U.S. ethanol plants are allowed to pollute more than oil refineries | Hacker News Reader

U.S. ethanol plants are allowed to pollute more than oil refineries

reuters.com

40 pointsDoubleDerper18 comments

This article does a great job of muddying the distinction of the CO2 output of corn production in general and the output of an actual ethanol plant.

To focus on the claim in the title, calling the CO2 byproduct of yeast fermentation of a grain, in which its carbon all came from atmospheric sources in the first place comparable to the pollution of an oil refinery is absurd.

There's also the recent work suggesting oil refineries led to an uptick in strokes across the South-East US.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac8943/...

The 'pollute' in the headline is misleading enough to be considered a lie.

In particular because the point of an oil refinary is to produce fossil fuels, which then get burnt, releasing fossil carbon.

Having said all that, moving to EVs will reduce the use of corn ethanol anyway.

> Having said all that, moving to EVs will reduce the use of corn ethanol anyway.

Ethanol for fuel was stillborn in the US by using corn to create ethanol, which is too inefficient and competes with food. What ever happened to the 20:1 ratio of using switchgrass, which no one eats? And why mix ethanol with gas, anyway? We could just use pure ethanol, which is more performant than gas at the cost of a 1/3 of a tank less milage, which is a fair trade.

I think we will slowly increase the ethanol content of gasoline as we transition to EVs, but still come out ahead, particularly in nations that make their ethanol in slightly greener ways than the US.

I think it'd be better to cut off petroleum at the knees and just exclusively use biodiesel and pure ethanol, but made from a more efficient source than corn.

We could also use biodiesel produced with ethanol which is more performant than gas and allows maybe 35-50% (or more?) more mileage

Edit: mileage

The average distance driven is only 40 miles a day. What is the concern about having a vehicle capacity of 235 miles as opposed to 400? If greater distance capacity is needed, biodiesel alone is an valid option. Mixing fuels just seems silly to me.

How do you mean mixing fuels being silly? I’m no expert but it seems quite common - hybrid vehicles for example; biodiesel with petrol diesel (and other things like motor oil); and not sure about gasoline but it seems to commonly be mixed with other things like ethanol.

Silly in that it is not necessary. Any ICE vehicle can be converted inexpensively to burn pure ethanol, no petrol required. Any diesel will accept biodiesel as fuel without mixing with petrol. If fossil fuels are a problem, and ethanol and biodiesel covers all petrol applications, why bother keeping petrol around?

> Any ICE vehicle can be converted inexpensively to burn pure ethanol

I can’t imagine where you got that idea.

I got that idea from the fact that an ethanol conversion kit costs about 300 bucks and installs in 15 minutes.

In my opinion this isn't the best lens to view ethanol through. If you start from the position that the government manipulating the food market to ensure a near-constant over-supply is beneficial for long-term food security, then the ability to funnel excess production back to a useful energy source at a rate even close to 1:1 is fine.

> If you start from the position that the government manipulating the food market to ensure a near-constant over-supply is beneficial for long-term food security

I don't agree with the premise. Oversupply causes waste, not food security.

It crates slack, which potentially can be used in the event of some sort of food emergency.

Stockpiles create slack, overproduction doesn't.

The US spends enormous amounts every year subsidizing corn, it's the reason for corn-based ethanol, high-fructose corn syrup instead of sugar, and so on. I've noticed this through SwiftOnSecurity on Twitter pointing this out. An interesting rabbithole.

> The EPA’s resolve to rein in ethanol emissions faces a new test this year as Congressional mandates for expanding biofuels expire, placing the future of the RFS at the agency’s discretion.

Great. They should just stop this charade then. There are 30 million acres planted with corn used for bioethanol production. Out of 90 million total acres planted with corn. For comparison, the US has about 800 million acres of forests.

And they're allowed to produce a product that gets less miles per gallon, goes bad quickly, breaks engines, is more expensive and energy intensive to transport, and doesn't do what the epa claims in terms of reducing emissions. In other words, the typical government solution.

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