Timely, given one of today's other threads, but not directly relevant to that discussion.

The Dirty Underside of Lula's Clean Energy Revolution - By Nikolas Kozloff | Foreign Policy

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/20...n?page=0,2 Wrote:Again, however, there are other greenhouse gases to consider besides carbon dioxide. The Brazilian ethanol industry uses more than 240,000 tons of nitrogen fertilizer per year at a cost of about $150 million. At a public senate hearing in Brasilia called to discuss climate change, experts expressed concern that nitrogen fertilizers used in conjunction with sugar cane production yielded nitrous oxide. What's more, when you cut cane by hand you've got to set controlled fires in the fields to smoke out razorsharp leaves, nasty snakes, and tarantulas. In the middle of the night, plantations look like a war zone as burning fields light up the sky and the wind blows billowing smoke clouds far and wide.  Not only do the burnings pollute the air with soot, causing a number of illnesses, but they also release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and nitrous oxide.

Public officials declare that ethanol will not lead to deforestation in the Amazon or exacerbate climate change. They say that the particular soils and rainy weather characteristic of the rainforest are not suitable for the growth of sugar cane. Agriculture minister Reinhold Stephanes has been quoted as saying that "Cane does not exist in Amazonia." In a withering blow to Stephanes's credibility, however, authorities recently raided a sugar cane plantation in the state of Pará where 1,000 workers were laboring under appalling debt slavery conditions. In all, environmentalists claim, hundreds of thousands of acres of sugar cane have been planted in the Amazon.

Even if there are only a few cane plantations operating in the Amazon, ethanol may exert an indirect impact on the rainforest through a phenomenon known as "agricultural displacement." Though the state of São Paulo is located far from the Amazon rainforest, the sugar cane there can drive other crops toward the agricultural frontier. In the state of São Paulo, sugar cane has been planted on former pastureland and this has pushed cattle into Mato Grosso. Hundreds of thousands of cattle are moving into the Amazon every year as a result of displacement by ethanol in the state of São Paulo alone, say environmentalists. This migration is becoming all the more likely since one can purchase 800 hectares of land in the Amazon for the price of just one hectare in São Paulo. Additionally, some soy plantations in the center of the country have been turned over to ethanol production, prompting concern among environmentalists that this will lead soy producers to move into the Amazon. And local observers say that sugar cane plantations are already pushing soy farmers and ranchers into the rainforest.

I'll defer to the experts I guess, but ethanol, and sugar cane ethanol seemingly in particular, seems to be an strange bedfellow to the enviornmental argument.

Replacing (the general idea of) gasoline with ethanol seems to rob Peter to pay Paul in the greening of society, no?

(04-12-2010 03:34 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  I'll defer to the experts I guess, but ethanol, and sugar cane ethanol seemingly in particular, seems to be an strange bedfellow to the enviornmental argument.

Replacing (the general idea of) gasoline with ethanol seems to rob Peter to pay Paul in the greening of society, no?

The problem is that, very simply, THERE IS NOTHING BETTER.

That's been the problem with our energy policy for at least 35 years. We keep waiting for some perfect solution, and there isn't one. There really isn't anything that is competitive with oil, but as a matter of national security we simply have to find alternatives, and live with the higher cost and/or lower utility of those alternatives. Not great news, but there really isn't another way.

(04-12-2010 03:34 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  I'll defer to the experts I guess, but ethanol, and sugar cane ethanol seemingly in particular, seems to be an strange bedfellow to the enviornmental argument.

Replacing (the general idea of) gasoline with ethanol seems to rob Peter to pay Paul in the greening of society, no?

I think you're right. On balance it's only slightly less objectionable than oil-derived fuel. But referring to 69/70/75's post, what are we trying to do? Do we want ethanol to make us greener or are we trying to achieve some greater measure of energy independence? Ethanol may just dent the former but has the potential to be significant in achieving the latter. I've noticed that a lot of the hard core greenies aren't very happy with ag-based fuels.

Corn-based ethanol is pretty much a disaster environmentally, because corn is such a poor source material. The only thing corn has going for it is that the Iowa caucus comes first.

Sugar-cane-based ethanol has a much smaller environmental footprint, primarily because it's about four times more efficient than corn as a source.

Corn ethanol is probably a net loss environmentally, whereas the greater efficiency enables sugar cane ethanol to be a net gain.

One other factor that people don't realize is that as long as we need oil, "drill here, drill now" is a net environmental gain over importing. Simply on the oil spill issue alone, the risk of a major spill from a tanker bringing oil here from overseas is MUCH higher than the risk from a well or offshore platform. I always thought it strange when, after the Exxon Valdez, Californians opposed offshore drilling on the grounds that they did not want a similar accident there. Actually, offshore drilling would have REDUCED the likelihood of such an incident, and blocking drilling increased that likelihood.

One of the things that concerns me is the (near-) slavery aspect of cane-derived ethanol production. Even with reasonable labor practices, it may be that cane/ethanol is still economically viable. I really like some of the technologies that suggest that industrial waste or output can be converted to gasoline, essentially using gasoline as the battery for "green" technologies. That, or converting coal to gasoline at the mine.