Fun point: many farmers are switching from corn and wheat this year to growing soybeans, because soybeans need less fertilizer. Now you can get biofuel from soybeans, but you need to crush and process them first, and it's more expensive and time consuming than corn-based ethanol.
Now you can get biofuel from soybeans, but you need to crush and process them first, and it’s more expensive and time consuming than corn-based ethanol.
For clarity, if you're growing soybeans for biofuel most efficiently, you'd use it as biodiesel. You get much more energy out of it that way.
Yes, you could instead take those soybeans crush, process, and ferment them into ethanol, but you get far less energy out only yielding about 25% more energy than it takes to grow the soybeans to begin with, far lower than using soybeans as diesel fuel.
if you crush out the oil, the biodiesel, you’re still left with a significant mass of protein and carbs, the carbs are what you would want for making ethanol.
The protein? Uh, not really useful for fuel. like maybe there is some specialized microorganism that could metabolize that to make ethanol or something? Probably it would just get tossed after the starches were fermented out of the solids. Normally it’d just get fed to animals, but the reason we’re even talking about alternative uses for soy is because the foreign animal feed market has collapsed because of an idiot old mans atavistic urges.
I was just wondering, wasn't the US exporting the soybeans to China until China said to shove it recently after another one of the tariff tantrums (and switched to buying from Argentina iirc).
That’s a big part of why the conversation about soybean based biofuel is suddenly in the news. Lot of farmers want to keep growing soy because it is relatively easy and hands off (as much as things can be in farming at least) but the demand is gone, so they need the government to step in and invent a new demand by subsidizing the purchase of soybeans for diesel.
The funny part is, the deals where other countries bought US soybeans as animal feed were a multi decade diplomatic effort by the US government to solve this issue. Those were not deals that just naturally arose because American soy was so cheap or good or anything, they were major foreign policy objective pursued for the sake of maintaining domestic soybean prices at the behest of farmers.
So... we can get transportation power from soybeans, which is worse than from corn, which is worse than from hydrogen, which is worse than from batteries. All I getting that right?
Yah, see, thing is, multigenerational wealth cosplaying as farmers need to grow something that at least breaks even on their financalized property assets, otherwise those assets wouldn’t be “farm land” and would get taxed differently.
Much of our corn fields already go to fueling vehicles even the corn that isn't is more than likely feed corn for livestock. It's not great for human consumption.
I think it has some value but not much, not unless it's been through nixtamalization which frees up vitamins and other nutrients. Masa harina is cornflour that's been through that process. Masa Harina is also used in making tamales.
It doesn't. Likely why Americans are so fat. Everything in US food has corn or is fed corn. 98.5% of corn is used for cheap sugars, oils, and precursor for plastics.
This. People in relative comfort have no idea what starvation looks like, but are willing to sell out their own country because of some images of people on the middle of a 'food shortage'.
Thats a part of it, but I think the biggest thing is they know that once work from home gets normalized, commercial real estate is going to tank and make what happened in 08 with subprime mortgages look quaint by comparison.
The big time real estate developers dont care about residential property, and more and more Space For Lease signs are showing up everywhere. If work from home becomes the norm they stand to lose a fortune and they will do anything in their power to prevent that.
Oh im sure...empty office buildings slowly decomposing isnt a good look for an areas local economy.
If we weren't run by monied interests wed be offering tax incentives the other way to get more people off the road but that doesnt keep us all dependent on fossil fuels so that's right out the window.
In my opinion, it's not just commercial that's vulnerable. How may office workers are going to live in San Fransisco or New York if they don't have to?
This is the argument they made over 20y ago. It's proven to be completely stupid. We already know that a fraction of the land used for corn could instead be used for solar, and it would power the entire country. Using today's solar technology.
Per Wikipedia, the world's largest photovoltaic power station is China's Talatan Solar Park, which generates 18,000 GWh annually. It occupies an area of about 420 square km.
4,430 TWh/18,000 GWh gives us 246.1 Talatan Solar Parks to power the country photovoltaically, occupying a combined area of 103,000 square km, or around a quarter of the total corn area. That's not even very efficient in terms of annual electrical generation per unit land area, and it's a mere fraction of the land we waste on corn
Also, corn has very low ROI for farmers even with "free equivalent land". Corn futures prices have not risen anywhere close to 100% fertilizer cost increases this month. Solar has much higher profit/ROI potential than ethanol corn for the land owners, with far less work.
Even if you drive a new car everything ive heard from actual mechanics is that it causes much more buildup and bullshit in the engine and you end up spending far more in maintenance due to using E85 then you save paying less per gallon for the fuel.
Personally in my step father's flex fuel truck the MPG dropped by like 20% on E85 thus evaporating even more of these "savings".
Ethanol is a trash substitute. We should be going full electric and putting all our money into that, but of course that dont prop up the corn and soybean farmers to keep them voting Republican.
For the record: ethanol burns with no carbon residue. All you want get is CO2 and water. Some countries run on E100 ethanol. Ethanol is used in drag and indycar racing, look it up.
Ethanol burns with 1/3 less energy vs gas, but much higher octane rating.
So while you will get 25% less fuel economy with E85, it costs less than half as much. But pickup drivers never math good.
And you still make less power per gallon, and so don’t really save anything. The only think it improves is pre-detonation, which only matters in super high compression or turbo cars (for whom gas money isn’t the problem anyway).
If i remember correctly, from way back in college chemistry, i learned E85 is already partially oxidized. So you are getting less energy out of the fuel. It's a step backward, and definitely isn't going to make anything better.
I don't know the specific reasons, but yes, ethanol is less energy dense. The communities talking about this factually see that the loss in MPGs is pretty close to the average price difference, making it a net zero benefit.
You said "if I remember correctly". Since ethanol isn't the same compound as as those found in gasoline, I'm not going to rely on an "if I remember correctly" statement about the specifics when there's verifiable proof on the road that, regardless of cause, it's lower. I was confirming your overall claim and agreeing with you.
So anyway, since now I'm driven to look up the specifics, yes, being partially oxidized is part of the problem, but that by itself is not the complete problem. With different compounds it wouldn't even be relevant. There are gasoline compounds that carry oxygen. C2H5OH (ethanol) is a relatively small molecule compared to the hydrocarbons in gasoline mixtures. Even if it didn't have that one oxygen atom, it'd still have fewer hydrogens to use than the main components of gasoline. And those gasoline compounds can be arbitrarily longer than their minimum molecule designation.
It's the single oxygen atom and the fewer total number of hydrogens, combined.
Probably not. It will be a subsidy to corn farmers, artificially increase corn prices. Farmers have generally not been having a great time of it under Trump administration policies, so they'll probably be happy about that. Corn consumers, maybe not so much.
Before the war, roughly a third of the world’s fertilizer ingredients and a fifth of its oil supplies passed every day through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway off Iran’s southern coast. But since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, the strait has been effectively closed by Tehran, leaving scores of tankers stranded.
The strait’s closure has driven up global prices for fertilizer and for the diesel fuel that powers most of America’s heavy agricultural equipment.
The double whammy is hitting farmers just as they head into the spring planting season.
“This is that perfect storm where everything comes together and hammers the farmer,” said Mueller, who also serves as the president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association.
Mueller said his fertilizer supplier was selling a nitrogen fertilizer he needs for $795 per ton on Feb. 22, a few days before the war started. At the end of March, it was $990, Mueller said, a nearly $200 jump in just a few weeks.
Meanwhile, the price he’s paying for diesel has jumped, too. Diesel is now averaging $5.51 nationwide, up from $3.76 right before the war, according to AAA.
Mueller said he got most of the fertilizer he needs for spring before the war — but had to buy some at the higher prices. He’s holding off on purchasing the additional fertilizer he needs for summer, hoping prices will come down.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs have also added to the cost of goods that farmers import from overseas — and frustrated many of the foreign buyers of America’s agricultural products.
“Our government made our life more difficult by walking away from trade deals or instituting tariffs or just basically making our customers angry — our customers being other nations and companies in other nations,” said Mueller.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Just makes everything else corn based more expensive. From plastics to animal feed.
This administration is running just like trump runs his businesses into bankruptcy. From taking money from medical services to buy bombs to shuffling corn products around to cheapen fuel it’s all the shallow economics of someone who never pays anything back. All that’s left is for trump to try to borrow money from Russia.
The concern for most people is not the range of a gas tank. It's about the fact that they'll have to fill the tank more often, which means paying more often to travel the same distance, which rather undermines the claim of lowering the cost.
The price per mile matters more than the price per gallon.
And then there's the additional cost of repairs when the ethanol prematurely dissolves your car's seals and hoses.
I get that Americans can't do simple math, but 30% less range for 60% less cost always makes economic sense.
Ethanol does not prematurely dissolve seals and hoses on any car made in the last 30 years, and even if it does on older classic gas guzzlers, the hoses can be replaced for tens of dollars.
The Dalton Highway is an isolated and mostly unpaved road that begins outside of Fairbanks, Alaska and ends 414 miles (666 km) later just shy of the Arctic Ocean in Deadhorse, AK. It’s the farthest north you can drive on a public road on the North American Continent. With one section being 240 miles between gas stations, it includes the longest stretch of road in America without services.
With lots of land that could be generating solar power instead. The solution to high oil prices is accelerating electric car adoption and reducing oil dependence, not bandaging the problem for short-term gains.
4$ per gallon? Thats like a bit over 1$ per litre. Which is still ridiculously cheap. In comparison: In germany I pay like 2,20€ per litre for Super...
from what I understand there are only a few ways to make ethanol that is decently net positive. This was why it was huge in brazil because it works well with sugarcane but that is because the fiber is burnt to provide the energy for the distinllation and such. using corn or sugarbeets is anemic and you use the waste product as animal feed to up its anemic returns. I remember swtich grass being a thing but looking into it it seems like they have not really solved the problems of breakdown.
I remember swtich grass being a thing but looking into it it seems like they have not really solved the problems of breakdown.
There's two ways main bases to make ethanol at scale:
sugar
cellulose
The sugar path is what we're doing everywhere with corn and elsewhere with sugar cane/beet waste. The switch grass is a cellulose path, but switch grass isn't the only feedstock that can be used. Its talked about the most because switch grass is really easy to grow.
Industrial cellulose ethanol is still only a tiny industry with only 3 commercial scale plants in operation today in the world (2 in Brazil, 1 in China). It has promise to be more, but its been small for decades.
The biggest push for cellulose approach is for making Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).
76 Comments
nulluser@lemmy.world · 109 pts · 150d
If we converted all of the existing cornfields currently making ethenol to solar farms, ...
edit; fixed link (Technology Connections rant about renewable energy)
aramis87@fedia.io · 27 pts · 150d
Fun point: many farmers are switching from corn and wheat this year to growing soybeans, because soybeans need less fertilizer. Now you can get biofuel from soybeans, but you need to crush and process them first, and it's more expensive and time consuming than corn-based ethanol.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 150d
For clarity, if you're growing soybeans for biofuel most efficiently, you'd use it as biodiesel. You get much more energy out of it that way.
Yes, you could instead take those soybeans crush, process, and ferment them into ethanol, but you get far less energy out only yielding about 25% more energy than it takes to grow the soybeans to begin with, far lower than using soybeans as diesel fuel.
megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 150d
if you crush out the oil, the biodiesel, you’re still left with a significant mass of protein and carbs, the carbs are what you would want for making ethanol.
The protein? Uh, not really useful for fuel. like maybe there is some specialized microorganism that could metabolize that to make ethanol or something? Probably it would just get tossed after the starches were fermented out of the solids. Normally it’d just get fed to animals, but the reason we’re even talking about alternative uses for soy is because the foreign animal feed market has collapsed because of an idiot old mans atavistic urges.
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 149d
I was just wondering, wasn't the US exporting the soybeans to China until China said to shove it recently after another one of the tariff tantrums (and switched to buying from Argentina iirc).
megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 149d
That’s a big part of why the conversation about soybean based biofuel is suddenly in the news. Lot of farmers want to keep growing soy because it is relatively easy and hands off (as much as things can be in farming at least) but the demand is gone, so they need the government to step in and invent a new demand by subsidizing the purchase of soybeans for diesel.
The funny part is, the deals where other countries bought US soybeans as animal feed were a multi decade diplomatic effort by the US government to solve this issue. Those were not deals that just naturally arose because American soy was so cheap or good or anything, they were major foreign policy objective pursued for the sake of maintaining domestic soybean prices at the behest of farmers.
Janx@piefed.social · 2 pts · 150d
So... we can get transportation power from soybeans, which is worse than from corn, which is worse than from hydrogen, which is worse than from batteries. All I getting that right?
megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 150d
Yah, see, thing is, multigenerational wealth cosplaying as farmers need to grow something that at least breaks even on their financalized property assets, otherwise those assets wouldn’t be “farm land” and would get taxed differently.
osaerisxero@kbin.melroy.org · 14 pts · 150d
Props for linking the full version instead of the abridged one.
ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca · 87 pts · 150d
So instead of using the crop fields to feed people, we're gonna grow corn for fuel for cars instead.
Cars are literally more important than feeding people.
NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml · 35 pts · 150d
Much of our corn fields already go to fueling vehicles even the corn that isn't is more than likely feed corn for livestock. It's not great for human consumption.
CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 150d
I thought I'd heard that corn doesnt even have any nutritional value.
village604@adultswim.fan · 11 pts · 150d
It kinda has to in order to make ethanol.
CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 150d
I wound up Googling it and you're correct that it is a source of calories, carbs, protein, and fat surprisingly.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 150d
Surprisingly? Corn is how you fatten up farm animals and humans, that's been known hundreds of years. That's what "corn fed" refers to.
And you get fatter eating animals fed corn.
athatet@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 150d
Food that has been eaten for thousands of years having things that our bodies need in it is surprising?
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 150d
You only need sugar to make ethanol, which is not nutritional.
village604@adultswim.fan · 1 pts · 149d
Sugar is absolutely a source of nutrition. It's not a good source, but it's definitely one.
DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 150d
You can make ethanol dirt cheap its the carb source for fermentation.
NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml · 7 pts · 150d
I think it has some value but not much, not unless it's been through nixtamalization which frees up vitamins and other nutrients. Masa harina is cornflour that's been through that process. Masa Harina is also used in making tamales.
Bad_Ideas_In_Bulk@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 149d
It depends on how you're using the word "nutrient". It isn't great by any means but it has carbs and carbs are a macronutrient.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 150d
It doesn't. Likely why Americans are so fat. Everything in US food has corn or is fed corn. 98.5% of corn is used for cheap sugars, oils, and precursor for plastics.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 150d
Already doing that
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 149d
Iirc something like a third of food produced in the US ends up in garbage, so it doesn't seem like yall have shortages there.
JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 149d
This. People in relative comfort have no idea what starvation looks like, but are willing to sell out their own country because of some images of people on the middle of a 'food shortage'.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 150d
Dumb take, less than 1.5% of corn grown in USA is edible.
ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca · 2 pts · 150d
So even less, then.
totesmygoat@piefed.ca · 1 pts · 150d
It will bring down prices. Got a few weeks. Until the balance of costs of ethanol kicks in. Just in time to make money off of the grift.
TryingToBeGood@reddthat.com · 52 pts · 150d
This would be a good time to let people work from home more.
Ghostie@lemmy.zip · 24 pts · 150d
Stern@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 150d
I'm sure there's a few C level guys who wish they could have owned plantations but will settle for cubicles.
Angrydeuce@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 150d
Thats a part of it, but I think the biggest thing is they know that once work from home gets normalized, commercial real estate is going to tank and make what happened in 08 with subprime mortgages look quaint by comparison.
The big time real estate developers dont care about residential property, and more and more Space For Lease signs are showing up everywhere. If work from home becomes the norm they stand to lose a fortune and they will do anything in their power to prevent that.
Ghostie@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 150d
Restaldt@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 150d
Also cities provide tax incentives to corps to get bodies in downtown areas supporting the restaurants and shops
Angrydeuce@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 150d
Oh im sure...empty office buildings slowly decomposing isnt a good look for an areas local economy.
If we weren't run by monied interests wed be offering tax incentives the other way to get more people off the road but that doesnt keep us all dependent on fossil fuels so that's right out the window.
Bad_Ideas_In_Bulk@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 149d
In my opinion, it's not just commercial that's vulnerable. How may office workers are going to live in San Fransisco or New York if they don't have to?
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz · 49 pts · 150d
This is the argument they made over 20y ago. It's proven to be completely stupid. We already know that a fraction of the land used for corn could instead be used for solar, and it would power the entire country. Using today's solar technology.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 150d
I'm not trying to debunk you, I just like recreational math and blue text
We've planted approximately 95 million acres worth of corn this year. That's about 384,000 square km, for normal people. In 2025, the United States generated 4.43 thousand terawatthours (TWh) of electricity.
Per Wikipedia, the world's largest photovoltaic power station is China's Talatan Solar Park, which generates 18,000 GWh annually. It occupies an area of about 420 square km.
4,430 TWh/18,000 GWh gives us 246.1 Talatan Solar Parks to power the country photovoltaically, occupying a combined area of 103,000 square km, or around a quarter of the total corn area. That's not even very efficient in terms of annual electrical generation per unit land area, and it's a mere fraction of the land we waste on corn
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 150d
Corn is used for many industrial raw materials, not just ethanol.
humanspiral@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 149d
Also, corn has very low ROI for farmers even with "free equivalent land". Corn futures prices have not risen anywhere close to 100% fertilizer cost increases this month. Solar has much higher profit/ROI potential than ethanol corn for the land owners, with far less work.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · -6 pts · 150d
The only people calling ethanol "stupid" are internet bots driven by oil companies.
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 149d
I invite you to educate yourself. Maybe start here
Or here
nosuchanon@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 150d
If you drive an old car that’s not designed for ethanol it’s gonna fuck up all the seals in the motor.
Angrydeuce@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 150d
Even if you drive a new car everything ive heard from actual mechanics is that it causes much more buildup and bullshit in the engine and you end up spending far more in maintenance due to using E85 then you save paying less per gallon for the fuel.
Personally in my step father's flex fuel truck the MPG dropped by like 20% on E85 thus evaporating even more of these "savings".
Ethanol is a trash substitute. We should be going full electric and putting all our money into that, but of course that dont prop up the corn and soybean farmers to keep them voting Republican.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 150d
For the record: ethanol burns with no carbon residue. All you want get is CO2 and water. Some countries run on E100 ethanol. Ethanol is used in drag and indycar racing, look it up.
Ethanol burns with 1/3 less energy vs gas, but much higher octane rating.
So while you will get 25% less fuel economy with E85, it costs less than half as much. But pickup drivers never math good.
XeroxCool@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 149d
It varies by area. My E85 is well above half e15. Like within a dollar so at recent best, 33% less.
anomnom@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 149d
And you still make less power per gallon, and so don’t really save anything. The only think it improves is pre-detonation, which only matters in super high compression or turbo cars (for whom gas money isn’t the problem anyway).
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 150d
If i remember correctly, from way back in college chemistry, i learned E85 is already partially oxidized. So you are getting less energy out of the fuel. It's a step backward, and definitely isn't going to make anything better.
XeroxCool@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 149d
I don't know the specific reasons, but yes, ethanol is less energy dense. The communities talking about this factually see that the loss in MPGs is pretty close to the average price difference, making it a net zero benefit.
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 149d
I just gave you the reason, it's already partially burned. That's what partially oxidized means.
XeroxCool@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 149d
You said "if I remember correctly". Since ethanol isn't the same compound as as those found in gasoline, I'm not going to rely on an "if I remember correctly" statement about the specifics when there's verifiable proof on the road that, regardless of cause, it's lower. I was confirming your overall claim and agreeing with you.
So anyway, since now I'm driven to look up the specifics, yes, being partially oxidized is part of the problem, but that by itself is not the complete problem. With different compounds it wouldn't even be relevant. There are gasoline compounds that carry oxygen. C2H5OH (ethanol) is a relatively small molecule compared to the hydrocarbons in gasoline mixtures. Even if it didn't have that one oxygen atom, it'd still have fewer hydrogens to use than the main components of gasoline. And those gasoline compounds can be arbitrarily longer than their minimum molecule designation.
It's the single oxygen atom and the fewer total number of hydrogens, combined.
Gammelfisch@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 149d
End the war stupid fucks and vote out MAGA.
RagingRobot@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 149d
They have to wait until the next election. They will forget by then
trackball_fetish@lemmy.wtf · 15 pts · 150d
Dilute, steal profit, repeat?
tal@lemmy.today · 15 pts · 150d
Probably not. It will be a subsidy to corn farmers, artificially increase corn prices. Farmers have generally not been having a great time of it under Trump administration policies, so they'll probably be happy about that. Corn consumers, maybe not so much.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/trump-iran-war-farm-crisis-rcna266283
NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml · 14 pts · 150d
Ethanol isn't as energy dense so it may or may not cost less but it will definitely get less mileage.
Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca · 12 pts · 150d
"Whiskey! Thins out the mix, gives us an extra 50 rpm!"
Parabola@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 150d
That’s heavy, doc
mlg@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 150d
Even diesel owners are probably offset by DEF shenanigans lol.
Oh well, DBF!
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 150d
Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Just makes everything else corn based more expensive. From plastics to animal feed.
This administration is running just like trump runs his businesses into bankruptcy. From taking money from medical services to buy bombs to shuffling corn products around to cheapen fuel it’s all the shallow economics of someone who never pays anything back. All that’s left is for trump to try to borrow money from Russia.
homes@piefed.world · 10 pts · 150d
Shitty-shitty Bang-bang
Zedstrian@sopuli.xyz · 8 pts · 150d
Not in any meaningful way; that makes it less energy-dense, leading to gas needing to be refilled more often.
ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 150d
Even if range drops, if the price goes down and CO2 emissions go down too, it'll be a win. I'm virtually never worried about the range of a gas tank.
who@feddit.org · 10 pts · 150d
The concern for most people is not the range of a gas tank. It's about the fact that they'll have to fill the tank more often, which means paying more often to travel the same distance, which rather undermines the claim of lowering the cost.
The price per mile matters more than the price per gallon.
And then there's the additional cost of repairs when the ethanol prematurely dissolves your car's seals and hoses.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · -2 pts · 150d
I get that Americans can't do simple math, but 30% less range for 60% less cost always makes economic sense.
Ethanol does not prematurely dissolve seals and hoses on any car made in the last 30 years, and even if it does on older classic gas guzzlers, the hoses can be replaced for tens of dollars.
Lot of Facebook Dad facts in this thread.
who@feddit.org · 2 pts · 150d
Note that "rather undermines" does not mean "completely negates". In any case...
Be sure to let everyone know when this new mix sells for 60% less than the current mix.
As far as I can tell, it's closer to 25 years. Be sure to let everyone with an older car know when you plan to buy them an upgrade.
Lots of assumption and rudeness in your comment. Please learn to be better. Goodbye.
tal@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 150d
If you're setting out on a trek away from gas stations, you can also haul jerrycans.
In 2026, not so bad in the Contiguous 48 in the US, but if you do Alaska, I'm sure that there are still long stretches.
searches
https://www.focusonadventure.com/Adventures/Dalton_Highway/
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 150d
Ethanol still makes C02, but that C02 was captured the previous season during growth. Gas releases C02 captured millions of years ago.
ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 150d
It does produce less CO2 for the equivalent energy release.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 150d
30% less energy, for 60% less cost.
Zedstrian@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 150d
With lots of land that could be generating solar power instead. The solution to high oil prices is accelerating electric car adoption and reducing oil dependence, not bandaging the problem for short-term gains.
einlander@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 150d
Not all cars can run e85 let alone e15.
HubertManne@piefed.social · 2 pts · 150d
I mean to not handle e15 it has to be from the last millenium. but e85 yeah.
bridgeburner@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 149d
4$ per gallon? Thats like a bit over 1$ per litre. Which is still ridiculously cheap. In comparison: In germany I pay like 2,20€ per litre for Super...
HubertManne@piefed.social · 4 pts · 150d
from what I understand there are only a few ways to make ethanol that is decently net positive. This was why it was huge in brazil because it works well with sugarcane but that is because the fiber is burnt to provide the energy for the distinllation and such. using corn or sugarbeets is anemic and you use the waste product as animal feed to up its anemic returns. I remember swtich grass being a thing but looking into it it seems like they have not really solved the problems of breakdown.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 150d
There's two ways main bases to make ethanol at scale:
The sugar path is what we're doing everywhere with corn and elsewhere with sugar cane/beet waste. The switch grass is a cellulose path, but switch grass isn't the only feedstock that can be used. Its talked about the most because switch grass is really easy to grow.
Industrial cellulose ethanol is still only a tiny industry with only 3 commercial scale plants in operation today in the world (2 in Brazil, 1 in China). It has promise to be more, but its been small for decades.
The biggest push for cellulose approach is for making Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).
source
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 149d
It may make fuel cheaper, but it won't lower the price...
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 150d
Blah blah blah: 😂🤣. Sure thing buddy.