The Redhunter

To set the stage, here are a few charts which show U.S. energy consumption that I got from the Heritage Foundation (click to enlarge)

So what do they have to say over at Time?

But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.

Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn't exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.

Biofuels do slightly reduce dependence on imported oil, and the ethanol boom has created rural jobs while enriching some farmers and agribusinesses. But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon.

I think that "global warming" is a scam itself, so I don't buy into that argument. But the other arguments are more serious. The damage caused by using so much land to grow crops for fuel cannot be overlooked. Increasing demand without a corresponding increase in supply always drives up price, so unless there is an acre added to food production for every acre devoted to biofuel production, we will be hurting the most vulnerable on the planet. And while I'm no environmentalist, much preferring the term "conservationist", I do not want to see any more land than necessary be taken away from pure natural growth.

One of the leaders in biofuels has been Brazil, where they grow sugar cane which is turned into ethanol. Ethanol provides an impressive 45% of the country's fuel on only 1% of its land. Further, some think they can double their production of sugar cane by 2015 with no more effects on the Amazon. If we could achieve these numbers we would not only reduce the amount of money we give to the Saudi Wahhabists to fund our own destruction, we could reduce the price of petroleum worldwide and thus defund Iran and Venezuela.

The question is, can we?

the problem in Brazil, Grunwald says, is that so much of the Amazon jungle rainforest has been cut down to make way for cropland that it stands a chance of becoming a "savanna or even a desert". Whether this is accurate or environmentalist hype I don't know, but it is something that cannot be dismissed.

Another question is that producing biofuels isn't free. It takes about a gallon of gasoline to get a gallon and a quarter of corn ethanol (a 1:1.3 ratio), so that's not very efficient. The ratio for sugar cane ethanol is better at 1:8, the fuel produces more energy per unit, and burns much cleaner to boot (for ratios and more see this National Geographic interactive).

Right now the American taxpayer is paying some $8 billion in subsidies to farmers to grow corn for ethanol. This seems rather silly given the poor return of corn ethanol. The problem is that once a subsidy is in place, it becomes very hard if not impossible to take it away. People base their lives around the product the subsidy is meant to produce, and will take their political vengeance on any politician who threatens to reduce it.

If not Corn then Sugar?

Can or should we produce sugar cane ethanol? The Time article doesn't address the issue, so I had to go elsewhere.

In July 2006 the USDA released a study titled: "The Economic Feasibility of Ethanol Production from Sugar in the United States" I don't have time to go through the whole thing, but here's a summary by James Jacobs, an Agricultural Economist at the USDA (and on who's page I found the link to the study)

The report found that at the current market prices for ethanol, converting sugarcane, sugar beets and molasses to ethanol would be profitable. "At this summer's unusually high price, I can conclude that it's economically feasible to produce ethanol from sugarcane and sugar beets," USDA Chief Economist Keith Collins said. However, there is not a clear-cut case that U.S. sugar will be commercially converted to ethanol anytime soon.

The study (and Jacob's article) point out that sugar ethanol can be obtained not just from sugar cane, but from sugar beets as well. This is important because the latter can be grown in northern states such as the Dakotas and Minnesota.

However, it costs about twice as much to convert either of these sugar crops to ethanol as it does corn. The economic break even point for sugar ethanol is when gasoline is at $2.35 per gallon or higher. Given current realities, it would seem that we're going to stay well above that price for the foreseeable future.

I don't have time right now to go through the whole article to see how much cropland it would take to produce how much ethanol, or what the effects may be of not growing other things on the land instead of sugar beets or sugar cane. These and other things must be taken into account.

My Conclusion

I think that we should end corn ethanol as soon as possible. The negatives of such production vastly outweigh the benefits. The longer we wait the harder it will be politically to pull the plug.

However we should look into sugar crops as a basis for ethanol. I don't have time to go through the entire USDA report, but it would seem that we might be able to make headway in reducing our petroleum consumption by pursuing such a course.

Remember also that technology is not static. Technologies that look inefficient today may not be so tomorrow. Surely if we put our heads together and put our best scientists on the job we can come up with something better than what we have today.

In the end, it probably won't be any one magic technology or fuel that rids us of the national security vulnerability caused by so much petroleum consumption, but rather a combination of things. As such we should not put all of our eggs in any one basket, but spread out our research into a number of areas. One promising area, however, is sugar based ethanol.

Commenter Mike's America map is here