<html>
<body>
Ted:<br><br>
The premise to your argument needs revision:<br><br>
The advent of the modern shopping center was founded on the
"one-stop shopping" model. That is, make it possible for
a shopper to go to one site to acquire goods and services - save time and
money by not having the shopper drive all over to acquire goods.
This model preceded WalMart by some 40 years.<br><br>
The WalMart model was designed to capitalize on the shopping center
model. By having one store provide a wide array of goods usually
found in a shopping center, shoppers would stop at one store to satiate
most of their purchase demands. Walmart could offer lower prices
because they eliminated much of the overhead associated with a shopping
center - one manager instead of several (one for each store in the
center); one accounting system instead of several; one inventory
acquisition system instead of several; one promotion program instead of
several etc.<br><br>
And several enterprises preceded WalMart in this model - Fred Meyer,
Sears, JC Penney, Montgomery Wards, K-Mart. <br><br>
Furthermore, WalMart's model has actually reduced the cost of moving
goods from the producer to the end-retailer. Their centralized
inventory distribution model is the envy of most large scale mass
merchandisers.<br><br>
One can make the argument that by having a WalMart in both Moscow and
Pullman, both communities benefit by reducing the cost of travel to a
central location.<br><br>
Now - as to biofuel, you bring some interesting issues to the
forum. I agree with you that a lot of research needs to be done to
validate the economic merits of a bio-fuel program. A bright side
to the current energy "crisis" is that energy alternatives will
finally receive scrutiny.<br><br>
<br><br>
At 05:19 PM 5/13/2006, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Nils et. al.<br>
<br>
I was discussing the proposed Wal-Mart Super Center in Moscow with a
Vision2020 list serve member, and I told them that the main reason I
thought the Supercenter a bad idea was not poor wages and benefits,
traffic problems, commercial blight, Wal-Mart dominating the local
economy, the cultural homogenization of society, etc., but that
Wal-Mart's economic model is premised on the continuation of abundant
cheap fossil fuels, to bring shoppers to their huge parking lots in
fossil fuel powered vehicles, ship all their goods from the cheap labor
factories overseas, and to maintain their huge fleet of diesel semis
running 24/7 all over the USA. <br>
<br>
Of course, if biofuels can be produced in large enough quantities cheaply
enough to run the whole production/distribution system with the fuel from
biofuels as well as supply numerous other needs, without hurting the
necessary agricultural production needed to feed the 10 billion people
that will inhabit the Earth in just a few years, or without other serious
negative environmental impacts, optimists will declare we can grow our
way out of the oil crisis. However, sober number crunching from
some energy experts sheds serious doubt that we can grow ourselves via
biofuels out of the oil crisis without major negative impacts.
<br>
<br>
Brazil is situated rather well in regards to this crisis, with their
limited energy demands and much lower population (compared to the USA),
year long growing climate and large potential agricultural land mass
resulting in the possibility they could replace most if not all of their
oil consumption with biofuels from sugarcane. Sugarcane, as far as
I have gathered, is one of the best crops for biofuel production, though
technology is developing to make biofuels from other kinds of biomass
that are now not practical or possible for this purpose: <br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2005/Update49.htm">
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2005/Update49.htm</a><br>
<br>
From site above:<br><br>
Ethanol could quickly take off in sugarcane-producing tropical countries,
which have the advantage of year-round growing seasons, large labor
supplies, and low production costs. As fuel demand rises in these
developing nations, biofuel production could check oil imports while
bolstering rural economies. Brazil, for example, could produce enough
ethanol to meet total domestic fuel demand by increasing the area used to
grow sugarcane for alcohol from 6.6 million acres to 13.8 million acres
(5.6 million hectares) or by shifting all current sugarcane acreage to
ethanol production. Unfortunately, new fields may cut further into
already shrinking rainforests, making them a serious environmental
liability. <br><br>
-------<br>
However, in the USA, the picture is not as promising for biofuels,
according to this analysis::<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BFOA.php">
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BFOA.php</a><br>
<br>
<br>
ISIS Press Release 28/02/06 <br><br>
<div align="center"><br>
<h1><b>Biofuels for Oil Addicts</b></h1><br><br>
</div>
<br><br>
<br>
<div align="center"><br>
<h3><b>Cure Worse than The Addiction</b></h3><br><br>
</div>
<br><br>
<i>Bioethanol and biodiesel from energy crops compete for land that grows
food and return less energy than the fossil fuel energy squandered in
producing them; they are also damaging to the environment and disastrous
for the economy. </i><a href="mailto:.m.w.ho@i-sis.org.uk">Dr. Mae-Wan
Ho</a><br><br>
A longer,
<a href="http://www.i-sis.org.uk/full/BFOAFull.php"><font color="#008000">
fully referenced version</a></font> of this article is posted on ISIS
members' website. Details
<a href="http://www.i-sis.org.uk/membership.php"><font color="#008000">
here</a></font>.<br><br>
"We must break our addiction to oil", President George W. Bush
said in his State of the Union address; but he wasn't advising people to
give up their cars or to use less oil, say by improving the gas mileage
of cars. Instead, he launched the "Advanced Energy Initiative"
that would increase federal budget by 22 percent for research into clean
fuel technologies; including biofuels derived from plants as substitutes
for oil (see Box) to power the country's cars. <br><br>
Successive US presidents have promoted ethanol from corn as a subsidised
fuel additive. President Bush said US scientists are now working out how
to make ethanol from wood chips, stalks, or switch grass "practical
and competitive within six years", which would replace more than 70
percent of oil imports from "unstable parts of the world" - the
Middle East - by 2025. Currently 60 percent of the oil consumed in the US
is imported, up from 53 percent since George W. Bush came to power.
<br><br>
<br>
<h3><b>What are biofuels?</b></h3><br><br>
<br><br>
Biofuels are fuels derived from crop plants, and include biomass that's
directly burned, biodiesel from plant seed-oil, and ethanol (or methanol)
from fermenting grain, grass, straw or wood. Biofuels have gained favour
with environmental groups as renewable energy sources that are
"carbon neutral", in that they do not add any greenhouse gas
into the atmosphere; burning them simply returns to the atmosphere the
carbon dioxide that the plants take out when they were growing in the
field. <br><br>
However, they take up valuable land that should be used for growing food,
especially in poor Third World countries. Realistic estimates show that
making biofuels from energy crops require more fossil fuel energy than
they yield, and do not substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions when
all the inputs are accounted for. Furthermore, they cause irreparable
damages to the soil and the environment (see main text). <br><br>
Biofuels can also be produced from wood chips, crop residues and other
agricultural and industrial wastes, which do not compete for land with
food crops, but the environmental impacts are still substantial.<br><br>
<br>
<h3><b>Biofuels cannot substitute for current fossil fuel
use</b></h3><br><br>
<br><br>
Biofuels from energy crops cannot substitute for current fossil fuel use.
The major constraints are land surface available for growing the crops,
crop yield, and energy conversion efficiency, although economics also
plays a large role. <br><br>
Growing crops for burning biomass - should be the cheapest kind of
biofuel both in energy and financial terms, as it requires minimum
processing after harvest. <br><br>
Crop scientists at Virginia Tech, David Parrish and John Fike, reviewed
the biology and agronomy of switchgrass, the most researched and favoured
biofuel crop. Switchgrass is a perennial native to the USA, and has been
extensively grown for fodder soon after the Europeans arrived. It is
prolific, does not require much nitrogen fertilizer, and is considered
the most sustainable, or the least environmentally damaging biofuel crop.
But the review concluded that, "even at maximum output, such systems
could not provide the energy currently being derived from fossil
fuels." <br><br>
Substituting switchgrass for coal is estimated to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by about 1.7 t CO<sub>2</sub> per t switchgrass. The prices
that growers must receive for biomass, however, must be sufficiently
favourable. Thus, about 8 m ha would be available if the price reached $
33 per t at the farm gate, increasing to about 17 m ha at $44 per
t. The market price paid for woodchip biomass in Virginia in 2004
averaged about $33 per t <i>delivered</i>, and the price for hay (all
kinds) is about $95 per t.<br><br>
One estimate placed the delivery costs of switchgrass at $63 per t.
Adding the costs of processing, such as pressing into pellets or cubes
for handling within a power plant, would bring the user's costs to about
$83 per t. One t of switchgrass produces 17-18 GJ of energy when burned,
compared with 27-30 GJ for coal; and coal prices are $55 per t. <br><br>
Switchgrass for energy is not at all economically competitive, unless
substantial subsidy is available. <i>The same applies, perforce, to other
energy crops.<br>
</i><br>
David Pimentel, a professor of crops science at Cornell University New
York and Tad Patzek, a professor of chemical engineering at University of
California Berkeley, reviewed the energy balance and economics of
producing biomass, ethanol or biodiesel from corn, switchgrass, wood,
soybeans and sunflower using the now generally accepted life-cycle
analysis. Although there is much controversy over the energy balance of
ethanol and biodiesel, the energy balance of biomass yield is generally
less subject to dispute, and is therefore a useful starting point.
<br><br>
It turns out that switchgrass has the most favourable output/input energy
ratio of 14.52, followed by wheat at 12.88, and oilseed rape at 9.21, if
the straw is included. Switchgrass is hence the most promising energy
crop, whether as biomass for burning or to make other fuels downstream,
such as ethanol. <br><br>
A quick calculation showed that even if all the farmland in the United
States were converted to growing switchgrass, it would not produce enough
ethanol for the country's fossil fuel use. Switchgrass takes several
years to mature. The yield ranges from 0 for complete failure of the crop
to take hold to 20 t or more per ha, a lot depending on the rainfall. A
yield of 15 t /ha is optimistic; and would provide some 250 GJ/ha of raw
chemical energy a year. If that energy could be converted with 70 percent
efficiency into electricity, ethanol, methanol etc., it would take about
460 m ha to produce the 80EJ (ExaJoule = 10 <sup>18</sup>J) fossil fuel
energy used in the USA each year. The total farmland in the USA is 380 m
ha, of which 175 m ha is harvested cropland. <br><br>
Clearly, energy crops are a bad option, and may become obsolete as
ethanol can now be made from wood chips, crop residues and other
agricultural wastes, and industrial wastes, though even that is not
sustainable ("Ethanol from wood biomass not sustainable", this
series). <br><br>
<br>
<h3><b>Do you get more energy out of biofuel than the fossil fuel energy
you put in?</b></h3><br><br>
<br><br>
There is a huge debate over the energy balance of making ethanol or
biodiesel out of energy crops, with David Pimentel and Tad Patzek
presenting negative energy balance for <i>all </i>crops based on current
processing methods, i.e., it takes more fossil energy input to produce
the equivalent energy in biofuel. Thus for each unit of energy spent in
fossil fuel, the return is 0.778 unit of energy in maize ethanol, 0.688
unit in switchgrass ethanol, 0.636 unit in wood ethanol, and worst of
all, 0.534 unit in soybean biodiesel. <br><br>
Their paper has provoked a strong riposte from several US government
departments, accusing Pimentel and Patzek of using obsolete figures, of
not counting the energy content of by-products such as the seedcake
(residue left after oil is extracted) that can be used as animal feed,
and of including energy used for building processing plants, farm
machinery, and labour, not usually included in such assessments.
<br><br>
For their part, Pimentel and Patzek, along with many other scientists
like me, are critical of estimates that produce positive energy balance
precisely because they leave out necessary energy investments. In fact,
neither Pimentel and Patzek nor their critics have included the costs of
waste treatment and disposal or the environmental impacts of intensive
bioenergy crop cultivation such as depletion of soil and environmental
pollution from fertilizers and pesticides. <br><br>
To apportion processing-energy to coproducts according to their bulk
composition in the seed may appear unexceptionable. Only 18 percent of
the soybean is oil that makes biodiesel, while the rest is soybean cake
used as animal feed. However, as the seedcake is produced as soon as the
oil is extracted, it is simply creative accounting to attribute 82
percent of the downstream processing energy for biodiesel - which is
quite substantial - to the animal feed. <br><br>
<br>
<h3><b>Energy balance of ethanol from corn </b></h3><br><br>
<br><br>
Sure enough, a new study comparing six estimates of energy balance of
corn ethanol did find that "net energy calculations are most
sensitive to assumptions about coproduct allocation".<br><br>
The new study, carried out by researchers at the University of California
Berkeley, published in the journal <i>Science</i>, evaluated six analyses
of corn-ethanol production, including those of Pimentel and Patzek. The
researchers developed a 'model' to allow them to compare the data and
assumptions across the analyses. Pimentel and Patzek's negative energy
balance stood out in including energy used for building processing
plants, farm machinery, and labour, and for not giving credit for
co-products. Removing those "incommensurate" factors
nevertheless resulted in only a modest positive energy balance of just
over 3 MJ/litre to 8 MJ/litre ethanol in the analyses that gave positive
energy balance, which translates to 1.13 to 1.34 for energy output/energy
input (there being 23.4MJ in one litre of ethanol), while the reduction
in greenhouse gas emissions averaged about 13 percent. <br><br>
The researchers have devised a way of presenting energy balance in terms
of "petroleum input" - expressed as MJ petrol/MJ ethanol that
puts a very positive gloss on the figures and is very misleading. It
essentially adds one hundred percent energy credit to the ethanol because
it assumes that the ethanol substitutes 100 percent for fossil fuel use.
<br><br>
The researchers then used the "best data" from the six analyses
to "create" three cases with their model (hence all
hypothetical): <i>Ethanol Today</i>, that claims to include typical
values for the current US corn ethanol industry; <i>CO<sub>2</sub>
Intensive</i>, based on plans to ship Nebraska corn to a lignite-powered
ethanol plant in North Dakota, and <i>Cellulosic</i>, which assumes that
production of ethanol from switchgrass cellulose becomes economic, an
admitted "preliminary estimate of a rapidly evolving
technology". <br>
he three cases, the researchers found a positive energy balance: a
whopping 23 MJ/litre ethanol for <i>Cellulosic</i>, 5 MJ/litre for
<i>Ethanol Today</i>, and 1.2 MJ/litre for <i>CO<sub>2</sub> Intensive
</i>; the corresponding output/input energy ratios are 1.98, 1.21, and
1.05 respectively. <i>Cellulosic</i> is the clear winner in terms of
energy balance, and also by a long shot in net greenhouse gas emission
saved, which is 89 percent; the corresponding values for <i>Ethanol
Today</i> and <i>CO<sub>2</sub> Intensive</i> are 17 percent and about 2
percent respectively. <br><br>
These analyses show that current production methods, represented by
<i>Ethanol Today</i> and <i>CO<sub>2</sub> Intensive</i>, offer but a
small positive energy balance and little if any savings in greenhouse gas
emissions, <i>even with the most favourable assumptions built in</i>.
<br><br>
<br>
<h3><b>Bad economics of ethanol from corn</b></h3><br><br>
<br><br>
Ethanol constitute 99 percent of all biofuels in the United States; 3.4
billion gallons of ethanol were produced in 2004 and blended into
gasoline, amounting to about 2 percent of all gasoline sold by volume and
1.3 percent of its energy content. <br><br>
Ethanol use is set to expand as the federal government has introduced a
0.51 tax credit per gallon of ethanol and issued a new mandate for 7.5
billion gallons of "renewable fuel" to be used in gasoline by
2012, which is included in the recently passed Energy Policy Act (EPACT
2005). <br><br>
Pimentel and Patzek have shown not only that the energy return is
substantially negative, the economics is worse. About 50 percent of the
cost of producing ethanol is for the corn feedstock itself ($0.28/litre).
Ethanol costs a lot more to produce than it is worth on the market, and
without federal and state subsidies amounting to some $3 billion per
year, corn ethanol production in the US would cease. Senator McCain
reports that total ethanol subsidies amount to $0.79/ litre; adding the
production costs would bring the cost to $1.24/litre. Ethanol has only 66
percent as much energy per litre as gasoline; so corn ethanol costs $1.88
per litre- or $7.12 per gallon- equivalent of gasoline, compared to the
current cost of producing gasoline, which is $.33/litre. <br><br>
Federal and state subsidies for ethanol production that total $0.79/litre
mainly end up in the pocket of large corporations, with a maximum of
$0.02 per bushel, or 0.2 cent/litre ethanol going to the farmer.<br><br>
The total costs to the consumer in subsidizing ethanol and corn
production is estimated at $8.4 billion/yr, because producing the
required corn feedstock increases corn prices. One estimate is that
ethanol production adds more than $1 billion to the cost of beef
production. <br><br>
Clearly ethanol from corn is neither sustainable nor economical, and a
lot of effort has been devoted to finding alternative feedstock.<br><br>
<br>
<h3><b>Worse energy yields as accounting gets more
realistic</b></h3><br><br>
<br><br>
In a detailed rebuttal to the <i>Science</i> paper showing a positive
energy balance in ethanol production from corn, Patzek exposed the major
flaws in energy accounting used, which greatly inflated the energy
return. These include:
<ul>
<li>Failure to account for the energy in corn grains as energy input
<li>Assuming an impossibly high yield of corn ethanol at variance with
real data available
<li>Assigning away undue energy costs in ethanol production, in
particular, distillation, to coproducts such as fermentation residues
that have nothing to do with ethanol production.
</ul><br>
In addition, the ethanol industry routinely inflates the ethanol yield by
counting as ethanol the 5 percent of gasoline added to corn ethanol as
denaturant; by taking the amount of fermentable starch to be the total
extractable starch, although not all of the latter is fermentable; and by
taking the weight of wet corn (average 18 percent moisture) as dry corn.
<br><br>
When the energy accounting done by different authors is reanalysed on the
same set of realistic data, energy yields come out remarkably uniform.
The output/input ratio varies between 0.245 and 0.310. In other words,
<i>the energy balance is strongly negative: for every unit used in making
corn ethanol, one gets at most 0.3 unit of energy back</i>. <i>It takes
at least 9 times more fossil fuel energy to produce ethanol from corn at
the refinery gate than gasoline or diesel fuel from crude oil
</i>.<br><br>
As Patzek points out, the 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol mandated by the
2005 Energy Bill by 2012 could be compensated by an increase of car
mileage by just one mile per gallon, excluding gas-guzzling SUVs and
light trucks. <br><br>
The economic consequences of excessive corn production have been
devastating. The price of corn in Iowa, the largest corn producer,
declined 10-fold between 1949 and 2005 as corn yields have tripled.
Today, Iowa farmers earn a third for the corn they sell compared to 1949,
while their production costs increased manifold, because they burn
methane and diesel to produce corn. The price of methane has increased
several-fold in the last three years. "Corn crop subsidies
supplemented the market corn price by up to 50 percent between 1995 and
2004." Patzek writes, predicting more concentration of industrial
corn production in gigantic farms operated by large agribusiness
corporations, and real farmers will only rent the land. <br><br>
An industrial raw material at rock-bottom price can now be processed into
ethanol at a significant profit, further enhanced by a federal subsidy of
50 cents per gallon ethanol, plus state and local community subsidies.
<br>
Patzek concludes: "the United States has already wasted a lot of
time, money, and natural resources
..pursuing a mirage of an energy
scheme that cannot possibly replace fossil fuels
The only real solution
is to limit the rate of use of these fossil fuels. Everything else will
lead to an eventual national disaster." <br>
<br>
---------<br>
<br>
Vision2020 Post by Ted Moffett<br>
<br>
On 5/13/06, <b>Nils Peterson</b>
<<a href="mailto:nils_peterson@wsu.edu">nils_peterson@wsu.edu </a>>
wrote:
<dl>
<dd>On 5/12/06 12:44 PM, "tom trail> wrote:<br>
<dd>> As it becomes clear that even a
<dd>>> moderate cut in production may double world oil prices, the
long-term
<dd>>> value of their oil will become much clearer.<br>
<br>
<br>
<dd>Wouldn't it be nice to have the distinction of having the last
WalMart Super
<dd>Center built before they recognized that peak oil changed their
business
<dd>model. When it became a dark stork, it would be a tourist attraction
<dd>bringing us great revenue (oh I forgot, tourism will change
too).<br><br>
</dl>_____________________________________________________<br>
List services made available by First Step Internet, <br>
serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
<br>
<a href="http://www.fsr.net /" eudora="autourl">
http://www.fsr.net
</a> <br>
<a href="mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com" eudora="autourl">
mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com</a><br>
ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ</blockquote></body>
</html>