Breaker 1: Several well-respected analysts have raised serious concerns about this increasing diversion of food crops toward the production of fuel for automobiles.

Breaker 2: Cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in grain production this year — a serious concern in a world where the grain required to make enough ethanol to fill an SUV tank can also feed a person for an entire year. Breaker 1: Several well-respected analysts have raised serious concerns about this increasing diversion of food crops toward the production of fuel for automobiles.

Breaker 2: Cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in grain production this year — a serious concern in a world where the grain required to make enough ethanol to fill an SUV tank can also feed a person for an entire year.

Of all the possible solutions to the current energy problems, biofuels are by far the most aggressively promoted today. Stories in all the major newspapers and national magazines, even ads from major auto makers, suggest that ethanol fuel and biodiesel are the keys to conserving oil, reducing pollution, and preventing climate change. Bill Gates, Sun Microsystems’ Vinod Khosla, and other major venture capitalists are investing hundreds of millions in new biofuel production, whether in the form of ethanol, mainly derived from corn in the US today, or biodiesel, mainly from soybeans and canola seed. It’s literally a “modern day gold rush,” as described by the New York Times, paraphrasing the chief executive of Cargill, one of the main beneficiaries of increased subsidies to agribusiness and tax credits to refiners for the purpose of encouraging biofuel production.  

The Times reported last summer that some 40 new ethanol plants were then under construction in the US, aiming toward a 30% increase in domestic production. Archer Daniels Midland, the company that first sold the idea of corn-derived ethanol as an auto fuel to Congress in the late 1970s, has doubled its stock price and profits over the last two years. ADM currently controls a quarter of US ethanol fuel production and recently hired a former Chevron executive as its CEO.  

Several well-respected analysts have raised serious concerns about this increasing diversion of food crops toward the production of fuel for automobiles.WorldWatch Institute founder Lester Brown, long concerned about the sustainability of world food supplies, says that fuel producers are already competing with food processors in the world’s grain markets. “Cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in grain production this year,” reports Brown, a serious concern in a world where the grain required to make enough ethanol to fill an SUV tank can also feed a person for an entire year.Others have dismissed the push for ethanol fuel as little more than the subsidized burning of food to run automobiles.  

The biofuel rush is having a significant impact worldwide as well. Brazil, often touted as the the most impressive biofuel success story, is using half its annual sugarcane crop to provide 40% of its auto fuel, while increasing deforestation to grow more sugarcane and soybeans. Malaysian and Indonesian rainforests are being bulldozed for oil palm plantations—threatening endangered orangutans, rhinos, tigers, and countless other species—in order to serve the booming European market for biodiesel.  

Are these reasonable tradeoffs for a troubled planet or merely another corporate push for profits? Two recent studies aim to document the full consequences of the new biofuel economy and realistically assess its impact on fuel use, greenhouse gases, and agricultural lands. One study, originating from the University of Minnesota, is moderately hopeful in the first two areas, but offers a strong caution about land use. The other, from Cornell University and UC Berkeley, concludes that all domestic biofuel sources — the ones currently in use as well as those under development—produce less energy than is consumed in growing and processing the crops.  

The Minnesota researchers attempted a full lifecycle analysis of the production of ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soy. They documented the energy costs of fuel production, pesticide use, transportation, and other key factors and also accounted for the energy equivalent of soy and corn byproducts that are available for other uses after the fuel is extracted. Their paper, published in the July 25, 2006 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that ethanol production offers a modest net energy gain of 25%, resulting in 12% less greenhouse gases than an equivalent amount of gasoline. The numbers for biodiesel are more promising, with a 93% net energy gain and a 41% reduction in greenhouse gases.  

The researchers cautioned, however, that these figures do not account for the significant environmental damage from increased acreages of these crops — including the impacts of pesticides and nitrate runoff into water supplies — or the increased demand on water, as “energy crops” like corn and soy displace more drought tolerant crops such as wheat in several Midwestern states.  

The most serious impact, though, is on land use. The Minnesota research paper reports that in 2005, 14% of the US corn harvest was used to produce nearly 4 billion gallons of ethanol, equivalent to 1.7% of current gasoline usage. About 1.5% of the soy harvest produced 68 million gallons of biodiesel, equivalent to less than one-tenth of 1% of gas usage. This means that if all of the country’s corn harvest was used to make ethanol, it would displace 12% of our gas; all of our soybeans would displace about 6% of diesel use. But if the energy used in producing these biofuels is taken into account — the fact that 80% of the energy goes into production in the case of corn ethanol and almost 50% in the case of soy biodiesel — the entire soy and corn crops combined would only satisfy less than 3% of current gasoline and diesel use. This is where the serious strain on food supplies and prices originates.  

The Cornell study is even more skeptical. Released a year earlier, it was the product of an ongoing collaboration between Cornell agriculturalist David Pimentel and engineering professor Ted Patzek of the University of California at Berkeley and was published in the journal Natural Resources Research. This study found that, on balance, making ethanol from corn requires 29% more fossil fuel than the net energy produced and biodiesel from soy results in a net energy loss of 27%. Other crops, touted as solutions to the apparent diseconomy of current methods, offer even worse results.  

Switchgrass, for example, can grow on marginal land and presumably won’t compete with food production (recall George Bush’s mumbling about switchgrass in his 2006 State of the Union speech), but it requires 45% more energy to harvest and process than the energy value of the fuel that is produced. Wood biomass requires 57% more energy than it produces and sunflowers require more than twice as much energy than is available in the fuel that is produced. “There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel,” said David Pimentel in a Cornell press statement. “These strategies are not sustainable.”  

The Cornell/Berkeley study has drawn the attention of numerous critics, some of whom suggest that Ted Patzek’s background in petroleum engineering disqualifies him from objectively assessing the energy balance of biofuels. Needless to say, in a field where both oil and agribusiness companies are vying for public subsidies, the technical arguments can become rather furious. An earlier analysis by the Chicago-area Argonne National Laboratory (once a Manhattan Project offshoot) produced data much closer to the Minnesota results, but a response by Patzek pointed out several potential flaws in that study’s shared assumptions with an earlier analysis by the USDA. In another recent article, Harvard environmental scientist Michael McElroy concurred with Pimentel and Patzek: “[U]nfortunately the promised benefits [of ethanol] prove upon analysis to be largely ephemeral.”  

Even the extraction of ethanol from Brazilian sugarcane, touted as the world’s model for conversion from fossil fuels to sustainable “green energy,” raises questions. The energy yield appears beyond question: it is widely suggested that ethanol from sugarcane may produce as much as eight times as much energy as it takes to grow and process. But a recent World Wildlife Fund report for the International Energy Agency challenges this approach to future energy independence. It turns out that 80% of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions come not from cars, but from deforestation — the loss of embedded carbon dioxide when forests are cut down and burned. A hectare of land may save 13 tons per year of carbon dioxide if it is used to grow sugarcane, but the same hectare can absorb 20 tons of CO₂ if it remains forested. If sugarcane and soy plantations continue to encourage deforestation, both in the Amazon and in Brazil’s Atlantic coastal forests, any climate advantage is more than outweighed by the loss of the forest.

This article came from the report "The New Energy Debates" which appeared in ZMag Online, January 2007 issue.

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