In the 2006 State of the Union address alongside his favorite portent of a hydrogen future, President Bush pledged additional research for “cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn, but from wood chips and stalks, or switch grass.” Thus, the American embrace of ethanol on the national level was born. Although ethanol has been touted as the silver bullet to shut up the green movement and foreign policy doves, the rate of return from corn-based ethanol has not provided an adequate return on investment thus far. Although there have been investigative reports criticizing ethanol production, a new dimension that has emerged in recent times should further cast doubt on ethanol’s status as a prime substitute for fossil fuels. U.S. ethanol production is contributing actively to starve the rest of the globe. As ballooning food prices in the past month have attested, using foodstuffs to fill SUV tanks instead of human stomachs is already sending tremors through the geopolitical landscape of the developing world.
America has a love affair with ethanol because it’s easier to make than oil is to extract from topographically or geopolitically-unstable areas. Just as prohibition moonshine was able to be brewed in bootlegger bathtubs, ethanol production (a similar fermentation process) is not particularly sophisticated. Furthermore, the agriculture-rich Midwest states stand to (and already have) reaped the benefits of government subsidies for production of corn for use in ethanol distillation. These factors would lead most to believe that ethanol is a great boon to the U.S. and will work to put the country on the road to achieving Bush’s goal of replacing “more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.” Unfortunately, something that seems to good to be true almost always is.
Ethanol as a fuel doesn’t give more bang for the buck when compared to gasoline by any stretch of the imagination. Ethanol has only 23.5 megajoules per liter compared with gasoline’s 34.8 megajoules, which is why it is used primarily as an additive in regular gasoline. Also, creating ethanol isn’t as easy as a fairy godmother tapping corn with her wand and turning it into clean-burning fuel. Although the chemical process of turning corn into fuel isn’t particularly difficult, it requires fermentation and distillation, processes that require heat and pressure, which in turn require lots of energy. Since the majority of that energy is coming from existing coal and oil, the cost-benefit ratio of ethanol is further diminished. Add on the agricultural costs of growing viable corn and the margin of benefit shrinks even more.
On a positive note, ethanol can be distilled from non-foodstuffs like switchgrass and wood chips and Plains states farmers have recently planted huge tracts with the former to be used for ethanol production. Unlike corn, switchgrass ethanol has a much higher rate of return, producing 540% more energy than the amount consumed growing the plant. Since switchgrass is just that (grass), it doesn’t require such intensive agriculture as food crops like corn. However, so-called cellulosic ethanol still accounts for a tiny percentage of U.S. ethanol production due to a lack of processing facilities and material handlers. And despite the clear shortcoming of corn-based ethanol, In 2007, 30 million tons of American-grown corn (about 1/3 of the total harvest) went towards the production of ethanol.
It does not require an extensive knowledge of agriculture to realize that 30 million tons of food is significant. It takes 450 pounds of corn to make enough ethanol to fill a 25-gallon gas tank, an amount that has enough calorie yield to feed a human for one year. The USDA projects that in 2010, the ethanol industry will consume 73 million tons of corn, which would be enough to feed the entire population of the United States for one year and have a decent surplus, or more importantly, feed 325 million people in developing nations racked by political and economic strife. As global food prices continue to rise, even countries in the developing world that enjoyed a modicum of stability, like Kenya prior to the election violence of the past months, will begin to feel the squeeze. Historically, there is no greater impetus to rioting and civil unrest than food shortages. From the French Revolution to civil strife in Somalia, much of the violence can be traced to acute and chronic shortages in the food supply due to poor harvests and rising costs. Ramping up production of corn-based ethanol is no way to remedy these grave challenges.
With food prices rising not just in the developing world, but in the industrialized west, the U.S. and other ethanol-producing nations need to seriously reevaluate their energy security policy. Continuing to dump millions of tons of edible foodstuffs into the production of a scant amount of fuel at high price does not look like a noble effort. In the eyes of those whose stomachs will go unfilled for days or even those in the developing world feeling the pinch at the grocery stores, it looks like aiding and abetting starvation. For a country whose reputation is already on the fritz, the U.S. can’t afford to become the nation that plucks food from the mouths of starving children. It’s an ethical dilemma whose conclusion should already be crystal clear. Choose food over fuel.
In our attempt to be 'Green' we are again doing the same mistake of aping without thinking which has made us to be in need of 'Green'.
Things like Ethanol are good for places like Brazil and other countries where water is easily available and later is suitable for it. But as we embarked on development without thinking about future, we have again embarked on saving our future without thinking about our present. Maybe world needs to understand the importance of word ‘Balance’.
You have rightly pointed out that filling a 25-gallon tank with ethanol will take as much of corn that can feed a human being for a year (theoretically in terms of calorific needs of an average human). That brings to the question if a human being can be fed with almost have a barrel of refined crude. This comes to almost 75-100 dollars, which is not enough to feed a human being for a year in any given country in the world.
Then comes the question of the food prices that will be affected when industrial scale production of corn for ethanol starts across the major food producing countries. The thought sends shivers through the spine imagining the situation food importing nations (which are mostly poor third world countries) will go through.
Global hunger is a grave concern. Rising food prices will only make it worse.
As you have pointed out the cost and the complication of the whole process of turning corn into ethanol that has much less calorific value than that of gasoline, I don't think this is going to last long. In the long term it will be neither viable, feasible (in many regions) and people will finally realise that it is unethical too.
i would be surprised though if the farmers who grow corn for ethanol would still get farm subsidies they had been enjoying for so long in the developed countries.