Ethanol is all the rage in some circles now as an alternative fuel for
our cars. Midwest America is especially enthusiastic about it because
the agricultural economy can benefit from it. Brazil has successfully
built a national industry based on sugarcane ethanol and biofuel
cars. How good is ethanol really, for the environment?
The hope is that ethanol can potentially produce many more benefits compared to oil. Farmers, obviously, are eager for the ethanol economy because it expands the market for their crops. Midwest America hopes that ethanol will help restore many rural agricultural communities perhaps even making them profitable enough so we can do away with government subsidies one day. That's the dream.
Ethanol has the potential to help nations achieve energy independence, reducing dependency on foreign oil. For example, Brazil announced last year that it has weaned itself off of oil, after 10 years of intensive effort in encouraging the budding ethanol industry to mature. This is a hopeful development. Imagine if China and India and USA goes energy independent! This would definitely change the geopolitical picture of our world. Indeed many countries with agricultural economy create enough agricultural wastes to produce certain amount of domestic ethanol fuel sources. Brazil used its sugarcane stalks leftover from its sugarcane processing industry. Closer to home we have weed grass and corn stalks in abundance.
Ethanol proponents also claim that
it creates no net addition to the world’s carbon emission. Plants are
carbon sinks, meaning they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere to grow, so
when we burn biofuel, we are simply releasing what it had absorbed.
How true is this? A recent National Geographic article explored this quite effectively, in my opinion.
The gist of the article is that it is important that the right agricultural product is used for producing ethanol. The drawback of our national ethanol
picture today, is that, it takes herbicide, machines, land, and lots of
water to produce corn and soybean which generates most of our ethanol
today. This creates competition with food supply (think cereal and
feedstocks). Even if we turn all our soybean and corn supply into
ethanol, we can only replace 12% of our gasoline and 6% of our diesel.
The article also said that there is no net gain in fossil fuel
replacement by moving to corn ethanol because it takes as much gasoline
to produce the amount of corn needed. Additionally, to produce enough
corn as ethanol feedstock, we will need to plow into increasingly
marginal lands.
According to Nathanael Greene, a senior researcher with the Natural
Resources Defense Council, the key is to figure out how to make fuel
from plant material other than food: cornstalks, prairie grasses,
fast-growing trees, or even algae. Brazil did a great job in this area
by converting the agricultural waste products from their massive
sugarcane industry into fuel. These would have ended up as waste
anyway, so finding another usage for them is a great example of whole-system thinking. As a result of their forward-thinking approach, 85% of Brazilian cars now run on alcohol, and although most have flex-fuel
ethanol-gasoline engine, the price advantage of sugarcane ethanol in
Brazil means that many haven’t visited the gas station for years.
That's something I'd like to have for the sake of my ever diminishing
wallet! Still although the ethanol picture in Brazil is rosier and
definitely more sustainable than that of the United States, it is not
without problems. Pressure for deforestation because of acreage
expansion, burning of cane to prepare fields for harvesting, and worker
exploitation remain issues to be solved.
Some groups are
working on taking the food chain out of the picture entirely. This
seems to be most promising path for the U.S. ethanol progression.
Cellulosic ethanol, made from plants with high-level of chains of sugar
molecules in the plants’ cell walls, is currently hailed as great
replacements for soy and corn sources. These alternatives are none
other than the deep-rooted perennial prairie grasses like switchgrass
or buffalo grass, sawdust, and other non-food stalks and leaves (e.g.
cornstalks). The trick is to make processing them cheap enough to be
competitive with other fuel sources.
In sum, the ethanol picture
is complex. It is an alternative for now, in competition with electric
and hydrogen fuel cell to power our vehicles. The eco-footprint
argument for ethanol is still murky and will probably remain
contentious for the next few years. As voters and consumers, it is
important that we continue to educate ourselves on the total impact of
each fuel alternative, as billions and billions of dollars are being
poured into each. Which one will help us reduce our greenhouse gas and
carbon footprint the fastest? How long can we afford to wait before
having a real solution to power our car more sustainably? The climate
crisis is here, and we can’t afford to fool around for years until a
solution is found. We need market solutions that will make a
significant dent on the climate crisis, TODAY, so we better spend our
precious R&D dollars and time wisely.
If you haven’t seen the news yet, IPCC, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has just given us the last warning on climate change in its final report as reported by NYTimes this past weekend. Even in its cautious and measured tone, IPCC has declared global warming as "unequivocal." That’s scary stuff.
In furthering the understanding of all AskPatty readers on alternative fuels, I would like readers to comment on what alternative fuels they are most enthusiastic on, and why they think it will help make a dent to the climate crisis. Submit your comments below, and let me know what you think. Until next time, Happy Thanksgiving!
Marn-Yee Lee
Contributing Editor
AskPatty.com
Marn-Yee Lee is pursuing an MBA in Sustainability at the Presidio
School of Management in San Francisco. After spending a decade in I.T.
and on Wall Street, she is now pursuing her passion for the
environment. She sees business as a partner for creating innovative
solutions to pressing environmental issues. In her spare time, she
writes a blog to inspire others to consider the impact of their daily
lives on the environment at busythinking.blogspot.com.
Flickr photo by ~dabbler~ (formerly
jowo)