Getting Our Fill of Ethanol
The support appears to be growing since the request was made to the EPA to grant a Clean Air Act waiver on Friday. Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack expressed his support for the move today.
Critics say the government should study the impact of burning more ethanol on the environment before granting a waiver. But there’s plenty of hard data to examine.
The Brazilians have been driving on rich ethanol blends for years. The country raised its mandatory blend from 22 percent to 25 percent in 2007.
Science and engineering aren’t holding us back, it’s politics. For example, oil producers have recently expressed their opposition to the change.
I’m no big fan of corn ethanol but I appreciate it as a bridge to lower-emissions, high-energy cellulosic ethanol, and other biofuel formations. By expanding demand for ethanol generally, we can create market opportunities for the more promising fuels to come.
Ethanol's Fall and the Oil Price Floor
Earlier last week, I wrote about a recent study that demonstrated how cellulosic ethanol carries fewer public costs than corn ethanol primarily because it releases fewer fine particulate emissions. In part because of its attractive emissions profile, I suggested the future of cellulosic ethanol looked rosy.
Of course, that future depends on demand for ethanol of any kind. And that appears to be very much in question.
The New York Times wrote later this week about how collapsing demand for ethanol has set off a wave of plant closings and bankruptcies in the industry:
“Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group, estimated that of the country’s 150 ethanol companies and 180 plants, 10 or more companies have shut down 24 plants over the last three months.”
When oil was at $145 a barrel, ethanol demand far outpaced the amount needed to satisfy federal mandates for ethanol blending. But now, with oil trading under $40, demand has vanished. New production mandates set by Congress just one year ago seem unattainable as well.
Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has said Congress may have to "reconsider" the mandate because oil and gas prices have plummeted and ethanol no longer looks like a go-go fuel.
What can we learn from the ethanol industry’s latest sudden turn? We have said it before; we now say it again: We simply must have prices for oil and gasoline that more closely reflect the fuels’ cost to society. All thoughtful economists, including most of the majority backing the stimulus package, agree that until oil costs are high enough, most national energy and climate policies won’t get off the ground.
The government must step in and set that higher price for oil. It can do it through a carbon cap-and-trade plan or a gas tax.
How do we prevent high gas prices having a disproportionate effect on any segment of society? The revenues of any scheme should go to ease the taxpayer burdens and to subsidize green energy technology, in that order, given the state of the economy today.
Our collective energies should go to designing the best and fairest price support under oil and other carbon-based energy sources, not rolling back biofuels mandates.
People Power
Ethanol has taken its lumps in recent months, after Congress blessed it with mandates in 2005 and 2007, but if you are looking for a low carbon, Middle East independent, sustainably produced bio-fuel, it is going to be hard to beat cellulosic ethanol. Now, there's a new reason to prefer ethanol made from switchgrass and other biomass: it inflicts less harm than comparable corn ethanol mixtures. It emits smaller amounts of fine particulate matter, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Minnesota.
Researchers compared the total environmental and health costs of producing corn-based and cellulosic fuels, primarily studying their impact on air pollution and air quality. They estimated the health costs represent about 71 cents per gallon of gasoline burned. Corn-ethanol fuel carries additional cost of between 72 cents to $1.45, depending on how it is made. Cellulosic ethanol by comparison clocks in between 19 cents to 32 cents, again depending on how it is made.
"Our work highlights the need to expand the biofuels debate beyond its current focus on climate change to include a wider range of effects such as their impacts on air quality," said lead author Jason Hill, a resident fellow in the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment.
Another plus the authors don’t mention: cellulosic biofuels require less intensive cultivation than monoculture corn and thus produce less fertilizer and pesticide runoff into rivers and lakes.
As the study's authors point out, those are costs borne not by producers or consumers of the fuels, but by the public. Another reason why lawmakers in Washington need to put R&D money not just into bio-fuels, but into the right types of bio-fuels.
