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Evidence against corn ethanol has been accumulating in recent years. It takes a lot of energy to grow corn and to ferment the kernels to produce ethanol, and considerable amounts of greenhouse gases are produced in the process. Hill's analysis suggests that corn ethanol could also create more health problems than gasoline.
However, Satish Joshi, an environmental economist at Michigan State University, who wasn't involved in Hill's study, says that he "wouldn't rule out corn ethanol" yet: "It's proven, well-established technology." Although Joshi says that he's pleased to see more evidence of the advantages of cellulosic ethanol, it's a newer development, and there isn't yet a way to produce it economically. Conversely, "corn has the longer history and the established manufacturing base . . . Cellulosic ethanol is still technologically unproven," Joshi says.
Hill's study compared three ways of making ethanol from corn--using natural gas, coal, or corn stover to generate heat at biorefineries--and four processes that produce cellulosic ethanol--from corn stover, switchgrass, prairie grasses, or Miscanthus, a tall perennial grass--and he says that the results show how much difference production methods can make in the overall impacts associated with fuels.
The impacts associated with fuels vary according to where the fuel is produced, Hill found. The health costs associated with airborne particles vary considerably, he says, depending on atmospheric conditions and population density.
"Maybe there's a way to spatially locate production of biofuel to get maximal health benefits" out of a switch from gasoline, Hill says--something that he plans to investigate.
His analysis assumes, for the sake of simplicity, that the additional corn or other plant material needed to produce biofuel is grown on grasslands that are currently part of the U.S. Conservation Reserve Program. Hill says that in reality, increased biofuel production will likely encroach on land that's now used to produce other crops, triggering a cascade of land-use changes. If rain forests in other countries are cleared to make way for crops, for example, the impacts in terms of climate change could negate the benefits of switching to biofuel to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
By taking into account the health consequences of fine particles, Hill looked at "one additional thing off a huge list" of possible effects that also include erosion, pesticide contamination, and petroleum spills", says Soren Anderson, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, who focuses on biofuels as part of his research on energy and environmental economics. "That additional thing made clear that corn ethanol is actually worse than gasoline, and cellulosic ethanol looks to be better."
A more flexible policy could ease the impact of ethanol mandates on worldwide markets.
Surprise - every coin has a flip side
The human race has progressed by harnessing external energy sources far beyond an individual's muscle power. It has brought us many good things. It is also causing distortions in nature. Perhaps all we are discussing is how to minimize the price of these(since I doubt we want to go back to foraging like monkeys), and that will continually change based, on circumstances. I doubt that there is a panacea, however much politicians would like to sell one.
This is no new concept. Americas obsession with corn based ethanol has been doomed from the start. Let alone the food shortages, corn is one of the most environmentally harmful crop to grown. Corn needs a lot of fertilizer and is a row crop which causes erosion. The nitrates are washed down rivers ending up in the golf of Mexico via the Mississippi river. Currently there is a dead zone the size of new jersey that cannot support life due to such erosion. Our industrial farming methods cause us to produce more greenhouse gasses in farming corn then that are saved in burning ethanol(according to Pual Crutzen, nobel prize winning chemist researching ozone depletion). We might as well just burn oil like we have been... Or we could just invade and occupy an equatorial country and grow sugar cane for ethanol....
Here is a simple principle tying market forces to environmental sustainability. The price of production must include the cost of controlling environmental impacts, whether you are a chicken farmer, a coal plant operator, or an ethanol manufacturer. If you cannot sell your product at a price which includes this cost of doing business, then you must find another business. If your product is essential enough, then people will pay the higher price for it, and the environment is protected. If people cannot or will not pay for your product at this higher price, then clearly it is not essential, and the environment will benefit from reduced production of disposable trash. The idea that the environment is an inexhaustible industrial toilet free for the using is centuries out of date. If the price that we paid for consumer goods from energy to prepackaged convenience food, to cars, included the cost of environmental protection, paid at every source point of pollution along the way, we might find that it wasn't practical to produce vast amounts of disposable trash: efficiency, conservation and quality production would become a market driven necessity rather than a political luxury. If fossil fueled energy industries were required to account for the cost of environmental damage, they would lose the economic advantage which currently stifles the development of sustainable energy technologies. No micromanagement of industry is required, we just need to enforce a simple, common sense law; zero tolerance for pollution of the air, the water or any other public resource. Pay for cleanup as you go, add the price to the product you are selling, and if it makes the product too expensive, then don't make it. For every business that fails, another one will come out of the woodwork to replace its function, but operating in a sustainable fashion. Green technologies will be seen as the competitive, sustainable alternatives that they are, when they are not weighed against falsely inexpensive, polluting industries which are allowed to shift the cost of environmental cleanup to the tax paying public. Business will thrive, jobs will be created in sustainable industries, the environment will benefit, and the people who consume the most, will pay the most for their impact upon the planet that we all live on. Those who work to reduce their impact upon the planet by consuming less, will pay less. Fair for everyone, and we might just find a way out of the hole we have dug ourselves into.
Even the bigger problem in using cellulosic ethanol, is that this will deplete the good soil which contains a large amount of organic material with clay. We will turn our farmlands into deserts. Garbage waste would work, since it now goes into land fills, but not crops as a source for ethanol.
Garbage would be a good source, since it is now placed in land fills. But to use crops will result in turning our farmlands into deserts.
The organic straw needs to be plowed back into the ground to increase and maintain, its organic contend. Plant one pea in clay and another in rich black soil and the results are dramatic.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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RD
212 Comments
Missing Ethanol Problem Information
No mention was made that ozone formation of ethanol fume creates a serious problem. The WA State Dept of Ecology states that any more than 2% ethanol in the fuel means Seattle doesn't meet ozone attainment goals. Also not mentioned is the formation of formaldehyde and acetaldehyde. And to top it off, 3% of the fertilizer used to grow corn goes into the air as N2O, a corrosive gas that is 296X worse than CO2 as a global warming gas. Where is the mention that ethanol destroys many fuel system components, thus requiring fuel system and engine repairs, or total equipment replacement. Surely there is an extreme environmental cost to that! According to an MSNBC poll, 40% of all small engine repairs are caused by ethanol damage. Fuel with ethanol has a much shorter shelf life and means that standby equipment, and infrequently used tools are less reliable when needed. Ethanol was one of the most stupid decisions made in the last decade. And our ecopoliticians want to UP the %?
Where is the comparison with isobutanol or propanol, both which are superior fuels to ethanol?
Why isn't it mentioned that the ethanol industry can't survive on its own? It needs taxpayer subsidies, a tarriff to protect it from competition, and percentage mandates. Now it has asked for $1 billion in taxpayer "stimulus" money, and $50 billion in loans to build MORE ethanol plants. The industry is asking for a mandatory % increase up to 30%, despite the automakers saying it will further damage engines, and the EPA saying the environmental costs are too high.
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phoenix
172 Comments
Re: Missing Ethanol Problem Information
The whole world could have been driving a wide variety of practical electric vehicles by now if it hadn't been for Henry Ford championing the internal combustion engine. Plus, the deal that was cooked up between GM and Standard Oil back in the 1950's, to replace a sophisticated network of electric trollys which ran the entire length of the Eastern Seabord all the way down to Boston, with GM buses, didn't help much either. While they couldn't have done it without Washington's full compliance then, the same dynamic is at play in regard to biofuels RD. These gasoline additives will simply be remembered in time as a very expensive investment in a technology, that while it was supposed to help cut down on tailpipe emmissions, was only able to grease a few squeaky wheels in the process.
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