Ethanol Fuel: Not a Solution
Published April 17, 2007
3 Comments (at bottom of article)
By Max C. Bookman
Have you been fooling yourself into thinking that your “Go Yellow” bumper sticker puts you on the frontlines of the fight to rid the world of petroleum? Well think again. I’ll try and forgive you for being so gung-ho about ethanol. After all, when you heard of a cheap fuel that is produced domestically, burns cleanly, and cuts us free of shady Arab oil tycoons, how could you not fall in love? The irony is just too great: all-American corn saving us (and the environment!) from our oil woes.
Ethanol is billed as a realistic alternative to petroleum (gasoline), derived from corn, sugarcane, or any other “biomass” high in sugar content. Car companies are rushing to make vehicles that can accommodate it. But while politicians, Kansas rednecks, and UVM tree-huggers alike are falling all over themselves to praise ethanol as the greatest thing to come from corn since sliced bread, very few people have stopped to look past the hype.
Yes, our dependence on petroleum does affect our foreign policy in the Middle East and significantly damages the ozone layer, but ethanol has plenty of its own baggage that needs to be addressed before we start taking the next step in our relationship.
The biggest of these concerns involves food. Right now, ethanol produced in America comes from corn. We have the most corn in the world, and it’s a very important part of our diet. Corn is integral in everything from breads, chips, and cooking oil, to canned foods, and soda (Google “uses of corn”). Corn feed is vital to the meat, poultry, and dairy industries as well.
With ethanol producers fighting the food industry for the same corn, farmers can raise their prices, making everything from Twinkies to Cook Commons chicken patties more expensive. The meat, dairy, and poultry sectors of the food industry have already felt the effect.
Ethanol isn’t as environmentally friendly as you think it is either. It does not add any extra greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, but it does emit far more smog-causing pollutants known as VOCs (Versatile Organic Compounds) that have both short- and long-term negative health effects.
In fact, much of the actual energy in ethanol is not, “new,” but is produced with petroleum powered tractors and factory machinery.
Also commonly overlooked is the impossibility for ethanol to completely replace petroleum. Last year, farmers planted 70 million acres of corn the majority of which is used for food. Even if all 70 million acres were used to produce only ethanol, it would only yield enough to replace 12 percent of the petroleum we consume. Yes, there is room to plant more corn, but 513 million acres more?
It is likely the Earth may be sucked clean of petroleum in our lifetimes. Our generation needs an energy system that will work in the long term, and sadly, ethanol is not it. We can’t let an older generation screw us over with a fuel that has just as many problems as gas does. So jump off the yellow bandwagon, and next time you hear about ethanol, show everybody how counter-normal yet socially and environmentally conscious you are. Besides, food isn’t meant to be played with, it’s meant to be eaten.
Print This Article
« For Love of the Lord on (a) High | April: Now is the Winter of Our Discontent »
Comments
3 Responses to “Ethanol Fuel: Not a Solution”
Leave a Reply
Obv you missed the point. Nobody thinks that Ethanol is the end all of fueling problems. However it will allow us to be less dependent on foreign oil, and did we mention better for the environment read up on the facts. It’s easier on the environment to produce and to use. Oh and not to mention Ethanol can be made from more then just corn it can be made from a lot of different things even waste! Which we have plenty of last time i checked!
Max Max Max…
That is the most narrow minded, near sighted ethanol article I’ve read anywhere. Let me guess…you didn’t believe in the viability of unleaded fuel or those dangerous mandatory seat belts. I bet you would have had a real problem switching from whale oil lamps to those dangerous unproven electrical filament contraptions.
As you have pointed out ethanol has some drawbacks and challenges. Unfortunately you are judging a product and technology that’s in its infancy. Of course it’s inefficient; we are currently using Jack Daniels type technology to produce ethanol from corn kernels, a process that wastes/rejects probably 70% of the fermentable sugars found in the rest of the corn plant. However, new cellulose technology is being built as we speak to take advantage of this. And what about other crops such as, sorghum, sugar cane and switch grass to name a few. What about bioengineered crops with ridiculously high levels of fermentable sugars that are designed specifically for cars not consumption. How about highbred strains of yeast that produce higher alcohol content before entering their dormancy phase. Yes it cost energy to produce alcohol and largely this comes from polluting petroleum sources. Here’s a surprise for you our farmers and equipment builders have figured out that locally produced bio diesel will run in farming equipment greatly reducing the energy loss and pollution ratios. Oh and here is another surprise, our farming communities are also our windy areas so farmers are starting to add massive wind turbines to their fields, using their land to harvest electricity like any other crop. So, you could have a fermentable sugar crop harvested and delivered with bio diesel trucks to an ethanol plant powered by a wind supplemented grid. Starting to get a better Co2 neutral, energy positive picture?
How about our vehicles, you totally missed some opportunities for negativity there. Flexfuel vehicles get horrible mileage compared to gasoline, I know, I own one. Flexfuel vehicles are optimized to run on gasoline not ethanol, so you need more fuel to get the same energy. But once again, we have options. We can increase our compression to maximize the benefits of ethanol’s higher octane, this would produce more energy during combustion thus increasing MPG. Or we could really get crazy and add plug in hybrid technology that recharges from the wind/solar grid and hardly even turns on your ethanol optimized engine for a run to the supermarket. Guess what, this isn’t some popular science view of the future. It’s here today if we choose to support/demand it. This is a wonderful free market society where consumers vote with their money, market and technology develop to meet the demand.
I can tell you the choice is clear to me, I’ve done 4 tours in the Middle East and seen first hand how our country hemorrhages our energy dollars and future into countries that loath everything about us accept our money. Ethanol is reasonable (not perfect) transitional fuel that reduces emissions, including Co2 and diverts investment into the American mid west instead of the Middle East. So you go ahead and complain about the cost of Twinkies and Cook Commons chicken patties while the rest of us sweat the little stuff like rising transportation costs, melting ice caps, flooding coast lines and millions of people with dwindling water supplies. We have an opportunity to do something other than complain…I say we take it.
I completely agree with Max. I realize ethanol was not meant to be our superhero fuel alternative. Yes it is a stepping stone on the way to independence from foreign oil, but at too great of a sacrifice. Ethanol has many more drawbacks, which are being added daily, than benefits. Corn use in producing in ethanol keeps an equilibrium in carbon emissions. This equilibrium is only the oxygen produced by corn being equivalent to the carbon emmissions created when burning ethanol. This leaves out one imortant step the production phase. When producing ethanol significant amounts of carbon emissions are released into the air. I understand ethanol can be produced from many agricultural derived products, such as corn, switchgrass, leaves, sugarcane, waste, and many more. Although there are other ways to produce it none of them are much more beneficial than the others. Many scientists have been researching this, and will continue to. Scientists have told us that if we have a major switch from gasoline products made with oil to ethanol we could have a problem on our hands. President Bush has been pushing an Energy Bill in Congress. Among the requirements are ethanol use and lower gasoline use. It bumps our now 6 billion gallon consumption of ethanol to a 36 billion gallon use yearly. Scientists have reported that if we have a major switch, about equal or more than what is in this bill, by 2009 we could have a crisis. We could have on our hands a crisis of global proportions. This could throw our entire ecosystem and world into a global disaster. (Global Warming effects multiplied many times.) I realize that there are many benefits, but does our health being risked and not to mention our food prices raising make up for this. We have to go about this very carefully. We need to find something that can free us from our fueling woes, but ethanol, sadly,is not it.
My FFA chapter competed in and won a Bronze medal in the National FFA Agricultural Issues Debate Forum. We went over this issue many times and I can understand the farmer’s standpoint,but its not worth it. (Oh by the way I’m 15 years old.)