@Patrick: I have been thinking about this ‘one other’. I guess you have much more readers, and this shows that in general we don’t talk with each others. I’m afraid it is a hard challenge for democracy when conservatives and liberals don’t talk..

@ Carlucci: I don’t know much about the US-politics.
In Germany we have the sugar industry lobbying for ethanol from sugar beet. Of course this helps in a world where the sugar prices are driven by the much cheaper production in eg your country. It helps the farmers, it helps the sugar industrie, I don’t think it helps the climate though, nor energy security, the second (or only, depending on how cynical you are) driver for renewables.
And we have bio-diesel from rapeseed, quite ineffective too, but helps you get a warm and cosy climate-saving driving experience. German farmers benefit from this initiative too, as rape-seed is a crop that goes very well here.

As far as I know, on investor level these types of first generation biofuels are out. At least Morgan Stanleys Iain Smedley said so on a recent conference on energy risk.

At the moment I see a lot of government initiatives that disturb markets without making much sense in the end. As I’m not a free-marketeer, I still get angry with governments that refuse to tackle real problems.

There is also another problem with the U.S. ethanol production: the use of corn, which is just insane. I don’t know if it is because of the weather or historical reasons, but it is just a bad idea.

The energy balance concerning corn conversion into ethanol is negative (1.29:1), that is for each kcal of energy supplied by ethanol 29% more energy is used to produce alcohol. This means that if 100% of the United States corn was to be used for ethanol production, this would satisfy only 6% of the needs of petroleum substitution.

Of course changing the main source of ethanol wouldn’t fix the problem, but it would drastically reduce it.

You’ve not my only somewhat liberal reader, I have one other! And, just like you, he is occasionally correct in his thinking!

Excellent point about the inefficiency of the ethanol model.

Seriously, I hope this problem transcends political labels or leanings.

Both the US and the EU are contributing to a very real global crises through their misguided attempts to solve complex issues with blunt and heavy handed market intervention.

On a right leaning side note, I’ve tried to find any comment from the godfather of global warming, A. Gore…he seems to be unwilling to take a position on this issue. If I were inclined to comment on his silence, the cynic in me would say that apparently he views starvation as a cost of doing business, painful but necessary when one is fighting the carbon wars for the future of the planet.

But, I’m not that cynical…yet.

Well, I agree with you.

There is one aspect I’d like to add on agrofuels in general: modern agriculture depends very much on fossil energy. For fertilizers, for machines, for transportation. In fact some people estimate that you have to add 10kJ of fossil energy to get 1 kJ back. If you look at it as a cycle, like you want the energy input in your agriculture, because, let’s say, you want a harvest again next year, nothing special, it does not look well.

Just because people are conservative doesn’t mean they are wrong. (Though for progressive people it looks like there is some correlation )