It's encouraging to see that alternatives are being developed. At the same time I think more should be done to reduce consumption which has the added benefit of reducing harmful emissions. The push for biofuels, while politically expedient, creates problems of its own. We are already witnessing its impact. The use of waste products in biofuel production makes much more sense as it then becomes a form of recycling.
I really do not know much about the reality of ethanol from citrus, but I hope it is not as big of a disaster as ethanol from corn. The largest winners from the manufacture of ethanol from corn are the corn farmers. This year even the price of US wheat to American wheat farmers went up to $5.65 per bushel partly because of the tremendous amount of acreage that was diverted by wheat farmers to corn production so they could get in on the corn cash train. Last year I sold my wheat for $3.75, per bushel this year $2.00 higher. It was nice but still it is a rip off of the general public. Food pricing is up also because of ethanol. Corn products are ingredients in tens of thousands of the nations food products. CBS television's special on ethanol, showed that the total amount of energy expanded in the manufacture ethanol is about equal to the amount of energy that ethanol provides. Just a trade off. Lastly, a tremendous amount of energy is used in just moving ethanol from the farm field to the consumer. Ethanol cannot be shipped by pipeline like oil can. Ethanol has to be shipped by truck. In my opinion, the last item that should be used to manufacture fuel is the people's food supply. How dumb is that? A win fall for the corn farmer, bad for the public. Another US government "great" plan. - Millet
Even that can be damaging to the crop producer - what is burnt for biofuel can no longer be composted to return the nutrients to the next crop, as it has been in the past. So it results in a significant drain on soil fertility and condition.
Actually, ethanol does not contain any of the macronutrients that were in the corn or citrus waste-- the nutrients all end up in the yeast and sludge that is left after the ethanol is removed. In the case of corn, many of the plants that produce ethanol are turning the waste directly into cattle food and in many cases feedlots are built next to the plants. I have heard that conversion of corn to ethanol uses almost as much energy as it produces, but I think to get that figure they even included the energy it takes to heat the farmers house. Sugar cane is more efficient and Brazil has become energy independent based on ethanol, so it can be done. I think the use of waste products for fuel is a good move. If we can extract the orange juice for us, ferment the waste, extract the ethanol for fuel, and feed the waste to cattle, then use the manure for improving the soil we will have gotten pretty good use out of an orange. Skeet
But the fact remains, that nutrients are removed from the site where the crop is grown, and not replaced there (whether they go up a chimney as smoke, or into a cow as cattle feed). It is a real concern in UK forestry plantations, where the brash (small branches and foliage) is currently left to rot on site after the timber harvest, providing important nutrition for the next rotation of trees, and also cover for wildlife. If all this brash was harvested too, the nutrient status and organic content of the soil would fall to such an extent that the subsequent crop would have very poor growth. The brash contains most of the nutrients on the site; very little is removed in the logs which unlike the leaves are nearly pure cellulose.
Skeet, ........." get that figure they even included the energy it takes to heat the farmers house"......Skeet my good friend .....PLEASE!!! Ethanol from corn is a GREAT IDEA if your a corn farmer, and I will have to admit it also helped me as a wheat farmer, but it is a BAD DEAL to the general public. It is the general public that will be forced to pay the bill every time they go to the store. Using one's food supply for fuel, is dumb. Further, ethanol certainly is NOT a very efficient fuel. It was announced just last week that a large range of food items will be increased due to the increased price of corn sweetener, corn starch and the further decreased availability of other cereal crop due to conversion to corn growing. Heaven forbid, it was also announced that the price of beer will also go up due to the fact that barley pricing is taking a jump because barley producers are also converting to corn and jumping on the corn gravy train. As for the conversion of citrus to ethanol, it will produce such a minute percentage of the total fuel required, it is almost not worth mentioning. MichaelF USA farmers rely totally on chemical fertilizers for crop nutrition, not returned waste. For wheat the fertilizer used is 99 percent Anhydrous Ammonia injected into the soil prior to seeding. Reliance on returned waste is a good method for US farmers to go broke. - Millet
Millet, I am going from memory, but I remember hearing an interview with a scientist that wrote an article saying that the net energy yield from corn was "zero". In the interview, it was revealed that to get to the "zero" figure, the scientist had included the energy required for growing the corn, transportation, distillation, and "even the energy required to heat the farmers home". Personally I do not believe that the yield is zero, but I can accept that it is not very efficient and we need to find other sources of energy. Brazil has become energy independent based on ethanol from sugar cane. The price of corn and soybeans has gone up because the energy value in those crops is worth more since oil cost have gone up--it will only get worse if we do not come up with alternate sources. Citrus waste is a small amount, but it all adds up-- waste oil from resturants, methane from landfills, using wood chips from tree trimming---. Skeet
To continue the discussion which strayed off the original topic: Biofuels may promote, not slow, global warming.
Just yesterday I heard on 850 KOA radio (the strongest and most listened radio station in the Rocky Mountain western states of the US) that a group of scientists are now calling for a warning about global cooling !!! I also heard a report on the same station concerning the posting Junglekeeper posted above. How many scientific scares have come and gone in the last 15 years? Natural Global warming has happened many times in past ages. Man caused global warming, color me quite SCEPTICAL. I could not care less about (1) 319 years to recoup the carbon emissions to create diesel-soybean plantations, (2) 423 years to pay off palm oil plantations, (3) corn-bio fuel production targets would be 167 years. If some one want to plant a palm oil plantation, I say fine, plant it, if a company wants to put in a diesel soybean plantation, fine build it. Some day an environmentalist probably will come up with the number of debt years it produces to fix the pot holes on the highway. This latest scare will go the way of all the other scares. - Millet
There is no question that man has influenced the impact of cyclic periods of global warming. Even today people are tapping into volcanic warmed glacier melt lakes as primary water sources, when before they could not. With the absence of the lake water now, we then get to see and read about the lake's disappearance on the television newscasts and in some documentaries as being directly related to global climate change. The climate can be impacted by the loss of the water but in a passing comment we may learn that the water all was siphoned off and was used for consumptive purposes. In this case the global climate change purveyors were people and the one consistent is that the people that used up the water are permanent and the lake was not. I think ethanol production was always meant to be a short term benefit until we get our act together and figure out more ways to work on clean burning or cleaner combustion energy. The current ethanol production is not meant to be a significant lowering of the amount of imported and domestic oil production as more and more people are driving cars than before along with the increased number of people needing heating oil still in major sections of North America. As far as global warming is concerned that all oxygen emitters and liberators contribute to global warming, then it is safe to say that just my breathing contributes also. We have become rather ridiculous now in what some researchers are presenting as evidence with so much subjective postulatization going on rather than actual objectively reasoned and unified, applied theory. We have to define what Citrus waste is and how do we assess what is wastage. I think the peel aspect for generating ethanol pales in significance as opposed to using whole fruit to yield ethanol or "dieselhol" We get more bang for our buck using the whole fruit which opens the doors to biomass a huge amount of discarded fruit such as overripe fruit that cannot be shipped or processed or fruit that cannot grade out due to marketing order restrictions and constraints. On one hand I like the whole idea of being able to render some use to much of the pome and stone fruit that goes to waste by using them to generate something useful in return as opposed to simply being discarded and either collected and buried or burned or left on the ground to rot. If we go back to thinking in terms of cultural control for some insects and diseases then we surely do not want to let the fruit rot on the ground and then be faced with using a pesticide spray the following year all because we chose to be remiss in our crop clean up. There are lots of issues in using biomass generation and one of them here has been the idea that we liberate pollutants into the air which is why some biomass plants were put on hold for a length of time until the "greased" politicians in our state legislature decide either to not let the biomass plants function, let them go online due to air compliance quality factors or let them remain as is to regenerate energy for electrical users once again. In this state we do not get to vote on what we want to do with renewable resources and other energy sources such as proposed clean burning coal and even cleaner emitting nuclear power. We always get to see, hear or read of someone with an environmental or bought off agenda telling us of a better way to do things, yet we never are told in any definable terms what those better ways are that are designed to impact the rest of us. We still can see every now and then the guy running around town in a Hummer spouting off on the evening news that GM can be producing that same car with 40 miles per gallon capability, yet for him that 12 miles to gallon gas guzzler fits his current day lifestyle needs just fine. Say whatever you want about ethanol. No one talks of the tax breaks that people got to build the plant or all of the subsidized corn being used to supply the ethanol generation or the taxpayer funding that bought the land to build the subsidized plant and then be told that there has to be a guaranteed price in return or they will close down the plant and leave us holding the bag after all of the higher ups all move to resort areas and be pampered for the rest of their lives at our expense. In that case we are not looking at a net zero, we are looking at a net deficit but we were looking at that all along anyway that we get to pay for again and again just for some short term energy relief. I think Florida Citrus Mutual needs to stand back from their intent and reason that private enterprise is the way to go, rather than putting all of their peels into one person's basket. Then again as we saw out here with solar that others involved in energy generation will buy up the privateers and quickly expunge their competition. It took several years for solar to make a comeback here and it was in part due to an energy producing company that felt the need to harvest the sun as a long term approach to sustaining their very existence. Give them enough time in their efforts to educate people with wind, solar and water generated electricity and they will have a significant impact in how we do things. No, not all energy producers are looking solely at the short term buck and for this I, for one, do appreciate what PG&E have done here and are trying to do. Yes, they are in the business to make money but at the same time they have a long term outlook that few others have and they do not cow-tow to their stockholders short term interests either. Yes, they can do more to advance renewable energy but when we go to the nearest office and see people in line with $400 energy bills that they only pay $200, then we can better reason that what they are doing is not all about the money. They do not have to give any low income person a price break on anything if they were the diehard, in your face, we do not care, business that a few misguided malcontents have written about online. We may not always like them in what they do but we better learn to respect them for what they have done and continue to do. What price tag do we put on service that is always there, right now, even when the going for them at the time can be rather difficult for them to deal with? Jim
Jim said, ....."There is no question that man has influenced the impact of cyclic periods of global warming.".... Actually, there are an untold number of questions remaining, of man's "influence". Myself, I would rather see the citrus pulp continue to be used for feeding livestock, instead of being used in yet another heavily subsidized venture, and another draining of the American tax payer. The college text book "Citrus Growing in Florida" says that the use of the peel for livestock feed, is actually quite profitable, and certainly is a benefit to the Florida rancher. Certainly, more of a benefit to the Florida ranching community, than the micro drop in the bucked of over subsidized fuel to the Florida motorist. On the 1st Earth Day in 1970 the US depended about one quarter on foreign oil. With the increasing environmentalist's demands on restrictions of domestic oil production, insuring that increased domestic demand must be met with other than domestic supply, this dependence is now 60 percent. The environmentalist say, "We need to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil....but no drilling here"??????????? - Millet
Thought sure I was going to catch heck from a host of angles yesterday while spending 6 hours mowing the backyard lawn. I had a lot of time to do some thinking about what I had posted. There is and has been periods of global warming along with periods of global cooling. Historical records will indicate this. We have evidence that this is or may be happening also in newly discovered dwarf planets as well.. I like the hard facts such as drilling core samples in Greenland and then determining oxygen content then in periods of the past as opposed to now. Seeing glaciers disappear before our eyes does lead to a conundrum but do we ever ask did this happen before and we just do not know about it? Funny thing that along the way we learned Greenland in the past was much warmer than it was in the last century and perhaps even the previous millennium. We have recorded data that tells when Germany was much warmer than it has been since the later 1800's. Warm enough to be growing Citrus in vast expanses and other cold sensitive crops, such as what we now call truck crops, vegetable crops, in ground. We cannot deny that Germany for a century or two longer was indeed warmer than it has been in more recent times. Just look what happened to all of the wine grape growing regions of Germany when they used to be everywhere in Germany. Florida Citrus was expected to face a quarantine in which no fruit can be shipped out of state and no Citrus could come into Florida either. I was surprised from being here on the "left coast" that this did not happen. We know of Florida Citrus that was shipped to Canada and we also saw Citrus nursery stock from Florida being shipped into Oregon of which none of those plants can come into California. The only way to ship under such an imposed quarantine that we've faced in the past is to fumigate the fresh market fruit for overseas consumption (cannot talk about the fact that the fumigant is a known carcinogen either) or process all the fruit in Florida and continue on selling juice and hope that another country or two or three does not flood the market with their juice. Florida with the canker issue was facing pretty much a county by county quarantine in which fruit from unaffected counties could be shipped out fresh sans the fumigation but when Florida was hit with a Citrus Greening quarantine then the entire state was to be under that same type quarantine as we have been here. The major difference is that our state imposed quarantine is much more strict than a Federal imposed quarantine is. Just ask Sunkist if you do not believe me. They remember the Med-fly and what had to be done to ship Fresno, Tulare and Kern County Citrus to Japan with an ethylenedibromide fumigation before those fruit could be shipped out but those same fruit could not be shipped to any other state. We do not see that in Florida or we are not being told of it and I do think that Canadian consumers that are seeing Florida Citrus come into them do have to right to know about it. So, with the two quarantines that Florida was to be subjected to that all fresh market Citrus was to stay in Florida that there was an "out" for all of the perishable fruit and that was to do something with them and lo and behold thanks to a few Universities that ethanol and we already knew that electricity can be generated from biomassing the fruit. The grower is going to pay for the picking whether the fruit is going to market or is processed or goes to waste. Out here with Navels we take a beating if the fruit is not of grade size to be shipped and goes to juice. Our return does not even come close to what the picking costs are, actually the price we get is an insult but if we can have a choice of having the fruit go to juice for penny's on the dollar or let the fruit go to biomass for free with no return, I'd choose biomass every time. We do not have to have our fruit go towards the making of ethanol we can choose having the discarded fruit go towards biomass generated electricity instead and this would be my personal choice but I do not have that choice. Even the people I know running or were running biomass facilities near the area were all put on hold, even at a time when we had electrical power grid problems in this state the led to some major selected power outage blockages in select metropolitan areas that some people later called brown outs. Well, none of these brown outs happened on their own. A quick flick of a switch from a power grid central station turned the power off to prevent the power reserves in this state from going to less than 3%. 5% power reserves is critical but less than 3% is too close to a statewide power grid meltdown. We can get more from hydroelectricity and geothermal electricity here to coincide with solar and wind generated electricity. We can also invest in more clean burning coal as well as look into clean nuclear fuel ( I want to know how do we render the waste material harmless before we get there with nuclear but that is just me). The naysayers still are quick to comment that we will be using petroleum oil to help generate much but not all of the electrical output needed to supply what we have now and what we will have later. The problem at this time is what we will have later with more and more cars on the road, more homes, more apartment dwellings, more and more land taken out of production. The proposed notion back in the 60's was that we would in time be working at a net deficit in that we were facing the prospect of using up more natural resources faster than they can be replenished. We are there now but as long as we find more oil reserves and those same reserves are not domestic reserves then we are at the mercy of the oligopoly gas producers that get 50 cents on the barrelhead for each and every barrel of oil they help produce from the oil producing areas. So when we read of $100 a barrel oil, who do we think gets half of it? Oil in of itself in an enigma. Demand can be down and the price goes up. Demand goes up and so does the price to us end consumers. Supply goes down and the price goes up and when supply goes up the price stays the same. Not much different than credit card lenders in that the federal rate to borrow goes up and so does our rate of interest and when the feds cut the rates to the lenders our rates go up again. The problem that I foresaw as it was happening that led me to know we were in big trouble was who is now in change of the gas company credit card billing statements. Who are we sending our payments to and guess what, they are the principal players in the credit card lending schemes. With those players involved headed by a oil conglomerate that does not have to pay US taxes since they are a foreign owned company, the realism is that unless we start to see some real fluctuations in oil output there will be no real desire to move away from having imported oil continue to come in. In that we have players involved that will not allow alternate fuels to come about and will expunge upstart companies like what was done to solar here and why the wind machines at Altamont Pass were rendered useless after they were privatized for company tax write off purposes in the early 90's. We are not going to win Millet. You know of coal in Colorado going somewhere but it cannot come here. We have the ability to light up the sky with solar in vast desert areas in the southern and Mojave desert areas and then we surmise that all those solar panels we see out in the middle of nowhere are generating electricity to the highest bidder instead of going to nearby cities and the larger populated metropolitan areas of this state. Makes no sense to me but it will to those that own those solar panels and why it is that we do not see more of them. The same issue I had years ago with hydroelectricity in that virtually every dam up this way and farther north have the ability to generate electricity, why aren't we doing it then if we have all the needed components to do so already right there and ready to go without too much worry of NIMBY interference. A great friend of the family had a dam named after him for his lifelong work with California water that was put in just to generate electricity. The paltry output from that dam is what irritates me but I've grown to yield a little in my hopes and expectations. Jim
Jim, two items. Very little electricity in the USA is generated by using oil to power the generators. Just about all electricity is generated using coal. Second, the high price that the country is FORCED to pay for FOREIGN oil is not our problem. Unreasonable environmentalists demands is the nations problem. - Millet
You may want to look at these links below. California's Major Sources of Energy 2006 Gross System Electricity Production 2003 U.S. Electricity Capacity by Fuel Type Jim
Jim, thanks for your links. However, California statistics really don't say much about US energy generation. Look at the graph near the bottom of the link below. - Millet http://www.electricityforum.com/electricity-generation.html also: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html
Re: O.T. to a large extent. I think the links show that we do things a little differently out here than the rest of the US. What you want to know is what is used to start up the turbine engines and for that we use fossil fuels for the most part. I know of a "clean" burning coal plant about five miles Southeast of Lemoore Naval Air Station that waited a long time to go online due to the legislature not wanting to grant them a license due to air quality concerns to go online. A governor stepped in and let them go online, so we do have some "screened" coal (not just any coal) that is coming here but not much of it as of yet. As we can tell from the second link that a lot more solar energy is produced here than is listed for electrical output. Much of it is privately owned, not corporate owned per say in the sense that it is not the bona fide power companies in this state that own them. We are even using solar now to run the street lights along certain notorious, fog stricken roadways and we should see more of them in time (I sure hope so as the stretch from Sacramento to Bakersfield (my home area) can be a real bearcat to drive at night) A lot of the electrical power we see among creeks, streams and smaller rivers to monitor water flow are run by solar now as well. We do not need to run diesel to utilize solar photovoltaic cells and that is a huge advantage in the battle with the few zealots that are anti everything as long as it does not pertain to or impact them but does to the rest of us. Jim
Jim, one thing I agree 100 percent with you is that California does do things different than the rest of the country. Especially different than the rest of the western states. As this is a citrus forum I think I will stop at this point. Millet
The thread title encompasses more than just Citrus, so a discussion on energy was bound to come into the thread as being part of the original thread post and link. I will stay on the sidelines now after a quick edit to my last off topic post. Jim
A new thread on the topic of biofuels and their impact on food prices has been added: Biofuel Folly | UBC Botanical Garden Forums.
