…EXPERTS RESPOND

E3 Biofuels: Responsible Ethanol
Robert Rapier, June 26, 2006 (R-Squared Energy Blog)
- If we could make sufficient ethanol with little or no fossil fuel inputs, ethanol could be a very important piece of a post-petroleum future. If ethanol could be produced with an
EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) of 3 or 4, as opposed to the current 1.0-1.3 or so, then ethanol begins to look attractive from a sustainability standpoint.

- My opposition to ethanol is due to the way we typically make it in the U.S., and is specifically focused on grain ethanol. We take fossil fuels and basically recycle them into ethanol in a very inefficient manner…
- Cellulosic ethanol may ultimately provide ethanol at a substantially better energy return…
- There are even some places in the U.S. where ethanol could provide a (mildly) sustainable solution even as it is produced today…
- E3 Biofuels...concept is this: Grow corn, produce ethanol, feed the byproducts to cattle, harvest the manure, produce methane from the manure in a biodigester, use the methane to fuel the boilers, and use the remaining solids to fertilize the soil. This is ethanol production in more of a Brazilian mold (i.e., byproducts

are used to fuel the process)…supplemental natural gas will be needed, but due to the manure-produced biogas, the amount is estimated to be substantially less than for a typical grain ethanol plant…fossil fuel usage is estimated to be 75% less than that of a standard grain ethanol plant…If the process works as advertised, the EROEI could reach 4 or 5 to 1, or even higher for the same process in Iowa where corn irrigation is not required…if ethanol is going to be part of the solution to diminishing oil supplies, E3 Biofuels is the first in the U.S. to show the way toward making ethanol in a more sustainable manner…As a long-time ethanol skeptic, the approach by E3 Biofuels is the first U.S. grain-ethanol process that I endorse.

Editorial: Thoughts on the performance and potential of ethanol
- Is ethanol better than dino-juice? I would say yes. Even in it's corn-derived stage here in the U.S., it burns off less carbon than gasoline…it would be better in a cellulosic-derived form, but let's work with what we have here…

- The ethanol Americans can buy comes from here in the U.S., and is generally made by workers here too. Is that necessarily a bad thing? It helps our economy in its present form. I will not delve into how it impacts the land it is grown on, or in the price of corn. We all know that. But, I would still give it preference over gasoline imported from somewhere else…In a nutshell, it is better than petroleum, right here and right now; it could be even better and hopefully will get there.
Now... performance comes into play… I am writing articles on two turbocharged Dodge Vipers…they run on ethanol…Over 1000 horsepower! … not a bad thing.
- Lastly, I will go on record here and say that I think the future of transportation should be electric. I would rather see money being spent on batteries and capacitors than on hydrogen and ethanol. Here is why: We can go electric now. Most of us could get by with a vehicle that can go, say, 100 miles a day on electricity without using gas…Perhaps the future is hydrogen. Nobody knows for sure yet…I am not writing off any new technology right now. But, let's start fixing the problem now with electricity and ethanol\biodiesel hybrids, then go to the next tech if and when we are ready…