By Derek Larson
St. Cloud (MN) Times
If you listen to talk radio or read the letters to the editor for a few weeks you're bound to come across someone castigating environmentalists for embracing ethanol. "It takes more energy to make than it produces!" "It's driving up food prices!" "It's government meddling in the market!" "Those crazy environmentalists want to force us all to buy ethanol!"
The fact is, they're pretty close to the truth on all but the last point: Environmentalists have been warning us about the folly of corn-based ethanol for years.
The problem is that lawmakers didn't listen. If they had, they would know that:
Corn-based ethanol is inefficient. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the fuel produced has only 30 percent more energy value than that required to produce it.
Ethanol production demands immense amounts of water, about 4 gallons for each gallon produced.
Corn monoculture involves the heavy use of petroleum products, including fertilizers, pesticides and fuel for machinery.
Ethanol production requires electricity, which is produced from dirty coal in most of the Corn Belt.
Corn's potential is limited. Converting the country's entire corn output to ethanol would only satisfy 12 percent of our demand for gasoline.
If the direct flaws in corn-based ethanol weren't enough to frighten lawmakers off, they might have listened to the environmentalists who warned of the potential impact a "corn rush" would have on food prices. We're seeing it now.
Fallout
The price of corn has doubled since 2006, which is great for struggling farmers. But that's also driven up the cost of animal feed and any food products with substantial corn inputs. Combine that with the spike in wheat prices — due largely to rising global demand — and you get the highest rate of inflation in food prices since the 1980s. Coming at a time when energy costs also have skyrocketed, it's no wonder families are struggling to make ends meet.
And yes, Virginia, this is indeed a case of the government meddling in the market.
Due primarily to the influence of the agriculture lobby the 2007 energy bill extended the subsidies that have kept the ethanol industry alive since the 1970s and established mandates that will keep it growing into the future. Tens of billions of dollars of tax money have been spent subsidizing corn production in the past decade, and now even more will go to support ethanol production directly.
Thanks, but no thanks
If corn-based ethanol was really the solution, why can't it compete without subsidies, especially in the era of $100-a-barrel oil? Possibly because consumers just aren't interested.
E85 fuel is available at less than 1 percent of all U.S. filling stations.
Ethanol contains about 15 percent less energy by volume than gas, so despite the slightly lower pump price it costs more per mile to burn than gas.
A 2007 GM study found that 70 percent of those who own ethanol burning flex-fuel vehicles didn't know it; only 10 percent of those who did actually bought E85.
Most environmentalists will agree that some government subsidies are desirable. But knowing that corn-based ethanol reduces net greenhouse gas emissions by only 13 percent over petroleum, they'd probably argue that this isn't one of them.
Other alternatives
The reality is that greens aren't gaga over ethanol. Turning a commodity food crop into an inefficient fuel crop is foolish. Instead the government should be investing in a comprehensive alternative fuels program that drives innovation across the board and lets the market settle on the most efficient technology with the greatest environmental benefits.
It may be cellulosic ethanol, as President Bush has suggested; some studies have shown it might yield as much as 35 times the energy required to produce it, a 100-fold improvement over corn. Or perhaps it's biodiesel, which is only about seven times as efficient as corn-based ethanol but can reduce total greenhouse gas emissions by 68 percent. Or maybe it's not a biofuel at all but rather electricity produced by wind or solar power that will prove to be the most efficient way to move things around.
One thing is clear: We can't grow our way to energy independence with corn. In fact, if we simply increased the average fuel efficiency of all our vehicles by 12 percent we'd save as much gas as all the corn in the country could replace. As any environmentalist can tell you, the cheapest gallon of fuel you'll ever find is the one you didn't have to buy in the first place.
