Anyone who has tried to brew coffee over an alcohol stove on a cold morning recognizes this: Alcohol (ethanol) is a wimpy source of heat energy.
The energy content of ethanol has figured prominently in the discussions over alternative fuel sources. Ethanol contains 76,100 British thermal units per gallon, about two-thirds of the 114,000 BTU in a gallon of gasoline.
Still, we shouldn’t underestimate the total energy that ethanol can deliver in certain circumstances. According to bicyclist Floyd Landis, it was ethanol, ingested the night before in the form of whiskey and beer, that fueled his breathtaking Stage 17 performance in the Tour de France and propelled him from 11th place to victory.
Subsequent drug testing has suggested that other propellants might have been involved as well. From a marketing standpoint, though, Landis’ account opens the door to those who might wish to capitalize on his ethanol-fueled success with motivational books (“How Tequila Tweaked My Game Plan”), cookbooks (“The Carouser’s Kitchen: Managing Intake for Maximum Effect”), and perhaps a chain of high-carb spas (“Suds ‘n Spuds: Training For Tomorrow”).
There is a longstanding link between ethanol and fiction. Some of the claims being made today for ethanol and other renewable energy sources have a fictional element, although fueled more by wishful thinking rather than consumption. Economic, political and military events in the Middle East have markedly increased the cost of gasoline and made us aware of how fragile our supply lines really are. We want more fiercely than ever to develop alternative energy sources to power our economy – sources, such as ethanol, that we and we alone can control.
It won’t be easy. One of the economic realities that surround ethanol production involves land use. There simply isn’t a lot of fallow agricultural land out there, especially in the areas east of the Mississippi where rainfall is the principal source of water during the growing season. In Western states, including Washington, opening up lands for cultivation of pre-ethanol crops would most often involve some intricate calculations involving both irrigation cost and water rights allocations.
Those calculations and decisions are pretty easy when ethanol production is at the entrepreneurial and prototype level. At any given time, there is at least one agricultural product market where world prices are depressed, and more money can be gotten from growing mustard seed, which ethanol producers now want, than from a crop you have to sell at a loss.
The problem comes when we try to expand production to economically meaningful levels. Given a limited supply of active agricultural land, this will mean diverting acreage from food crops to energy crops. Food prices can be expected to rise, and we should be prepared for this as an expected and planned for cost of energy independence.
In a free market, agricultural resources will shift to ethanol production as oil prices go up. A spike in oil prices, then, will eventually show up not only at the gasoline pump but at the grocery store. That happens now, of course, because higher oil cost is reflected in the equipment fuel and fertilizer costs farmers incur, but the effect will be magnified if ethanol-related crop production were an option.
In addition to the food-fuel tradeoff issue, there is an engineering issue. The technical relationship between ethanol and motor vehicles has its origins in air pollution, not economics, or even energy. The resultant system design viewed ethanol as a fuel additive – an oxygenate – to help us get cleaner air in the winter.
The government mandates that created this design naturally focused on refinery mixes to obtain the most efficient, least polluting fuel that could be delivered to the pumps.
When the external economics change – that is, the cost structures and availability of oil and ethanol – so that we look at ethanol as an energy source, the technology should change, too. What is likely to happen eventually is that the refiners will produce gasoline or ethanol, or both, and the mixture will be created in the vehicle itself, so that it can adjust to the engine load.
With a vehicle-based fuel mix system, it would be quite possible for the lower energy content of ethanol to be virtually unnoticeable when a vehicle is idling or in low-speed traffic. There it could run on an ethanol-rich mixture. Gasoline would be added to the engine’s fuel mixture as needed – for acceleration and when driving at higher speeds.
Changing the decision-making point, from the refinery to the vehicle’s engine-controlling computer, would make a dramatic difference in the efficiency and the appeal of ethanol as an alternative energy source. It won’t be energy independence, but it could put us on the road that gets us there.
James McCusker is a Bothell economist, educator and consultant. He also writes “Business 101” monthly for the Snohomish County Business Journal.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
