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Environment would suffer from biofuel
January 31, 2008 9:21 AM
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Many presidential candidates are driving the United States down a dangerous road. For weeks leading up to the Iowa caucus, candidates were talking ethanol. Ethanol can be used to fuel cars and is one of the upcoming alternative fuels to oil. Iowa is a major distributor of corn, which is what ethanol is made from in the United States. It made sense for the candidates to push ethanol there in order to entice voters. However, the long-term effects of an ethanol policy would have a negative impact on the United States. The two largest arguments for biodiesel are reducing the dependence for foreign oil and reducing the negative effects on the environment. Presidential candidate Barack Obama said in 2005, “For too long now we’ve relied too heavily on foreign oil to fuel our energy needs in this country.” However, recent studies are showing that ethanol is not the answer to oil, despite what presidential hopefuls tell the public to win votes from the agriculture industry. Howstuffworks.com reported that Cornell University professor of agriculture David Pimental said that one gallon of ethanol contains 77,000 British thermal units of energy, however it takes 131,000 Btus to create (one Btu is the amount of heat needed to increase the temperature of a pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit). In other words, ethanol takes more energy to create than it produces. On top of that he estimates that a car would take 11 acres of corn to run for a year. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics said that in 2005 there were 250 million registered vehicles in the United States. That would be 2.75 billion acres of corn just to keep U.S. vehicles running, and that is without taking into account that a semi truck would take even more acres to run. Deforestation, along with less corn being produced for food are just two of the negative impacts that corn-based biofuel would create. The Earth Policy Institute recently told the Associated Press that the country’s push for ethanol is a “misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity.” They cited hunger and malnutrition as being among the side effects. Food prices are expected to surge due to the demand. In Iowa, Gov. Chet Culver has actually invested state funds in developing ethanol plants. AP also reported that Minnesota’s ethanol production is going to double by 2011. Another concern is groundwater consumption. AP reported that a new plant in Minnesota at Granite Falls depleted the groundwater so much that they had to start pumping water from the Minnesota River. Could you imagine if central California put increased demands on the limited water from the Colorado River? Ethanol could still work though. Cellulosic ethanol is fuel created from waste products like leftover wood. KL Process Design Group will supply the Le Mans racing series with cellulosic fuel for the 2008 season. The fuel, although still not more efficient than gas, at least does not put the environmental land strain that corn-based fuel puts on the country. Reuters reported that cellulosic ethanol produces fewer carbon dioxide emissions than corn-based ethanol. The United States, however, largely backed by politicians catering to farmers, continues to push corn-based biofuel. Financially, ethanol can provide more jobs though. Ethanol Across America recently put out a study that said in Nebraska, ethanol-producing factories created $2.2 billion in revenue for the state in 2006. Is the profit worth raising the price in food and destroying the environment at the same time? “For What it’s Worth” is a regular opinion column in the Business and Technology section, the opinions expressed are those of the columnist and not those of [X]press.
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| BACK TO TOP | Copyright © 2008 [X]press | Journalism Department - San Francisco State University |
Thanks for allowing comments on this article, because there are a number of innacuracies that should not go unchallenged.
First, numerous peer reviewed studies conclude that food prices are affected much more by rising transportaiton costs (i.e. petroleum) than by any increase in the price of ethanol feedstocks (i.e. corn). On average, farmers receive only about 19 cents of every dollar spent on groceries.
Second, the work of Dr. Pimentel has been largely rejected by the scientific community as being unsound becasue of his use of old statistics and false assumptions. The generally accepted ratio of energy output to input for ethanol is between 1.3:1 and 1:7:1. In other words, ethanol provides between 30 and 70 percent more energy than it takes ot produce it. For whatever reason, Dr. Pimentel's faulty research seems to have taken on a life of its own and has not been seriously questioned by most media.
Third, the ethanol plant in Granite Falls, MN had always had a plan to take their water from goundwater sources, but initially tapped into an aquifer. As soon as it became apparent this source was not sustainable, the switch was made to ground water and the aquifer is now recharging itself. Ethanol producers continuously look for ways to roduce more efficiently, and their water consumption per gallon of ethanol continues to drop, while their output of ethanol per bushel of corn continues to rise.
Further, to put the water usage issue into context, in Minnesota, at least, golf courses currently use almost twice as much water as all the state's ethanol plants combined. Even if ethanol production were to double, production would only equal the water used by our golf courses. Incidentally, yearly water usage for all current ethanol production in the state uses what the seven county Twin Cities metro area consumes in just two days.
And the estimate of 11 acres of corn to run a car for a year just doesn't make sense, on a number of levels. First, ethanol is currently used in gasoline blends (10 percent here in Minnesota), not as a straight fuel. Using a yield of 150 bushels of corn per acre (a conservative estimate) and 2.5 gallons of ethanol per bushel (again, a conservative estimate)results in 4,125 gallons of ethanol from 11 acres of corn. Even if one were running 100 percent ethanol, and even if one's mileage was reduced by 20 percent and even if that resulted in your vehicle getting 15 MPG, one would still be able to drive more than 60,000 in one year. I suspect even in California, that's some pretty heavy duty commuting.
Additionally, the assumption that increased corn acres would result in deforestation is not based on fact, either. Increased corn acres come from tillable land already in production - it may have been planted to wheat, or soybeans or sugarbeets, for example. As a matter of fact, many ag economists are predicting a drop in corn acreage this year, despite increased ethanol production, because the prices of wheat and soybeans are so high. And, most economists credit those high prices to increased demand for the product, a poor harvest last year, and, as importanly, the weak dollar across the globe - not increased demand for ethanol. Farmers plant with their pocket book in mind: if they can do better planting soybeans or wheat, that's what they're going to do.
Incidentally, the article seems to confuse biodiesel and ethanol - they are two seperate and distinct fuels, one made (in this country, at least) from soybeans, the other from corn. Although they are both domestic, cleaner burning, renewable fuels, they are not interchangeable.
I urge your readers to do their own research and not to accept as fact much of the anti-renewable fuels hysteria. Ethanol is not a perfect fuel - nothing is - but it is one viable alternative to our growing energy crisis. I would urge your readers to support other solutions, like conservation, increased efficiency, mass transit and hybrid vehicles as well. But I would urge others to think about where so much of the current anti-renewable fuels rhetoric comes from: who has a vested interest in seeing that Big Oil's stranglehold on our economy continues?
Thanks for allowing me the forum.
Mark Hamerlinck
Minnesota Corn Growers Association