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The Forum > General Discussion > Beattie promises ethanol

Beattie promises ethanol

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According to this Australian article http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20158516-601,00.html Peter Beattie has today promised to require all petroleum refiners in Queensland to produce only petrol with 5 percent ethanol. It's like Catch 22 - he can't make us buy it, but he can ensure it's the only product available.

This has got to be one of the most ludicrous policies I have seen in a long time. I'm not exactly sure what percentage of the nation's petroleum is refined in Queensland, but if you assumed it was enough for the Queensland market where is all the ethanol going to come from?

Are we going to import it from Brazil? Or is Beattie going to relax his tree-clearing legislation so that we can clear more land to grow sugar cane to produce it? And has anyone factored in how much water growing the sugar cane is going to take (just at a time when we've realised there's barely enough to go around)? And what about the flow-on effects for the price of products using sugar, and grain crops that can be substituted for it?

Of course, he's likely to get away with this because the Oppposition still can't work out that elections are won by the party having the largest number of seats; and journalists are generally so dim, that asking really hard questions in a press conference when the media release in their hands is still warm from the photocopier is just a bit beyond them.
Posted by GrahamY, Thursday, 17 August 2006 6:09:15 PM
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GrahamY

I think your question "where is the ethanol going to come from?" is indeed pertinent.

One could suggest that Beattie is going off half-cocked on this one. However, I'm sure most would agree that we must start looking at energy alternatives ASAP. Surely this would be the new growth industry, problem is current approaches are not holistic.

Nuclear - shortsighted and nonrenewable - stop gap solution only if it can be implemented swiftly.

Ethanol - questions of production - do we need to grow food to make fuel?

We really can't afford an either/or approach we need to invest in ALL possibilities and alternatives.

As for Beattie - yeah, he'll get back in as default premier because the QLD opposition is about as credible as the federal opposition.

Cheers
Posted by Scout, Friday, 18 August 2006 2:32:01 PM
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It's probable that most of us know little or nothing about the technicalities of fuel production. All we know is that the increasing price of petrol is hurting us in various direct and indirect ways and that there's no sign of relief.

So what Peter Beattie is proposing seems likely to be a vote winner and right now that's maybe all he really cares about.

This is a policy statement by The Greens [WA]:
http://wa.greens.org.au/policy/economic/energy-04

Included is the statement:
'opposition to the use of anhydrous ethanol as a fuel extender for internal combustion engines on the grounds of excessive fossil fuel input in its production;'

I live in WA, but my understanding is that Queensland has huge coal reserves. So maybe Beattie can justify the overuse of greenhouse gas producing fossil fuels by falsely claiming that he is 'clean and green' on ethanol production.
Posted by Rex, Friday, 18 August 2006 2:59:18 PM
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Graham, I'm less concerned about the supply side, then you seem
to be. I think the market will sort that one out. Just recently
I read in the rural press, that some NSW growers were thinking
of switching out of cattle, into sugar, because of the rising
cane price.

I try to judge the whole thing, based on the fundamentals.
We need to start weaning ourselves off Middle East oil, to
which we have become addicted. A variety of alternatives need
to be looked at, from NW gas, to biodiesel, ethanol, wind,
solar, you name it, it needs to be examined and toyed around
with.

Food competing with energy, I don't see as an immediate
issue either. Lets face it, before ethanol came along, they
were battling to give sugar away, farmers were going broke
and bailing out of production. We seem to need to bribe
Iraqis to even sell our wheat! Using some of that wheat
for ethanol, would do wonders for the wheat market. Fact is
the world is still awash with food, thats why the EU and
US pay huge subsidies, to try and get rid of the stuff.

A change in commodity prices would affect consumers far
less then one might think. A loaf of bread contains about
10c worth of wheat. A kg of sugar is worth about 30c.
A litre of milk about 27c. A kg of meat about 1-3$.
The real cost to consumers comes from moving them down the
value added chain, through the Westfield Shopping Centre etc,
for people to buy. Some calculations that I have done
show that Westfield, as owners of the centres, would
be earning far more from some products, then the growers who
produced them.
Posted by Yabby, Friday, 18 August 2006 8:03:48 PM
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Yabby, if ethanol is to be anymore than a niche additive you'll be talking about absolute food shortages, of which price rises will be the first precursor.

Came across this interesting piece on Fortune the other day http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/08/21/8383659/index.htm. According to it, one SUV full of ethanol would produce enough energy to feed one person for a year.

It says "The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol, for instance, could feed one person for a year. If today's entire U.S. grain harvest were converted into fuel for cars, it would still satisfy less than one-sixth of U.S. demand."

The author Lester R Brown, looks credible, as you can see from this biog http://www.earth-policy.org/About/Lester_bio.htm. But I'm happy to be enlightened.
Posted by GrahamY, Saturday, 19 August 2006 12:11:29 PM
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Graham, I guess we could extend that argument and say that the
300g steak that you ate for lunch took about 4kg of grain to
produce, which could have fed 6 people, so are you going to give
up meat?

I grant you, you are opening a can of worms, only time will tell
how the whole thing pans out. We know that right now, palm oil
makes extremely cheap biodiesel, highly competitive with the
stuff from Saudi Arabia. There is a real risk that more and more
of the world's rainforests will be chopped down, to grow palm oil
for exactly that use!

Last I read, around a third of the US corn crop was going into
ethanol and quite frankly farmers are cheering. There might be
hungry people, but nobody is prepared to pay to feed them, so
its not a question of a shortage of food, but a shortage of resources to pay for that food. Farmers, like anyone else, deserve
to be paid for their labour and costs that they incur.

I do not think that one magic bullet will solve the energy crisis.
It will have to come from many sources, ethanol being just one of
them. As the price of energy rises, less wastage and more efficient
use will be another. But lets look at another option. We run 100
million sheep in Australia, growing wool that hardly anyone wants
to buy these days. Wool farmers are growing broke everywhere.
Developing fuel crops which they could grow and actually make a
living, whilst you the consumer get your tank filled, is just one
of many options. Algae are another potential source, one of many.
We need to explore all these options. So I think its best not to
close our minds to anything, but also not look for any magic bullets. Yup, food and energy crops might well compete one day.
Posted by Yabby, Saturday, 19 August 2006 4:14:30 PM
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