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The Ultimate Individual Mandate

By on 1.13.12 @ 6:08AM

Its name is cellulosic ethanol — it’s nonexistent but oil companies are still being fined by the EPA for not buying into it.

Peering ahead at the worst possible outcomes of Obamacare five years from now, imagine that individuals were being fined by the Department of Health and Human Services for failing to buy health insurance — even though insurance companies have withdrawn from the market and aren’t offering it anymore! Would that be fair?

Well, it’s exactly what’s happening right now as the Environmental Protection Agency penalizes oil companies for failing to buy non-existent cellulosic ethanol.

Ah, ethanol. What market atrocity hasn’t yet been committed in pursuit of the idea that we should power our cars from farmland rather than taking the fossilized stuff out of the ground?

In case you haven’t noticed, the 30-year-old program for subsidizing ethanol production through tax credits has expired. Congress let it to happen over the Christmas holidays while hassling over how to fund the federal government for fiscal 2012. Republicans (minus a few farm state members) have long condemned the program while Democrats, who usually hail it as a triumph of the Carter Administration, finally decided it wasn’t worth defending anymore. This means the tax credit for ethanol — which started at 3 cents per gallon and eventually rose to 54 cents — is now off the books. Also gone is the 46-cents-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol to protect the domestic industry.

Does that mean we’re back to reality? Unfortunately, no. Still in place are the mandates adopted when the Bush Administration set phantasmagorical goals for ethanol production, particularly cellulosic ethanol, which brings us to our original subject.

The ethanol that we’ve been putting in our gas tanks for the last 20 years is made from corn seeds. The sugars and starches in the grain break down under heat and can be easily fermented into alcohol. We’ve been doing it since Neanderthal days (the Cave Men had a version of beer), so it’s not too complicated. The problem is that the seeds make up only 15 percent of the corn plant. The rest is cellulose, the much tougher molecules that give the plant its structure and do not break down so easily. It can be accomplished with chemical enzymes or by evaporating everything and then combining it back to liquid ethanol, but both methods are far too expensive and energy intensive.

So the preferred techniques are biological. There are bacteria in the guts of cows and termites that break down cellulose but they are highly adapted and have trouble living outside their native environment. Only in 2010 did someone genetically engineer a strain of yeast that can do the same thing. But that is getting way ahead of the story.

Drawing on only 15 percent of the plant, we are now processing an incredible 40 percent of the 12 billion bushels grown on 400,000 farms into fuel ethanol. The entire world crop is only 25 billion bushels, which means that one out of five bushels worldwide is going into American automobiles. This has crimped the world food supply and set off riots in places as diverse as Mexico and Southeast Asia. The UN Food and Agricultural Organization regularly condemns ethanol as a “crime against humanity” but no one in this country pays much attention.

Always on the horizon of this effort, however, has been the vision that we will one day be able to process the remaining 85 percent of the plant — the cellulose — into a usable fuel as well. Then we wouldn’t have to be taking food out of people’s mouths.

Unfortunately, while it’s been accomplished here and there in the laboratory, no one has ever been able to scale the process up to a commercial level. Nor is there any assurance that anyone ever will. People have been trying to domesticate morel mushrooms for centuries without any success. Somewhere around 2005, however, the environmental movement and its tagalongs in the Bush Administration came upon the perfect solution — government mandates!

“America is addicted to oil,” President George Bush, Jr., pronounced in his 2006 State of the Union address, even mentioning the magic word “switchgrass,” which serves as a shibboleth among renewable energy enthusiasts. Switchgrass is a fast-growing weed that sprouts anywhere and could provide enough feedstock to replace significant portions of our domestic oil — if anybody ever figures out how to ferment it. Charging straight ahead, however, Congress adopted the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, which mandated the consumption of 100 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol in 2010, 250 million by 2011, and 500 million in 2022 at a time when no one had ever mastered the technology. To make sure it happened, the bill added a $2 billion Department of Energy program to fund manufacturing plants. The Department of Agriculture kicked in another $1.6 billion. You say you want technological progress? Put things in the hands of the government.

The first company to take advantage was Range Fuels, a Colorado company that broke ground in November 2007 in Soberton, Georgia, promising to generate 100 million gallons of ethanol a year out of pine-logging wastes. Before it even built the plant, Range Fuels won the 2008 North American Fuels Technology Innovation Award for Green Excellence. Full operation was promised by 2009.

By 2010, Range had received a $50 million grant from the Department of Energy with another $26 million promised when it produced its first gallon. The State of Georgia contributed another $6 million and the Department of Agriculture added an $80 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Biorefinery Assistance Program. Still, Range had not produced a single gallon of ethanol. In January 2011 Range finally opened the factory to produce one 200-gallon run of methanol — which can’t be used in cars — and then closed down, saying the plant didn’t work. That single run allowed it to collect the last $26 million, so that Range was able to reimburse its investors while leaving taxpayers holding the bag. It was a bigger scandal than Solyndra, although no one noticed at the time.

By this time the EPA had scaled the 100-million gallon mandate down 6.6 million, yet even that wasn’t available. Cello Energy, an Alabama company with similar ambitious, also gave up on the process after receiving government money. There was no cellulosic ethanol to be had anywhere. Still, the mandates remained in place and so the EPA decided to enforce them anyway. It required several major oil companies to buy $6.8 million worth of “credits” for future cellulosic ethanol on the presumption that one day they will be able to cash them in. At this point, the higher the EPA raises the mandates, the more they can collect from the oil companies.

Is anyone in the government or environmental community repentant or even discouraged by any of this? Hardly. Cathy Milbourn, of the EPA, said the quotas were still “reasonably attainable” and that by maintaining them “we avoid a situation where real cellulosic biofuel production exceeds the mandated volume.” Try to figure that one out. Retired Vice Admiral Dennis V. McGinn, who serves with the American Council on Renewable Energy, added: “I am absolutely convinced from a national security perspective and an economic perspective that the renewable fuel standard, writ large, is the right thing to do.”

So that’s what it’s like when the government decides to run the renewable fuel industry. Just imagine what it’s going to be like when it’s running health care. 

About the Author

William Tucker is news editor for RealClearEnergy.org.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (52) |

Kenny| 1.13.12 @ 6:35AM

Good information.

I'm wondering. What do they do with the 85% of the plant that can't be converted into EtOH? Just dump it?

oldfart| 1.13.12 @ 6:47AM

I believe in Hawaii, the left over 'stuff' from harvesting sugar cane is used as a fuel to boil water the generate electricity and to make bio-degradable things.
http://www.squidoo.com/bagasse.....es-cutlery
It is certainly not suitable for conversion to a motor fuel - but then again God forbid logic get in the way of the stupid laws passed by congress.

c. j. acworth| 1.13.12 @ 5:29PM

I heat my home through a long new Hampshire winter with 3 tons of wood pellets; basically sawdust compressed into little pellets fed slowly into a stove/furnace. That is the only economical way to make use of cellulose. No fancy chemistry or biology, no expensive high-tech inputs. Pelletizing equipment is even available in small sizes so you can make your own pellets, if you have a cheap source of sawdust. So take the switchgrass/cornstalks/wood waste and get energy the way we've done it for thousands of years. You make a pile of "cellulose" and light a match.

Dick Nome| 1.13.12 @ 6:50AM

It is chopped up and placed in silos to produce silage to produce cattle feed and cow farts.

michigander_sandusky| 1.13.12 @ 8:23PM

Sorry Dick Nome the 85% of the corn plant left is not chopped and ensiled. Corn silage utilizes both the grain and the stover (leaves, stalk, etc.). Corn plants sans grain makes very poor livestock feed. That is because most of the usable energy in the plant is in the starch located in the grain. This is another major hurdle of cellulosic alcohol production. The stover is extremely bulky and the volume needed to produce one unit of alcohol is extremely large when compared to alcohol production using grain. Transporting this bulky material to cellulosic alcohol plants will greatly decrease the plants efficiency even if a feasible fermentation process is developed.

RonRonDoRon| 1.14.12 @ 4:40PM

Also, if I'm not mistaken, chopping corn for silage only works if you do it while it's still green. So there is no grain produced when corn is turned into silage.

Not sure, but I believe the stalks left standing after harvesting corn (as grain) are usually just plowed under. There's too little demand to make it worth the expense of harvesting and transporting them.

donserge| 1.13.12 @ 8:07AM

Not only the stupidity of the food for fuel aspect but don't forget how small engines, marine engines, and auto engines are being ruined one of the dumbest policies ever instituted by our country.

squalis| 1.13.12 @ 10:04AM

Wow, that is high praise indeed!

Nancy in NC| 1.13.12 @ 4:09PM

Yep, spent $1700 last year to repair the engine on my small boat. No more ethanol for me. I buy gas at one of the few stations in the area without ethanol. It costs a bit more, but I get better mileage, so it's a wash, and I'm protecting my care engine.

JimH| 1.13.12 @ 8:15AM

It’s always a pleasure to read your articles Mr. Tucker. It’s fun to watch the cockroaches scramble after you turn on the light of scientific fact. As an aside, I know you support nuclear development, as do I; I’d like your opinion on orbital based solar power. I hear different opinions from equally credible sources.

Darin| 1.13.12 @ 8:50AM

I'd say the biggest problem is figuring out how to get such power to the ground in an economical fashion. A 100 mile extension cord ain't gonna cut it. Can such power realistically be transmitted through the air?

JimH| 1.13.12 @ 9:07AM

The proposals I've seen involve very low density micro-waves beamed to large antenna farms.

squalis| 1.13.12 @ 10:05AM

Should help with global warming, too, by blocking out the sun.

curt| 1.13.12 @ 8:22AM

The roots and stalks are typically left in the fields to prevent erosion and to help fertilize the fields for next year. If you recover the cellulose, you leave the land bare and exposed to erosion.

Darin| 1.13.12 @ 8:47AM

Until someone shows the world how we can eat oil and live, the idea of using food (corn) for fuel will remain borderline insanity.

Ground Control| 1.13.12 @ 11:34AM

I think it has actually crossed the borderline into real insanity.

David W| 1.13.12 @ 10:16AM

Is it just cheaper for the companies being screwed by the government to just lay back and try to enjoy it? Time and again we see absolutely stupid government regulations and laws costing companies millions and no one seems willing to fight. I just saw where Pepsi paid out millions because they dared to use criminal records in hiring decisions (apparently too many blacks had criminal records).

No wonder the government can get away with this, no one is willing to pay the money to fight the fricking bastards.

TrueBlue | 1.13.12 @ 5:12PM

Hard to fight the guy that can print infinite amounts of money. Unlike private citizens and companies the government doesn't have a money limit.

Dsf| 1.14.12 @ 1:14AM

Why spend money fighting it in court? The oil companies just pass the cost onto consumers, like all other taxes.

Matt| 1.13.12 @ 10:20AM

Since when has methanol not been able to be used in cars as you claim? Last time I checked, flex fuel vehicles were invented to run on methanol, and current vehicles on the road are protected against corrosion and could use low-level blends. On top of that, there is still a waiver on the books for any company that wants to blend it in the U.S., just the corn ethanol mandate prevents them from using the much cheaper fuel.

KML| 1.13.12 @ 10:42AM

So, they blow countless hundreds of millions on these green companies. In this one we learn of another disaster - Range Fuels. All of these tax dollars blown in the name of saving the earth. Even though it has been well established all of this spending is to enrich Obama's cronies.

All of this money wasted, and the dear president and the rest of the Democrats have the audacity to say we need to raise taxes? This is a sick joke.

WeeWillie| 1.13.12 @ 10:43AM

I do not know the engineering details but if the waste heat from nuclear power plants were used on urban garbage to separate the steel and so forth that heat could be sued to decompose cellulose to be converted via CO or dehydration into methanol or ethanol.

The have been a number of pilot plants on these processes. Much of the heat from nuclear power plants goes up in steam. That steam could make the production of ethanol from cellulose practicable. Using grain corn for fuel is insane.

lee g| 1.13.12 @ 11:03AM

Sounds like the bureaucrats have all graduated from Academy of Lagado. In 'Gulliver's Travels', Gulliver shows up there and finds some professors who, in this age, would be pushing cellulosic ethanol. Here's George Will in his May 9, 2009 column:

Gulliver's travels took him to the Academy of Lagado, where "professors contrive new rules and methods" for everything: "One man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of materials so durable as to last forever without repairing. All the fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we think fit to choose, and increase a hundredfold more than they do at present." There was, however, the "inconvenience" that "none of these projects" had yet come to fruition and "the whole country lies miserably waste." But "instead of being discouraged," people were "fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes," which included "extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers."

Terrible Ted| 1.15.12 @ 3:49AM

There should be a movie made about the failed Range Fuels. It could be called "Swindler's List."

Petronius| 1.13.12 @ 11:04AM

Get ethanol OUT of MY Gas Tank NOW! It's all a colossal scam and a back door Tax Increase. When I drive to places where I can fill up with 100% gasoline, My mileage goes up almost 20%. Repeal the damned CAFE standards and gut the Parasitic EPA. The only thing environmentalists do is drive up My cost of living.

Redstateboy| 1.13.12 @ 4:48PM

Petronius - well stated. These knuckleheads in Tennessee - our glorious US Senators: Alexander and Corker want to be reelected. If I get the opportunity.. I'm gonna slam em' both with why are they allowing this BS to continue.

TrueBlue | 1.13.12 @ 5:15PM

Amusingly if they removed the ethanol the car companies could actually meet the CAFE standards.

Moe Blotz| 1.13.12 @ 11:24AM

Cavemen had beer? Was that developed before or to go with their barbeque ? The earliest brewers that I have read about were in Mesopotamia over 4,000 years ago. The Sumerians had their Goddess of Brewing , Ninkasi, and grew a wheat-like grain for brewing their favourite tipple.

Ground Control| 1.13.12 @ 11:35AM

I believe Fred Flintstone used to knock a few back to go with his Bronto-Burgers.

Redstateboy| 1.13.12 @ 12:45PM

Where are the F'n! Liber-uls who visit this site...??!!?
Here is the utter stupidity of Liber-ulism (and stupid Republicans who try to appease them) and Libs are no where to be found. Why do even listen to them?!!?

Ron| 1.13.12 @ 1:44PM

Redstateboy,

You do not see the Clint and jack show on this article because it does not mention: Israel, Jews, Ron Paul or the military. There is no comment hear they can use to shout "Israel Firster, Proud 4Fer" or any of their other useless diatribe.

john dubose| 1.13.12 @ 1:53PM

Bio tech for fuel procuction is just getting warmed up. The biggest threat is that the government mandates the WRONG bio-tech before the scientists, engineers and companies figure out what the best technologies are.

WalkingHorse | 1.13.12 @ 2:20PM

This makes as much sense as mandating manufacturers fabricate windows from transparent aluminum to avoid the risks associated with shattered glass.

Engineers who have been around long enough to be properly cynical refer to such substances as "unobtanium".

Andy Anderson| 1.13.12 @ 3:53PM

In all this beating of the ethanol industry I figure someone ought to defend it. While it's true that 40% of our corn crop heads to the ethanol plant, it's also true that a third of that 40% returns from the ethanol plant as feed for cattle. The ethanol industry creates a market for corn that has allowed the U.S. treasury to reduce subsidies to the corn farms by over 80% and created an industry that provides 500,000 jobs(and taxpayers!) that otherwise wouldn't exist. Most of the corn subsidies, prior to ethanol expansion, were designed to reduce U.S. corn production and prop up corn prices. Since eliminating those subsidies, corn productivity has grown 50% in the last 12 years. In other words we are producing more food on the same amount of land than we did before we started making ethanol. Finally we have 16 billion gallons of home grown liquid fuel to burn in our cars. Even factoring the energy delta between gasoline and ethanol, thats 12 billion gallons of gasoline not imported from overseas and $40B not sent to countries who make trouble for us. Meanwhile the subsidy on ethanol has been eliminated, along with the tariff on the 1 billion gallons of ethanol we import from Brazil, about $.5B not going into our treasury and about $6B not going out. Whether the ethanol industry can stand on it's own two feet and not collapse, throwing 500,000 people out of work, is yet to be seen. I suspect it can, because every year the ethanol industry finds more markets for the parts of the corn seed it doesn't turn into ethanol and uses less energy and water to make a gallon of ethanol.

THKrupp| 1.13.12 @ 4:28PM

Andy,
In addition to your comments, people should understand that the ethanol industry was not recieving the blender credit that was recently allowed to die. The blenders which would be the refineries and oil companies were the major recipient of this subsidy. The loss of this subsidy will not have any effect on the ethanol industry at all. Ethanol can be purchased cheaper than what the gasoline that it is blended with can be purchased for. We now export gasoline to other parts of the world because of ethanol. Also we no longer import ethanol from Brazil but export it to them as well.

THKrupp| 1.13.12 @ 4:11PM

Cellulosic Ethanol is just a fancy word for wood alcohol. The technology to do this has been around for a very long time. The Germans used it in WWII for solvents and fuel when they were having shortages. It can be done right now. The problem is doing it economically. Economically viable cellulosic ethanol plants are the holy grail of ethanol production. The key is to develop enzymes or some sort of physical reaction to break down long carbon chains that cellulose is made up of. So far nothing economical has been found yet. There are many pilot plants scattered around the country working on this. Their is more production of second generation biofuels than what this author leads us to believe. There is not enough to meet the mandate. The EPA lowered the mandate so that energy companies would not be penalized. Traditional dry grind and wet mill plants produce ethanol from the corn seed. While this seems to be a very small portion of the plant it is the majority of the simpler carbohydrates that can be broken down into glucose for yeast to eat. The biggest thing to come out of all this research companies are doing is that breaking down cellulose to make alcohol is not even what is really important. With modified organisms many different types of chemicals can actually be produced. These chemicals can replace petrochemicals that we are currently using. This technology is real and is currently being used and expanded upon. While it may seem like a big waste we are developing good technology out of these failed attempts. Does this mean that the ethanol adventure we are currently going through is worth it? I dont know ask me in 20 years. The idea that everytime you fund research you should get a positive definable reward is very short sighted and foolish. Should the government be in the business of funding private companies? Probably not, but we have been in that business since the ink was barely dry on the constitution. In some instances we recieved a very good return in others not so much. When times are tough is not the time to stop spending money on research, if anything you need to redouble efforts during tough times. We cannot afford to stand still and let the world pass us by.

TrueBlue | 1.13.12 @ 5:30PM

No, when times are tough the government should definitely not be involved in investing money in anything except the military projects already in progress. All the government does is take money from everybody else and redistribute it ineffectively. That money is better in the hands of the people who originally owned it than a beaurocratic fiasco that doesn't care how much money it spends. If a company is unable to stand on its own feet then it doesn't need to be in business.

IF the government wants to give money for research it should be done by giving prizes to companies that develop real working technology on their own dime. Give a prize out every 5 years or so based on the possible economic impact and viability of the project. That is the ONLY research money they should be handing out, to basically help a company that has developed a new technology that they have PROVEN to work then market that tech.

THKrupp| 1.16.12 @ 10:07AM

What you are advocating is that the government become a venture capitalist rather than funding research. This is what they did with Solyndra. I dont think the government should be giving money to fund operations or overhead...it should be strictly research. If a company has proven technology then why do they need to research it? I dont want the govnerment picking winners and losers. I want them to facilitate research. That doesnt always mean giving it to companies. If you cut back on research when times are tough then dont develop anything new for when times are better.

cicero| 1.13.12 @ 5:11PM

Of coarse, we all realize that the only reason for the whole ethanol/celulosick fiasco in the first place is because we have to avoid GLOBAL WARMING, and the ever present cry that we are running out of oil. Now that we have discovered what we really knew all along, that global warming was a chicken little scam of the first order, and that the world is awash in carbon based fuel sourses, what in the hell is the excuse for spending the peoples' money on these boondoggles anymore? Have we no sense whatsoever?
Instead of marching on Washington and demanding that the EPA, the Dept of Ag, and all of the other silly make work departments are shut down, we seem to be more worried about whether Tim Tebow actually gets help from God in hitting receivers. If the Repubs really want to win big time, all they have to do is run a candidate who will promise to shut down about 3/4 of the Washington bureaus in the first week after inauguration, and the rest of them the next week. All of this nonsensical research for an alternative to the cleanest, cheapest, easiest to find and use sourse of energy must stop. Oil and gas have fueled the most prosperous economies ever known, and made this generation the healthiest, most well fed, and long lived in the history of the world. And we want to change that, why?

TrueBlue | 1.13.12 @ 5:32PM

No issues with changing it, just angry at the waste of OUR money and resources on non-viable technology. Let the companies produce working and commercially viable products, then we'll see about giving them a hand on widescale production.

THKrupp| 1.16.12 @ 10:17AM

So you are saying that $100 per barrel oil is a hoax?

Marc Jeric| 1.13.12 @ 6:26PM

I am a retired engineer (MS, PhD, Engineering, UCLA); I spent 40 years designing pipelines, refineries, coal-gas-oil fired power plants, nuclear power plants, geothermal and solar power plants (I was lucky to skip the wind power scam). All processes producing fuel from vegetation is unavoidably energy negative: it takes more energy to produce ethanol, methanol, or anything similar than that garbage contains.

THKrupp| 1.16.12 @ 10:08AM

Please post your models so we could all see how you came to your conclusions.

tjoswald| 1.13.12 @ 8:05PM

Corn stalks are normally left in the field to keep the soil from eroding. Removing stalks WILL increase erosion tremendously unless untested alternatives are used. An Iowa State University professor did a study just on the needed roofing to keep the stalks dry and it was a 25 acre area just for a typical ethanol plant and its current annual production. Mr. Tucker called switchgrass a weed. He is mistaken since it is considered a native grass in the tall prairie region. It has been used for years as a great wildlife habitat in the CRP program.

Richard Baker| 1.13.12 @ 8:33PM

The sugar cane residue in Hawaii is called bagasse and is what's left over after the cane is burned. They've been using it in Hawaii for cattle feed and for limited power production for a long time. Not practical elsewhere because sugar cane requires immense amounts of land to grow economically, it takes almost 2 years to mature before harvesting, and it can't be grown in cold weather climates. At present, plant fibers/residues for power are, at best, expensive and require huge subsidies similar to the rest of this renewable nonsense.

POST American| 1.13.12 @ 10:19PM

----Just days after learning the capstone's
taken to saturating not just the food, packaging,
plastics etc. ---but even TOILET PAPER
with deadly estrogen Bisphenol A---

"And doctors now disclose that when
they operate on breast cancer --the
cancers are filled ---FILLED with
BPA."
-ALEX JONES
Infowars
(2 days ago)

HAD ENOUGH?

----------------EUGENICS is REAL----------------

--------------------------------TIME TO MOVE!

RonRonDoRon| 1.14.12 @ 4:49PM

Please excuse POST American, who suffers from a rare form of political/philosophical Tourette's.

Dan Mathewson| 1.14.12 @ 7:01PM

I read him like P.J. O'Rourke reads old Soviet/Nation propaganda.

POST American| 1.14.12 @ 10:01PM

"Americans better watch it or in
a couple of decades we're going to
be a minstrel show ---for RED China."
-Gore Vidal
(1985)

AS we were saying ---

"-----In this, the 11th hour of the 4 decades on
CFR Globalist RED China set up, sellout,
world TREASON and EUGENICS OP."

----------------HUAC/ Nuremberg IS coming.

Richard Baker| 1.15.12 @ 7:15AM

Moe:
He said that they had a form of beer. Who knows what that "form" was like but I liked the later comment regarding Fred Flintstone and Bronto-Burgers. Yabba Dabba Doo!

rhoetus| 1.15.12 @ 8:41PM

“I can’t decide if the world is run by smart people who are putting us on or imbeciles who really mean it.” –Mark Twain

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