About the eco-balance of ethanol

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Christophe
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About the eco-balance of ethanol




by Christophe » 13/08/08, 17:12

Here is the excerpt of a doc about the eco balance of ethanol pending publication:

The questioning of the ADEME's eco-balance
While most journalistic and scientific commentators against these renewable energies insist with vigor and no doubt in good faith on the dangers of the production of first-generation biofuels, in no comment is there any scientific proof of the harmful role of them. Moreover, in most texts no definitive study is proposed and the affirmation is often accompanied by a verb conjugated with the present conditional.

The only one in France is that of EDEN (Sustainable Energy in Normandy) of December 2006 whose author is Patrick Sadones, agro engineer and farmer, member of the Confederation Paysanne. It is he who launches the controversy on the harmful effects of biofuels by contesting the ADEME study at the day of Agros 15 October 2005. On the website Espoir Rurale, the author of the study takes a stand.

He denounces "an intense propaganda campaign, led among others by a pharmacy dependent on the all-powerful FNSEA called" Passion Céréales "which disseminates, with the complicity of the Chambers of Agriculture, magnificent brochures in which we can read: When one tonne of gasoline is replaced by one tonne of ethanol, and greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 75%.

This sentence is a triple lie:

a) one ton of ethanol does not replace one ton of gasoline, but only 630 kilos. Indeed, the burning of a kilo of ethanol provides 26,8 MegaJoules of energy, against 42,5 for the combustion of a kilo of gasoline. It is therefore necessary to compare greenhouse gas emissions with the equivalent amount of energy released.

b) This result is a dishonest interpretation of the ADEME - DIREM 2002 study, which is itself misleading. Its steering committee, under the pressure of the agrofuels lobby, had indeed chosen a method of calculating energy balances and inappropriate greenhouse effect, favoring agrofuel outrageously. According to the more rigorous studies, the substitution of a unit of energy in the form of wheat ethanol, used in direct blending, with a unit of gasoline energy would at best reduce the GHG emissions of 45% .

c) In France, ethanol is practically not incorporated into gasoline by direct blending, but almost exclusively in the form of ETBE, a derivative of ethanol produced by oil companies. The cost of transporting ethanol to the ETBE production unit and above all the cost of synthesizing this derivative, from ethanol and isobutene lead to the balance of the ethanol used under this form, of which a unit of energy, substituted for a unit of gasoline energy, no longer reduces GHG emissions by only 12%, which means that the cost of tax exemption per tonne of CO² saved in this way exceeds 500 €, ie 10 times more than what we are able to obtain today by using biomass for heating. " http://www.espoir-rural.fr/



Point c) is now obsolete because it is ethanol which is at the base of the E85 and not the ETBE!
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