Ethanol no Panacea for Rising Energy Demands

By Donald F. Anthrop
August 2007

Many politicians at both the federal and state levels are being pushed by environmentalists to embrace the biofuels craze. As with most stories that are built upon myths, this one is going to have an unhappy ending.

The energy bill currently pending in Congress would mandate the production of 36 billion gallons of ethanol per year by the year 2022.

Production of this ethanol would consume 137 percent of the present U.S. corn crop.

Indeed, production of this volume of ethanol would require almost one-third of U.S. cropland used for crop production be devoted to corn solely for ethanol production. These people need a reality check.

Current ethanol production averages about 6 billion gallons per year, and this has caused corn prices to rise 58 percent in the past year.

Furthermore, the effect on grain prices has not been limited to corn. Both wheat and soybean prices have risen sharply as farmers shift land to corn production.

It is worth noting that approximately 14 percent of the U.S. corn crop is irrigated and that this irrigated acreage consumes almost 18 million acre-feet per year of water — much of which is overdrafted from the Ogallala aquifer in the Great Plains.

To put this water requirement in some perspective, the average annual flow of the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry is only about 14 million acre-feet per year. Moreover, much of this corn acreage in the Great Plains is easily erodable land, and numerous studies have conclusively demonstrated that row crops, such as corn, result in much higher erosion rates than cereal grains or forage crops.

The potential for expanding corn acreage is limited, and the potential for expanding corn acreage without causing significant environmental damage is even more limited.

Much of the expansion of corn acreage thus far has come at the expense of soybean acreage, and this has pushed up the prices of both soybeans and soybean meal.

The latter is used as a protein supplement in animal feeds. Furthermore, soybeans fix soil nitrogen and are usually grown in rotation with corn to reduce nitrogen fertilizer requirements.

Shifting cropland from soybeans to corn means more nitrogen fertilizer will be needed for crop production.

Nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas. It was only a few years ago that the environmentalists were complaining that modern agriculture relied on monoculture and synthetic fertilizers to boost yields. Apparently these are bad if the crops are grown for food but benign if the crops are grown for fuel.

Perhaps the two most popular myths about corn ethanol are that 1) it is a renewable energy source, and 2) its use as a motor fuel substantially reduces greenhouse gas emissions when compared to gasoline.

A.E. Farrell and colleagues of the Energy Resources Group at UC Berkeley recently published the results of a study to determine the net energy balance of fuel ethanol. In the course of that work, which concluded that the net energy balance is positive, the authors found that the renewable (solar) content of corn ethanol was only 5-26 percent. The balance of the energy input is primarily natural gas and coal.

Let’s assume the average is 16 percent. Both Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration and the Legislature have been promoting flex-fuel vehicles designed to run on E85 — a mixture consisting of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. California’s gasoline consumption in 2004 (the last year for which we have data) was 376 million barrels. If all the vehicles in California operated on E85, the ethanol required would consume 70 percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, but only 13.6 percent of the energy in the fuel would be renewable.

Furthermore, greenhouse gas emissions would only be reduced by 13 percent. This hardly qualifies as an economically or environmentally beneficial undertaking.

The new report issued by the California Department of Finance clearly shows that the real problem is immigration-driven population growth.

Even if per-capita gasoline consumption were to remain constant (which is unlikely) the 22 million new residents in California projected for the year 2050 would increase gasoline consumption by 62 percent.

Ethanol is not going to solve this problem, and it is time for the politicians and environmentalists to stop pretending it will.

Donald F. Anthrop is a consultant for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS), a professor emeritus in the Department of Environmental Studies at San Jose State University and can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected]