British Airways is among the investors in a $200 million plant that will make sustainable aviation fuel from ethanol derived from corn. The plant officially opened in rural Georgia last week and will produce about 10 million gallons of jet fuel and diesel. As electric cars and trucks displace gasoline-powered vehicles there will be massive excess capacity in ethanol plants that now supply an average of 10 percent of the volume of pump gasoline. It’s relatively straightforward to convert the alcohol to diesel and SAF, and the notion has also attracted investment from Suncor, a Canadian oil sands petroleum producer.
President Joe Biden has set a target of producing three billion gallons of SAF by 2030 and corn won’t be the only feedstock. A California company says it will make 61 million gallons of SAF from sugarcane. The plant covers 160 acres and will get its raw materials from farms in the Imperial Valley. It will also produce ethanol for gasoline blending, renewable natural gas, renewable diesel, electricity, CO2 and hydrogen.
This policy is bad for food prices.
It’s also bad energy policy.
It’s unsustainable to create fuels that take more energy to produce than they deliver when used.
Precisely, Mr. Arthur Foyt.
It’s stupid is what it is. But intellectual validity isn’t as important to “solutions” as it once was. Making it feel good superficially has replaced reality based practicality.
Using the food supply for fuel is nuts whether for cars or aircraft. We DO have malnutrition in the US and around the world so this is literally taking food out of people’s mouths. All this because a bunch of leftist whiners who don’t live in a mental world of reality.
Leftist?, Where is your head? Corn for ethanol is not part of the food chain, and neither is corn grown for silage, they are different types of corn, and the pressure to use corn for ethanol was put on the government by the extremely right-wing corn industry lobby years ago. Back then, people on the left were making the same argument you’re making about food shortages years. Get your fact straight before your need to blast the left consumes you.
While it may be true the specific variety of corn grown to produce ethanol for fuel is not considered a “food crop”, it is also true that those farmers growing that specific variety of corn to produce ethanol are using their land and resources to grow a crop we cannot eat, instead of a crop that we can eat. Were it not for the ethanol fallacy and government subsidies, more actual food could be produced.
In Wisconsin, there’s ‘sweet’ (edible) corn and ‘field’ (for other purposes) corn growing all over the place. Most of it is field corn. It’d be easy to just plant sweet corn IF there was a reason to do so. In the last 10-15 years, fields that used to sit fallow now have corn growing on them.
Leftist?, Where is your head? Corn for ethanol is not part of the food chain, and neither is corn grown for silage, they are different types of corn, and the pressure to use corn for ethanol was put on the government by the extremely right-wing corn industry lobby years ago. Back then, people on the left were making the same argument you’re making about food shortages. Get your fact straight before your need to blast the left consumes you.
While it may be true the specific variety of corn grown to produce ethanol for fuel is not considered a “food crop”, it is also true that those farmers growing that specific variety of corn to produce ethanol are using their land and resources to grow a crop we cannot eat, instead of a crop that we can eat. Were it not for the ethanol fallacy and government subsidies, more actual food could be produced.
That well known leftist, Senator Charles “Chuck” Grassley (R-IA), has been ethanol’s biggest supporter for decades.
AvWeb comments are like a creative writing exercise for some. Regardless of the article topic, the challenge is to find a way to dump on “leftists”, “socialists”, and the Biden administration. It is like clockwork.
I’ve been following the sugar cane to ethanol proposal in the Imperial Valley. All of the water to grow and process the sugar cane will come from the Colorado River which is in constant over over allocation.
You are correct about where the water coming from the Colorado River, but what you may not be aware of is the cane will be grown on farms that are currently being used to grow hay which is then harvested and sold off shore. No additional water will come from the river and the cane will actually use less than the hay.
It is usually not mentioned but important to consider that an ethanol plant only uses the starch from the corn. The germ and other parts contain all of the protein and fiber. This portion is left over and enters the food chain mostly as animal feed. A shortage of starch in diets is not generally a problem.
Anyone who thinks that burning food is sustainable (ie SAF) is an idiot. Anyone who thinks that perpetual taxpayer subsidies for idiot ideas is sustainable is an idiot. All of these SAF and other “green” ideas would go away overnight if government stopped taxing hard-working Americans to fund delusions and idiocy. A decent journalist would examine about such flaws in the “green” agenda. Journalism is dead.
There certainly seems to be a lot of idiots about. A journalist should look into it.
We certainly woke up grumpy today.
I think journalism is not yet dead. But the “idiotism” You, Mr. Blaine Nay, have precedently referred is, IMO, quite right.
Any good organic chemist will tell you that, given enough time, money and the right catalysts, you can turn methanol into road asphalt. The big question is why would you want to? Seriously, the main goal of organic chemistry is to find the best feedstock and the shortest, most economical route from feedstock to finished product. In other words, if you are wanting sustainable jet fuel, the much easier process is to start with soybeans or even algae. Georgia farmers are likely well familiar with soybeans, which are easier and less energy intense than corn, and they can skip the fermentation process, making them more efficient. As with the corn, the meal and solids from the bean can be used for animal feed, so not wasteful there. Algae can be grown in ponds, thus avoiding the competition with food crops for land. The politicians obsession with corn farmers blinds them to better ideas that are scientifically more sound. Sad…
That’s true!!!
So sad to see a argument on which political party more supports this stupid idea more than the other. Corn ethanol is such a bad idea in so many ways it is unbelievable that it ever happened. The environmental damage is just hideous and the fact that it doesn’t even reduce CO2 compared to just using the petroleum alternative makes it a total wasted effort. The socialist farmers are behind this fraud. It is so subsidized, 2/3 of their crop insurance to grow this corn ethanol is paid by the US government.
Ethanol in motor gasoline is a classic example that once a government program is created, it is nearly impossible to get rid of it. The original intent of the program was to extend the supply availability of domestic crude oil to bypass the threat of embargos from Middle Eastern OPEC members. The government also threw in the prospect of lowering emissions to keep the EPA happy. Never mind the fact that they used specious data there that ignored the energy input needed to create the ethanol on the front end. Directional drilling and modern fracking technology has pretty much alleviated the concern over domestic oil supplies, but the ethanol bandwagon lives on. What was once a technology issue has become a political mess, because no one wants to upset the farmers’ corn lobby, especially in an election year. Classic government myopia.
From AVweb reader Troy Murphy:
After reading your recent article on SAF from Ethanol, I thought I’d share this article relating to the impending development of a SAF refinery next to a Soybean processing facility in Southeastern Kansas.
https://www.derbyinformer.com/news/area_news/kansas-looking-to-get-into-renewable-aviation-fuel-industry/article_4f2d901e-c083-11ee-84e3-1f7f89a2f157.html
Hope it helps you for another article.
The $200,000,000 plant proposes to make 10,000,000 gallons of diesel or jet fuel per year. That’s 20% for the INITIAL cost of the plant, or 20 cents per gallon–and that’s only for the INITIAL cost of the plant!
You still have the cost of operating the plant–like any other manufacturing business.
You still have the cost of “farming the feed stock”–planting, caring for, harvesting, transporting, and processing the raw materials.
It used to be said that “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”–but that was disproven–you CAN make that silk purse, but it would be far too expensive to sell–I haven’t seen any on the market–or any other “silk products” made from animals.
And then there is the quote from the notable energy expert, Joe Biden–“President Joe Biden has set a target of producing three billion gallons of SAF by 2030”. That 10,000,000 gallons from this proposed plant would make up only 1/3 of 1% of his called-for hopes for ethanol production–you would need 300 of these proposed super-plants to meet his hopeful goals.
I don’t think that most investors will be rushing to sell their petroleum stocks.