*From an NRDC article published in March 2010, we learn that “the current corn ethanol tax credit is effectively costing tax payers $4.18 per gallon and is driving up grain prices.” The author, Nathanael Greene, concludes that “[w]e don't need an additional 1.4 billion gallons of corn ethanol, or the higher prices for grains and more deforestation that come with it…It's time to transition from corn ethanol's pollution and pork to a new generation of more sustainable biofuels that brings us closer to real energy independence.”
*From this NRDC article published in January 2010, it turns out that “The old, dirty ethanol industry is dominated by big companies like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Poet.” The author, Roland Hwang, adds, “It’s baffling why an industry that benefits from $4 billion a year in government subsidies can’t find a way to compete on environmental merits.”
*As Nathanael Greene points out here, “the nitrogen runoff from corn grown all along the Mississippi causes a huge dead zone in the Gulf every summer.” And, “[w]ith about a third of the corn crop going to make corn ethanol, it should be clear that more corn ethanol is not a real solution.”
In addition to NRDC, Barack Obama also weighed in during the 2008 presidential campaign, declaring that “we're going to have a transition from corn-based ethanol to cellulosic ethanol, not using food crops as the source of energy.”
Last but not least, Earth Policy Institute founder Lester Brown and Clean Air Task Force Jonathan Lewis, writing in April 2008, explained in devastating terms why corn ethanol is so problematic:
It is now abundantly clear that food-to-fuel mandates are leading to increased environmental damage. First, producing ethanol requires huge amounts of energy — most of which comes from coal.
Second, the production process creates a number of hazardous byproducts, and some production facilities are reportedly dumping these in local water sources.
Third, food-to-fuel mandates are helping drive up the price of agricultural staples, leading to significant changes in land use with major environmental harm.
Most troubling, though, is that the higher food prices caused in large part by food-to-fuel mandates create incentives for global deforestation, including in the Amazon basin. As Time magazine reported this month, huge swaths of forest are being cleared for agricultural development. The result is devastating: We lose an ecological treasure and critical habitat for endangered species, as well as the world's largest “carbon sink…”
Meanwhile, the mandates are not reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Last year, the United States burned about a quarter of its national corn supply as fuel — and this led to only a 1 percent reduction in the country's oil consumption.
In short, the problem is that while “biofuels” sounds as benign as apple pie, corn ethanol – the main biofuel available today – is actually bad for the environment both in the U.S. and abroad, bad for the poor, and bad for the American taxpayer.
Just to be clear, ethanol from cellulosic material is a completely different – and far superior – story from other, advanced biofuels (e.g., cellulosic), but advanced biofuels are not what Senator Klobuchar's talking about here. To the contrary, Senator Klobuchar is using this once-in-a-generation chance for comprehensive, clean energy and climate legislation, to push through a big agribusiness, corn ethanol boondoggle that will harm the environment, do nothing to reduce U.S. dependence on oil or to help strengthen U.S. national security.
Yes, we want increased production of renewable energy like wind and solar. Yes, biofuels done the right way could be an important part of the U.S. energy mix. But no, Sen. Klobuchar's approach – promoting dirty, old corn ethanol – is simply not the correct approach to the energy and environmental challenges we are facing.
she’s very, very wrong on corn ethanol. Really, the only biofuels that make sense IMO are recycled biofuels from things like vegetable oil, that’s already being used. Anything other than that is actually counter productive.
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p>I can’t see any other future than plug-in technology (hybrids in the interim), with a simultaneous push for wind, solar and other smart renewable sources we create in the future.
Does the NRDC have a single article which outlines the problems with corn-based ethanol? I ask because I’ve yet to see a single technical article which I found convincing. For example, using the blockquote from above:
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p>1. “huge amounts of energy” — well, huge is a lousy word to use here, as it’s non-technical. Corn-ethanol is net-energy positive, though not by much. Some of the energy inputs is coal, much is also natural gas and petroleum, and almost none is renewable. All true. I haven’t seen a carbon-balance study in a while, so I have no idea if the extra carbon in the coal inputs is more than the reduced carbon in the natural gas inputs; ie if the net carbon balance is worse or better than straight gasoline.
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p>So the rhetoric is high, but no solid numbers to let me — a scientist, but not one in this field — draw my own obvious conclusions from data and studies. It also does not mention the truth that corn ethanol is in fact net energy positive.
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p>2. Water problems: if this is a problem, and I don’t doubt that it is — fight this problem. If what they’re doing is illegal now, get Obama’s men on it. If it’s not illegal, work to make it illegal. You don’t but the kibosh on corn ethanol over this problem which, while not minor with respect to the health of rivers and ecosystems, is minor with respect to the process of producing 10,000,000,000 gallons of ethanol a year in the US.
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p>3. Food-to-fuel. Cripes. There’s no food shortage problem. There is a food distribution problem. Given that about 15% of the corn grown in the USA went to ethanol, and given that corn is but one food crop, I have a really hard time seeing how folks make this case. Currently, corn is trading at 6.6 cents per pound. Do you really think that if it went up another nickel a pound that suddenly folks couldn’t afford their corn bread and corn flakes and Tostitos? This brings me to my next point — the fact is, Americans don’t eat very much corn per se. A few niblets, some tortilla chips and some breakfast cereal. We eat a lot of corn syrup, but most folks on this board would argue that that’s a bad thing, and that the price going up on corn syrup just might help folks choose healthier foods in the first place. Additionally, it takes about 6 lbs of corn to grow one additional pound of beef. 60% of corn is used for feed. These two tidbits suggest that if you’re really worried about food availability, argue against eating beef, or argue against feeding a food staple (corn) to an animal which never evolved to eat corn (cow). Not a single food-to-fuel argument makes sense. We’ve got enough food, ethanol uses a very small percentage of our overall food, the price of corn is extremely low in absolute terms, and there’s plenty of more corn in the system by not using eating as much beef.
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p>4. Global Deforestation. A problem, to be sure. What does this have to do with the creation of corn-based ethanol in the US? Heck, if anything it suggests that we should be over-producing ethanol and exporting it to South America et al, to drive down the price of ethanol there so it’s not worth slash&burning forest to grow it in the first place.
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p>5. Three problems with this statement. One, all places I’ve found a number show 15%, not 25%. Secondly, arguing that reducing foreign consumption by 2% (about half of our oil is imported, and domestic oil is cheaper and thus consumed first) is not reducing our consumption is just plain first grade math wrong, and third, it ignores that ethanol is used as a replacement to MTBE, a chemical which was blended in gasoline to raise the octane number and to comply with the Clean Air Act. Turns out that MTBE was polluting groundwater, and that ethanol does the job nicely. This is not to say that there aren’t any alternatives other than ethanol or MTBE nor that the amount of ethanol used now is what is necessary (a smaller amount would suffice). Simply to point out that this statement, is factually incorrect, mathematically challenged, and is yet another example of we environmentalists arguing that a small improvement isn’t worth perusing, despite knowing full well that the only way to mitigate climate change is with a large number of small changes.
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p>I believe that there is an outstanding argument against corn based ethanol in tUSA, but it’s not any of those listed above. No, the best argument is economic. The federal cost of corn based ethanol is too high relative to the federal benefit of corn based ethanol. For $30B, we could build high speed rail or repair/improve local subways which would reduce fossil fuel and petroleum consumption by more than ethanol. It’s true, farmers would suffer — but a far far greater number of urban and suburban folks would benefit from shorter travel times because transportation capacities would be increased, thereby reducing congestion.
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p>I’ve been really frustrated with the corn ethanol debate because I believe the pro-environmental groups have been intellectually dishonest. “Food-to-fuel” is not a fundamental problem, and we as humans have used food for fuel for 100s of years if not more (tallow candles, whale oil, etc). One need not argue that corn based ethanol or it’s production methods are bad. Simply argue that the the American taxpayers aren’t getting enough return on their financial investment, and that the money would be better spent elsewhere. Then, do some real research, with real numbers, and show exactly where.
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p> * Note: all of my comments compare equivalent-energy-content quantities. A gallon of gasoline contains less energy than a gallon of gasoline, but the comparisons I’m looking at are BTU to BTU comparisons, not ml to ml comparisons.
I’m not sure where you got the 15% figure from. The actual percentage is closer to 33%. See this graph, for example:
http://worldofcorn.com/images/…
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p>Now it’s true that animal feed is an even higher share of corn usage, but it’s not realistic to assume that we can get people to transition away from cheap meat. “Sorry, no big mac for you; people are starving in the third world,” would not be a winning political strategy.
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p>In case you’ve forgotten already, there were serious shortages of all grains in 2008 causing price spikes and food riots. Only the global recession brought prices back down. The subsidies for fuel production that caused those shortages are still in place and once the economy gets back on its feet there’s ever reason to believe that prices would rise again.
and the 15% appears to be 2006/2007 data. It’s clearly higher now, showing 25-30%, some higher, some lower — some play games by not including corn exports, for example.
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p>As for the “not realistic” argument… well, if the price of corn goes up, the price of meat goes up. It’s not cheap any more, and folks will shift to other foods. This idea that it’s not realistic to push people away from beef and it’s not realistic to discourage fuel consumption so instead we should just not use ethanol is nonsense. Look, the fact is that the amount of food worldwide being used for ethanol is miniscule. It’s 33% of corn in tUSA, which is what percent of edible calories?
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p>As for the food shortages — there was not a shortage of all grains, and it wasn’t the global recession which brought prices back down. There was a bad crop of rice, but there was also problems with shipping and problems of perceived shortages causing hoarding. Once people realized that the shortage was overblown, they started consuming their hoarded rice resulting in a whiplash reduction in demand… and price went back down. The shortages were not at all caused by demand for ethanol… you’re just plain rambling on at this point.
Corn does play a very significant role in the diet of people who happen to live south of our southern border, and price increases to corn might be expected to have an disproportionate impact there, as it did a few years ago.
But frankly, how tUSA impacts the price of corn in Mexico would seem to be a relatively minor argument in the big picture policy decision of massive subsidies for corn ethanol in an effort to reduce fossil fuel consumption, the importation of fuel, and the subsidization of American farmers.
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p>If the anti-ethanol folks hung their hat on the price of tamales, they’d be laughed out of the room.
A drought in Australia, the poor rice harvest you mentioned, etc. But to ignore the role of fuel production is not accurate either. Part of the reason the cost of grains like wheat and barley went up is that farmers who had been growing them switched to corn, since large subsidies for ethanol production had made it more profitable. What’s interesting about the 2008 food crisis is the cost of nearly all staples went up simultaneously. I have yet to see a good explanation of everything that went into this, but a crop failure or weak harvest of any one grain is not enough to explain it.
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p>My larger point is that in your original post you write “Corn-ethanol is net-energy positive, though not by much.” You then spend the rest of the post trying to diminish the negative effects of it. The question I have is why should we be subsidizing ethanol to such a large extent when the benefits are so marginal, and there are clear negative impacts from increasing corn production? Wouldn’t that money be better spent supporting research in to technologies that would make a more substantial impact? Ethanol subsidies seem more like a kickback to big agriculture to get their support for energy bills rather than a well thought out policy.
but having spent time in Iowa (originally born there) as long as the Iowa Caucus starts out the presidential election cycle, corn ethanol subsidies aren’t going away any time soon. Makes no economic sense whatsoever.
Study: Ethanol Production Consumes Six Units Of Energy To Produce Just One
I’m not a scientist, but the publication has ‘Science’ in its name, so It Must Be True!
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p>Ethanol Fuel from Corn Faulted as ‘Unsustainable Subsidized Food Burning’
This one doesn’t have “Science’ in its name, but it’s out of Cornell, and is quoting a Cornell science professor, so It Must Be True!
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p>2. 9 years old. Entirely irrelevant.
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p>I’m not at a .edu domain right now so I don’t have access to modern literature. I have seen literature from about 3-4 years ago showing that modern cracking and refining techniques have gotten the energy requirements down to a slight net energy gain. Now, there’s also the argument that trading coal for oil is a net benefit for foreign trade and foreign policy, though perhaps a net detriment on carbon and environmental considerations. I can’t find the study (or any other) right now, so I don’t have info on how much of the corn to ethanol process is coal vs. oil vs. natural gas.
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p>Wikipedia’s article on corn ethanol cites articles claiming a net energy balance ratio of 1.3 (1.3 units ethanol per 1 unit energy input).
Do you have any evidence that current methods of ethanol production use less energy, or produce less carbon? Just because it’s five or nine years old doesn’t make it false. Is there some requirement that a study like Pimental’s must be repeated every few years because it has passed its shelf-life, or something?
I don’t think that the implication was that it is false.
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p>Rather, the implication is that it doesn’t necessarily translate to today, and is therefore neither supports neither the ethanol side, nor the anti-ethanol side.
but you’re on the unfortunate side of trying to prove a negative. Those papers can’t establish in 2005 or 2001 what can or can’t be done in 2010. I didn’t claim that they were false, rather that because the use of corn ethanol has increased dramatically in the past 5 years, it’s not unreasonable to expect that more efficient means have been generated, given the incredible profit from shaving just a few cents off the cost of production per gallon.
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p>This market didn’t exist nearly the same way 5 or 9 years ago (also, keep in mind that the lag in this research is likely 2-3 years between data collection and publication) — the science has been changing, quickly. You need a far more modern publication to have anything like a credible claim.