Once touted as the be all and end all of America’s energy woes, ethanol is proving to be an environmental, safety, and philanthropic bust. What are the problems with ethanol? How long have you got?
First, producing ethanol actually uses more energy than exists in the ethanol, resulting in a net energy loss. If that sounds counterproductive, welcome to 21st century environmentalism. Cornell University Professor of agriculture Dr. David Pimental explains the dilemma: “producing corn and processing it into 1 gallon of ethanol requires 131,000 BTUs of energy; but 1 gallon of ethanol contains only 77,000 BTUs. Since farmers are using fossil-fuel-powered equipment to plant, maintain and harvest the corn and are using fossil-fuel-powered machinery to process that corn into ethanol and then transport that ethanol to collection points (ethanol can’t run in underground pipelines because it picks up damaging impurities), the ethanol industry is actually burning large amounts of gasoline to produce ethanol, and that ethanol contains far less energy than the gasoline they consumed to produce it.” Not all scientists agree with Dr. Pimental’s gloomy calculations. Some even argue ethanol production results in a net energy gain, albeit a small one. Everyone agrees the early euphoria hailing ethanol as the environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels was hysterically optimistic.
Since ethanol production is energy inefficient, how then, you ask, can producers afford to make this prized fuel? Government subsides, of course, amounting to about $1.90 per gallon of ethanol produced. Take away your tax dollars and ethanol would only be found in the Smithsonian.
How about if all those gas and diesel burning farm implements were, say, battery or solar powered. Wouldn’t that help the ethanol energy equation? Well, yes and no. I’ll let Wikipedia ’splain it: “Even with the most optimistic energy return on investment claims, using 100% solar energy to grow corn and produce ethanol (fueling farm and transportation machinery with ethanol, distilling with heat from burning crop residues, using NO fossil fuels), the consumption of ethanol to replace current U.S. petroleum use alone would require about 75% of all cultivated land on the face of the Earth, with no ethanol for other countries, or sufficient food for humans and animals.” Gee, does that mean a Big Mac would cost more?
If ethanol is successfully produced — i.e. economically viable — in Brazil, why can’t we do the same thing here? Upon close examination, “sugar cane ethanol works in Brazil because they have an equatorial year-round growing season, and the Amazon River — [the] world’s largest fresh water supply. Locations with snow on the ground part of the year, short growing seasons, and limited fresh water supplies are less effective. Growing crops like thirsty genetically-engineered corn can require significant irrigation.” Is there any good news?
Not really. Repeated, frequent planting of corn leads to decaying soil, erosion and irrigation issues, says HowStuffWorks.com. Remember, one of the dust bowl’s recovery strategies was crop rotation. Therefore, many scientists say corn is not a truly renewable energy source. Geez, who thought up this ethanol idea, anyway?
It gets worse. “Two studies published [recently] in the journal Science say that current biofuel production actually adds to the greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming,” opined my local Press-Enterprise on February 11th. “Theoretically, since plants absorb carbon dioxide, making fuel from plants would help cancel out emissions from burning the fuel. But the studies said that logic failed to account for unintended worldwide consequences. (Emphasis added with great glee) The growing economic demand for corn and soybeans, along with the diversion of those food staples into fuel production, led farmers across the globe to clear away forests, grasslands and other natural growth to plant those lucrative crops. As a result, the total amount of carbon the world’s vegetation can adsorb actually decreases, the studies said.” More on the law of unintended consequences straight ahead.
Undeterred and flying in the face of mounting scientific evidence that ethanol production is counter-productive to stated environmental goals, our omniscient Federal government just last year passed the Energy Independence and Security Act, requiring “fuel producers to use at least 36 billion gallons of biofuel in 2022. This is nearly a fivefold increase over current levels.” The “logic” of this reminds me of a fellow paper recycler whose favorite sarcastic saying was, “We’re losing $5 per ton, but we’ll make it up on volume.” Only government planners can legislate more of a bad thing; the profit and loss incentives in private industry weed out the dummies in a hurry. When governments waste money, they just dig deeper in taxpayer pockets. There’s no accountability!
Secondly, beyond the environmental shortcomings of ethanol, we have just yesterday been informed by the Associated Press that ethanol fires cannot be extinguished with water or the widely available foam retardants used to combat gasoline and diesel blazes. ”Such [ethanol] fires require a special alcohol-resistant foam that relies on long-chain molecules known as polymers to smother the flames. Industry officials say the special foam costs about 30 percent more that the standard product, at around $90 to $115 for a five-gallon container.” Here’s the rub: “Many fire departments around the country don’t have the foam, don’t have enough of it, or are not well-trained in how to apply it.” Golly, is there anything else we didn’t think of?
Thirdly, there is at least one more reason the government might want to reconsider its headlong rush toward biofuel nirvana. Burning the world’s food supply is folly on the face of it, a practice causing no small disturbance in the supply/demand ratio of, in this case, corn. Increased demand for corn — millions of bushels are burned for fuel, and people still need to eat — has resulted in skyrocketing prices, great for American farmers, but not so great for millions of people in underdeveloped countries around the world. The United Nations recently announced it would cut back food aid to some of the world’s poorest nations because “grain import prices for the world’s poorest countries are expected to rise 35%,” prodding the LA Times to hitherto unknown heights of journalistic indignation and hypocrisy. “The astonishing callousness of burning millions of bushels of grain in gas tanks even as global starvation worsens has apparently never occurred to Congress, the Bush administration or the remaining presidential candidates, all of whom are big boosters of ethanol,” snorted the Times last Tuesday. Look who’s calling the kettle black! At last count, the Times has printed 505,345 articles and op-eds advocating alternative fuel production. Now that were actually doing that, and some unintended consequences have reared their ugly heads, the paper switches horses in mid-stream. How convenient. Of course, the rag has a point.
Whenever a government imposes mandates on an economic structure, unforeseen results appear. There is a law of unintended consequences. Some years ago the government mandated that even infants had to be strapped into their own airline seat, the thought being that, in the event of a survivable accident, survival rates increase if every person is buckled into their own seat, as opposed to kids sitting on Mom’s or Dad’s lap. True enough, but the fly in that ointment was the ruling meant a family of 4, including two small children, had to purchase 4 seats instead of 2 to fly to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving. But, the extra fares made flying too expensive for many families, forcing those folks to drive instead. Because mortality rates per mile of driving are much higher than per mile of flying, more children died because of the “one person, one seat” law. Funny how that works.
Ethanol subsides and mandates should be scraped. Poor return on energy investment, bizarre safety issues, and incredibly wasteful use of food demand that our government get the heck out of the way and let the free market determine what sources of energy we use and what kind of crops farmers grow. There is a smarter way to energy independence.
Nuclear power provides France with 75% of its electricity. A similar effort in America would dramatically reduce greenhouse emissions and provide clean power for generations. American shale oil reserves are truly enormous, estimated at 5 times greater than the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Coupled with ANWR and off-shore deposits yet untapped, harvesting our own oil would quickly end our dependence on foreign oil and provide time to develop wind, solar, and electric alternative power that make sense. Unshackling American industry in just these two arenas — nuclear power and oil exploration – would lower the cost of energy, dramatically improve national security, and more quickly lead to the development of viable alternative energy. Boondoggles like ethanol only waste time and money, and impugn the integrity of good-hearted but wrong-headed environmentalists.
Pigs will fly before commonsense of the kind we are advocating takes hold, unless average Americans vote for politicians who still have the sense God gave them. Refusing to harvest our own oil as gasoline prices edge toward $4 per gallon disproves evolution; we must be getting dumber. Nuclear power is clean and safe; what’s the problem? The way things stack up in Washington today, the best advice is: invest in corn futures.
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Posted by Jerry Pomeroy in Economics, Energy, Politics, Video