gasoline. The environmentalists are falling all over themselves to push this stuff, and a whole industry is blossoming to make it.
Only problem is, ethanol is a joke - and a bad joke, at that:
Ethanol is much less efficient, especially when it is made from corn. Just growing corn requires expending energy — plowing, planting, fertilizing and harvesting all require machinery that burns fossil fuel. Modern agriculture relies on large amounts of fertilizer and pesticides, both of which are produced by methods that consume fossil fuels. Then there’s the cost of transporting the corn to an ethanol plant, where the fermentation and distillation processes consume yet more energy. Finally, there’s the cost of transporting the fuel to filling stations. And because ethanol is more corrosive than gasoline, it can’t be pumped through relatively efficient pipelines, but must be transported by rail or tanker truck.
In the end, even the most generous analysts estimate that it takes the energy equivalent of three gallons of ethanol to make four gallons of the stuff. Some even argue that it takes more energy to produce ethanol from corn than you get out of it, but most agricultural economists think that’s a stretch.
Great article on the real world limitations of ethanol.
Long and short: it’s a lot more expensive to make than gasoline (and will likely remain so), it’s harder to store and transport, it has only a fraction of the energy production return that gasoline has. Worst of all, every acre used to grow ethanol stock is an acre - and soil nutrients, water, etc. - not used for growing food.. and we’d have to grow an awful lot of it to supply even a decent fraction of our liquid fuel needs.
The real problem is physics - the law of energy conservation, otherwise known as the first law of thermodynamics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. If you want a new energy source, that energy has to come from somewhere.. and ultimately, most of ours starts in a giant hydrogen fusion reactor, located about 93 million miles from Earth.
Oil is an interesting animal - the long-term carbon product of decomposed biological matter, oil is literally stored solar energy. The heat and light from the sun fueled life on Earth, starting with vegetative photosynthesis, eventually leading to our global ecological system.. which in turn became oil - liquid, relatively stable, highly energy-dense, and found in great abundance.
For all the abuse that fossil fuels receive in the media, the truth is that oil and natural gas represent the almighty trust fund of the human race - the massive collective energy inheritance that created the middle class, led to stable democratic societies around the world, and fostered a higher standard of living than anyone has ever known throughout human history. We owe all that to millions of years’ worth of abundant, cheaply-had, liquified solar energy.
We’re a lot more than addicted to oil; we literally owe it our lives. Availability of cheap energy in the oil era fueled a massive population explosion in the twentieth century, with global population growing over sixfold since 1900. If you’re reading this, odds are that cheap oil is the reason you’re even alive today.
Ethanol derives its energy from the same source, only it’s not nearly as efficient of an energy storage medium. It’s essentially grain alcohol. So - once again, the first law of thermodynamics - if we want the same energy from ethanol as we’re getting from oil, we have to make a lot more of it. And we have to use up a lot less energy in making it.
See, that’s the other problem with ethanol: nature made oil long before we noticed it. We just had to pull it up and refine it. But we’ll have to grow ethanol stock, and it’ll have to be economically competitive with available fossil fuels.. and there aren’t a lot of good options for doing that.
Before oil, steam powered industry; before steam, there was slavery. Brazil, the poster child for the ethanol future, apparently has managed to keep its cane ethanol competitive by returning to the traditional ways:
“The current bioenergy production model is based on the same elements that have always brought oppression to indigenous people: appropriation of territories, of natural goods, of the labor force,” said Via Campesina in the letter, which is called “Full Tanks at the expense of Empty Stomachs.”
“The Brazilian government is now encouraging the production of biodiesel also, mainly to ensure the survival and expansion of soybean monoculture in large areas. With the aim of legitimizing this policy and disguising its devastating effects, the government has been encouraging the diversified production of biodiesel by small farmers for the purpose of creating the so-called “social seal.” Monoculture is increasing in indigenous areas and other territories of original indigenous people,” he added.
One of the main concerns is with working conditions in farms. And this includes the use of indigenous labor which, particularly in sugarcane plantations, often faces conditions similar to slavery: low pay, no safety, long months away from their villages and homes.
The energy to produce ethanol has to come from somewhere - if not from cheap oil, then from cheap labor. There’s no free lunch.
That’s the truly terrifying part. We have no fallback - no energy source or technology within sight has a hope of replacing oil in our society. Just bad jokes, like ethanol and hydrogen, and fantasies like controlled fusion. Nothing like oil.. and when that ready source of cheap energy goes away, so does everything it created. Fermenting all the magic beans in the world won’t change that.
