Ethanol: A Sustainable Alternative?
In January, 2007 I attended an orientation meeting for
Gateway Ethanol in
There has been much excitement, both locally and
nationally, about the various potentials for bio-fuels. It is suggested that it will relieve our
dependence on foreign oil, support the local economies, help the family farmer,
and most importantly, be a renewable and sustainable resource for our energy
demands. But is it really the
energy-savior that we are portraying?
Long-time critic of the ethanol industry, Dr. David Pimentel of Cornell
University, claims that it takes 29% more energy to make a gallon of ethanol
than is contained within the gallon itself if we consider all the fossil fuels
involved in producing the grain in addition to the energy needed to distill it
into alcohol.1 For the last decade Dr. Pimentel has been
attacked and ridiculed for tipping the Holy Grail of farm-raised fuels. Other studies, funded heavily by the
National Corn Grower’s Association (NCGA), have concluded that there is a net
energy gain of about 40 percent in making ethanol.2 That is, for
every 1 BTU (British Thermal Unit, a standard measure of energy) expended in
growing, harvesting, transporting grain, and distilling ethanol, we get 1.67
BTUs in return. The solar component is
the “bonus” in this equation, the free and renewable additive.
As with most political views, I suspect the truth lies
somewhere in the middle. Due to
squabbling over corn/ethanol conversion efficiencies, corn input/yield ratios,
and numerous other discrepancies, I shall utilize the average figure of 1.34 to
1 provided by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), with the
assumption that its results are as unbiased as any.3 But should I feel
the same optimistic sentiment towards the ethanol politicos? One wonders just how profitable the ethanol
business truly is be when the federal government throws approximately $3.7
billion annually towards this “renewable” resource and its primary component,
corn grain. That’s a whopping 82 cents
of charity per gallon of fuel--one that has only 61 percent of the energy
(BTUs) of gasoline, the forbidden “G-word!”
My home state of
All of the following figures come from our
government’s own website at the Department of Energy.4 These
are some incomprehensibly BIG figures, but very sobering to analyze. The following amounts were calculated for
the year 2005.
Ø
A staggering 99,890,000,000,000,000
(or 99.89 quadrillion) BTUs were consumed in 2005 in the
This amount of energy is comprised of mainly coal,
petroleum, and natural gas (non-renewables).
Ø
1,125,476,000 tons of coal. (30.7 % of total energy
used)
Ø
7,592,789,000 barrels of liquid petroleum (gasoline,
diesel, fuel oil, propane, jet fuel). (39.6 % of total)
Ø
22,241,202,000,000 cubic feet
of natural gas. (22.3 % of total)
Ø
Hydro-electric, nuclear, wind, solar, other (7.4 % of total)
The remainder of these 337 million BTUs/person/year
comes from the “renewable” fuels, ethanol and its cousin, MTBE (methyl tertiary-butyl ether):
Ø
3,960,700,000 gallons (94,000,000
barrels) of ethanol. (0.302 % of total)
Ø
1,164,000,000 gallons (28,000,000
barrels) of MTBE. (0.11 % of total)
The total energy contained in this ethanol and MTBE is
a paltry 410 trillion BTUs6…or enough
to power this country for a day and a half.7 That’s it and
that’s all. And we used 17 percent of
the nation’s corn crop to do it.8 (I
knew there was a reason the NCGA claimed the higher conversion ratio!)
Oh, I almost forgot.
Remember I assumed the EESI’s numbers were correct in the 1.34 to 1
ratio of energy output to energy input?
That would mean only about 25 percent (100 minus 1/1.34) of the
“renewable” fuel is actually renewable (solar) and not derived originally from
fossil fuel. So, we can run the country
for only 9 hours9 on this inefficient
solar harvesting process for which we are paying $3.7 billion annually in
subsidies. (.00103 of
total energy production)
Simply put, is this yield from ethanol plants worth
the investment? If we could use ALL the
corn, we could make enough energy to run the Stars and Stripes for 2 whole days
per year! 10 The corn and ethanol
cohorts would exclaim, “But isn’t something better than nothing?” Not necessarily. And there’s a good reason.
Professors of economics, Ronald Johnson of Montana
State University and Gary Libecap of the University of Arizona (curiously, both
states not in the Corn Belt), together with the National Bureau of
Economic Research, make a good argument that public funding is easily
“disguised” from its true purpose to the voting electorate.11 They
contend that subsidizing various markets is a scheme that is more palatable to
the voter than blatantly giving the money directly to the corn farmer with a
check in the mailbox. “Let’s just
create more market for the surplus corn (i.e., ethanol plants), thereby
elevating the commodity price of grains,” the smoke-and-mirrors approach
goes. This con-artistry creates
construction jobs, heals dwindling rural economies, raises the standard of
living for farmers and their support industries, and so on. And no one seems the wiser because “at least
we’re not buying so much oil from the doggone Arabs.” After all, it’s our very own sacred cow.
On a per person basis, investment in ethanol
bricks-and-mortar is a terrible choice, without government kickbacks and
welfare. Consider that capital
investment is $1.66 per gallon of ethanol production.12 To give a family of four their required 1.35 billion BTUs
annually, they would have to spend almost $7350 per person, or $29,000 for a
“theoretical household ethanol facility.”13 Then each successive year, they would cough
up 73 % of that ($19,289) in operating costs to buy the corn, the electricity,
the natural gas, the labor, transportation, etc., to keep this factory making
“cheap” fuel.14 Would any family do this to obtain energy
independence? Of course not. It’s cheaper to buy gasoline at $2.50 per
gallon at the local pump and just burn the corn in a fireplace to heat our
homes. But that would cut out the
middle-man (read “technological progress” and “jobs”).
Meanwhile, back on the
The problem is that there is no real incentive for any
ag-businessman to adopt new technologies to sequester carbon into his farmland
when cash corn prices hover around the $3.50/bushel mark. It’s just business as usual…conventional
farming, deep tillage, and high applications of anhydrous ammonia…aerobic practices
that don’t foster carbon sequestration.
If they did that job adequately and sustainably, our soils would still
have the organic matter (carbon) that they had 50 years ago. (Take a soil sample of organic matter from a
cemetery or other “protected” area and compare it with a corn field soil
sample!) The farmer is in the financial
habit of looking at the price per bushel of grain, and not at the living soil’s
potential to DEVOUR atmospheric carbon.
Worse yet, our government does not force heavy
industry to participate in the CCX to the extent that the European governments
do. And so our farmers
plant fencerow to fencerow in much the same manner they have for decades,
chasing the corn/ethanol dollar around, and the CCX will struggle along without
achieving its purposes of helping the environment. When was the last time your heard our
farmers express any enthusiasm about selling carbon on the CCX?
Of course, the apologists will say, “OK, wise guy, so
where are we going to come up with 100 quadrillion BTUs of energy?” We get it the same place that our
forefathers did – from the Sun, the wind, and geothermal heating, just as we
did before the Age of Petroleum. And we
face up to our national fears of the
How about spending that $3.7 billion of ethanol/corn
subsidy and tax abatements on discovering new technologies for safely handling
nuclear waste, or for methods of efficiently harvesting solar and wind
energies? We cannot afford to waste
research dollars on energy sources that release even more CO2. How about Congress subsidizing the so-called
“green” technologies and energy efficient practices instead? How about taking calculated steps to curb
world population growth?
There are CO2-free alternatives, but they
are not a fool’s paradise. They require
tough discipline, difficult changes, and looking our doubts and fears squarely
in the face. I hope that reaching the
peak of oil production will not force mass starvation, and consequently, forced
changes of behaviors. By that point, it
will be too late to strategize. Recall
that it took our civilization over a century to perfect the conversion of fossil
fuels into useful products for 6 billion people. We have only a few decades, at most, to
build an entirely new intellectual database regarding energy. Let’s start today and lose this sacred cow.
Sources and
calculations cited:
17.
Based upon average close of Chicago Board of Trade numbers for ethanol
contract, 29000 gallons, in 2005. Subsidy
numbers from 108th Congress, Federal ethanol tax credit of
$.51/gallon at National Taxpayer’s