Catch a leprechaun at the end of a rainbow and his pot of gold is yours, says the Irish myth. The United States has been chasing the ethanol rainbow for some years now, with most of the gold going to a handful of very unleprechaunlike corporate giants. Not only has this corny idea failed to make a dent in weaning the country from foreign oil, but it may not even result in a net savings of petroleum and, worst of all, is taking millions of acres out of food production at a time of growing world hunger.
In America, ethanol is produced by turning corn into alcohol of the same type used in beverages. About $7 billion in subsidies go to growers, 2/3 of that into the coffers of two companies, Archer Daniels Midland and Renewable Products Marketing Group. 90% goes to the top eight producers. Oil companies also cash in with a 51 cent tax credit for each gallon of ethanol blended into motor fuel. The "farm" and oil lobbies do a good job of keeping the subsidies flowing. It also doesn't hurt that presidential candidates are always asked to declare fealty to ethanol subsidies at the beginning of the presidential campaign every four years. That's because the nomination calendar begins with caucuses in Iowa, the nation's #1 corn state.
Ethanol only produces about 76% of the heat per volume as petroleum, so it is a considerably less efficient fuel. That is why usually only 5 to 10% of an ethanol fuel is really made up of the substance. The rest is standard gas. It has been calculated that if 50% of the U.S. corn crop were devoted to ethanol production it would only result in a 6% reduction in the use of gasoline.
Compounding these considerations is the disquieting finding that it takes nearly as much fossil fuel to produce the ethanol as the petroleum it replaces. Once fuel for tractors, harvesters, trucking, processing, pesticides and fertilizers is counted, even oil-industry studies show the best-case return is about 30%. That is, it takes 10 barrels of petroleum to produce 13 barrels of ethanol. And remember the ethanol is 24% less efficient as a fuel. Non-industry research has the margins even closer, including some that say it actually takes more fuel to make the stuff than is produced.
This might all stand merely as an interesting academic argument except for the unpleasant fact that millions of acres are no longer producing food at a time when the food is desperately needed. As Mark Lynas in the (U.K.) New Statesman puts it, "Next year, the US use of corn for ethanol is forecast to rise to 114 million tonnes-nearly a third of the whole projected US crop. American cars now burn enough corn to cover all the import needs of the 82 nations classed by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization as 'low-income food-deficit countries.' There could scarcely be a better way to starve the poor."
The shortages have contributed to rising prices. Rice has gone up 75% and wheat 120% over the past year, pricing the world's poorest out of range of securing their staple food needs. In February the Labor Department tied rising wheat and soybean prices to the loss of acreage to corn for ethanol. Global reserves are at their lowest levels for 25 years, and food riots have recently broken out in Egypt, Cote d'Ivoire, Cameroon, Mozambique, Senegal, Yemen, Haiti, Mauritania, Bolivia, Mexico, India, Burkina Faso and Uzbekistan.
It is time we realize this policy is not accomplishing its ostensible purpose and in fact is contributing mightily to misery on a vast scale. It will not be easy to overcome the ethanol lobby in Washington but it is necessary.
1 comment:
It is very necessary. Corn ethonal is only a distraction from the problem of finding alternative fuels. As lucrative an industry as it is becoming, bringing it down will no doubt be a long an painful process. It is not as though we cannot use some ethanol though. Ethanol made from sugar cane, I read, is something like eight times more efficient to produce than ethanol made from corn.
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