Ethanolonomics

Re: [spiers] Ethanolonomics

Here is a guest columnist article that appeared in the New York Times in May on
the feasability of ethanol...
alan

The Great Yellow Hope
By Michael Pollan



Michael Pollan is the author, most recently, of "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A
Natural history of Four Meals," which was published in
April. His previous books include: "Second Nature," "A Place of My Own" and "The
Botany of Desire," a New York Times bestseller.

A contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, Mr. Pollan is the Knight
Professor of Journalism at the University of
California, Berkeley. Many of his food articles can be found at
michaelpollan.com



I've been traveling in the American Corn Belt this past week, and wherever I go,
people are talking about the promise of ethanol.
Corn-distillation plants are popping up across the country like dandelions, and
local ethanol boosters in Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa
and even Washington State (where Bill Gates is jumping into the business) are
giddy at the prospect of supplanting OPEC with a
homegrown, America-first corn cartel. But as much as I'd like to have a greener
fuel to power my car, I'm afraid corn-based ethanol
is not that fuel.



In principle, making fuel from plants makes good sense. Instead of spewing
fossilized carbon into the atmosphere, you're burning the
same carbon that a plant removed from the air only a few months earlier - so,
theoretically, you've added no additional carbon.
Sounds pretty green - and would be, if the plant you proposed to make the
ethanol from were grown in a green way. But corn is not.



The way we grow corn in this country consumes tremendous quantities of fossil
fuel. Corn receives more synthetic fertilizer than any
other crop, and that fertilizer is made from fossil fuels - mostly natural gas.
Corn also receives more pesticide than any other
crop, and most of that pesticide is made from petroleum. To plow or disc the
cornfields, plant the seed, spray the corn and harvest
it takes large amounts of diesel fuel, and to dry the corn after harvest
requires natural gas. So by the time your "green" raw
material arrives at the ethanol plant, it is already drenched in fossil fuel.
Every bushel of corn grown in America has consumed the
equivalent of between a third and a half gallon of gasoline.



And that's before you distill the corn into ethanol, an energy-intensive process
that requires still more fossil fuel. Estimates
vary, but they range from two-thirds to nine-tenths of a gallon of oil to
produce a single gallon of ethanol. (The more generous
number does not count all the energy costs of growing the corn.) Some estimates
are still more dismal, suggesting it may actually
take more than a gallon of fossil fuel to produce a gallon of our putative
alternative to fossil fuel.



Making ethanol from corn makes no more sense from an economic point of view. The
federal government offers a tax break of 54 cents
for every gallon of ethanol produced, and this incentive is what has generated
the enthusiasm for ethanol refining: the spigot of
public money is open and the pigs are rushing to the trough. (At the same time,
the government protects domestic ethanol producers
by imposing a tariff of 54 cents a gallon on imported ethanol.) According to the
Wall Street Journal, it will cost U.S. taxpayers
$120 for every barrel of oil saved by making ethanol. Some "savings." This is
very good news indeed for Archer Daniels Midland, the
agricultural processing company that controls about 30 percent of the ethanol
market. (And, it would seem, a comparable percentage
of the U.S. Congress, which has been showering the company with ethanol
subsidies since the days when Bob Dole of Kansas was known
as the senator from A.D.M.)



Absurd as it is, the rush to turn our corn surplus into ethanol appears
unstoppable, and the corn belt, laboring under the weight of
falling corn prices for the past several years, is celebrating the great good
fortune of $3-a-gallon gas prices. We're desperate for
alternatives, and all that corn is waiting to be distilled. As corn prices rise
(and the giddiness has already given them a bump),
farmers will be tempted to produce yet more corn, which is not good news for the
environment this whole deal is supposed to help.
Why not? Because farmers will apply more nitrogen to boost yields (leading to
more nitrogen pollution) and, since soy bean prices
are down, they will be tempted to return to a "corn-on-corn" rotation. That is,
rather than rotate their corn crops with soy beans
(a legume that builds nitrogen in he soil), farmers will plant corn year after
year, requiring still more synthetic nitrogen and
doing long-term damage to the land.



It's not easy being green.



But just because making ethanol from corn is an environmentally and economically
absurd proposition doesn't mean ethanol made from
other plants is a bad idea. If you can make ethanol from a plant that doesn't
take so much energy to grow in the first place, the
economics and energetics begin look a lot better. The Brazilians make ethanol
from sugar cane, a perennial crop that doesn't require
nearly as much fossil fuel to grow. Switch grass, too, is a perennial crop that
grows just about anywhere, requires little or no
fertilizer and needs no plowing or annual replanting. And although the
technology for making ethanol from grasses (cellulosic
ethanol - distilled from plant cellulose rather than starch) is not quite there
yet, it holds real potential.



So why the stampede to make ethanol from corn? Because we have so much of it,
and such a powerful lobby promoting its consumption.
Ethanol is just the latest chapter in a long, sorry history of clever and
profitable schemes to dispose of surplus corn: there was
corn liquor in the 19th century; feedlot meat starting in the 1950's and, since
1980, high fructose corn syrup. We grow more than 10
billion bushels of corn a year in this country, far more than we can possibly
eat - though God knows we're doing our best, bingeing
on corn-based fast food and high fructose corn syrup till we're fat and
diabetic. We probably can't eat much more of the stuff
without exploding, so the corn lobby is targeting the next unsuspecting beast
that might help chomp through the surplus: your car.


----- Original Message -----
From: "spiersegroups"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2006 9:27 AM
Subject: [spiers] Ethanolonomics


Folks,

Brazil is offered as the way for ethanol, so let's hear a Brazilian voice on the
topic.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/desousa1.html

John





Compete on Design!

www.johnspiers.com

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