The corn oil deception
by Edwin Black
06-05-08
Corn ethanol has exploded recently in the headlines as the latest big
fuel mistake and cause of public outrage. Its very production has been
denounced by numerous world leaders as a “crime against humanity” because
corn cultivation for ethanol diverts food acreage to fuel acreage creating
the tectonic cause of the severe spike in food prices. This has in turn
helped swell a rising tide of starvation for millions around the world.
Corn ethanol’s inherent energy inefficient character has been exposed by
experts who have resisted the tobacco-style science corn lobbyists have
proliferated. But all these headlines were shouted years ago by critics who
foresaw the current predicament.
What began as an additive functioning as a 10 and 15 % gasoline extender has
become elevated to a potential major ingredient in a gallon of gas. E85, for
example, is an emerging blend of automobile fuel composed of 85 % ethanol
and only 15 % gasoline. Dedicated E85 pumps are now being established atgas
stations, mainly in the Midwest’s corn-rich farm belt.
At first blush, ethanol from corn appears to be a solution from America’s
heartland, a win-win proposition in the struggle to free the world from
harmful hydrocarbons and politically embroiling fuel.
But American corn ethanol cannot stand on its own. Ethanol actually depends
upon the continued use of petroleum and by necessity increases petroleum
consumption and greenhouse gases. Many experts say ethanol simply uses more
petroleum than it saves.
For example, a key series of studies was conducted by Tad Patzek, a
University of California geo-engineer and David Pimentel, a Cornell
University expert in life sciences, energy, and sustainable agriculture.
Pimentel’s and Patzek’s studies asserted that, “ethanol production using
corn grain required 29 % more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced”
and that even proposed alternative ethanol cellulosic sources other than
corn, such as switchgrass, wood, and straw, “required 50 % more fossil
energy than the ethanol fuel produced.”
Those energy expenditures cover a range of hydrocarbon users from the
diesel-burning tractors and combines on the farm to the ordinary trucks
needed for transport to and from the industrial centres.
“In plain words,” Pimentel explained, “it takes 1.29 gallons of petroleum or
petroleum equivalents to produce one gallon of ethanol.”
The conclusion that ethanol drank more petroleum than it saved subjected the
two researchers to a vilification campaign by ethanol industry lobbyists,
according to Pimentel.
“Our first such report was reviewed by 26 top scientists who advised the
Secretary of Energy,” he said, “and they unanimously approved it. But two
members of Congress from ethanol-producing states had us investigated -- our
very honesty was investigated,” said Pimentel.
Patzek and Pimentel say they welcomed the investigations, which they say
only sustained their findings.
“But now I would like another investigation,” Patzek insisted, “a thorough
investigation of this entire affair.”
When asked about the Pimentel and Patzek studies, a National Ethanol Vehicle
Coalition spokesperson stated that such studies were “discredited,” adding,
“Only uneducated people would write such a thing, or believe such a thing.”
A second official from the organization stated, “I concur. Such people are
uneducated.”
Patzek denied he was uneducated, citing his co-authorship of 177 scientific
papers, and at least five books. His resume includes degrees in chemical
engineering and engineering physics, as well as a prior stint with Shell
Development where he worked on “enhanced oil recovery methods and evaluated
the future of US energy supply from tar sands, heavy oil, and coal.” He
added, “I have taken more courses in thermodynamics than almost anyone at
Berkeley.”
Patzek, who has published his findings widely, says he will not back down
and has more scientific peer-reviewed journal articles on the topic coming
out. However, said Patzek, he must now must keep future articles a secret
until after publication to avoid pressure on academic editors by ethanol
interests.
Pimentel also denied he was uneducated, explaining he was an Oxford
University graduate and author of 600 scientific papers and twenty-five
books.
“The problem is the ethanol people have a lot of money,” says Pimentel,
adding staunchly, “This is not about energy or science. What is driving
ethanol is politics and big money. You can quote me!”
A senior alternative fuels expert from a leading company within the
automotive industry that has abstained from the ethanol bandwagon concurred.
“Ethanol is just a scam,” the source said, “and I hope you have the courage
to say so publicly!”
Criticizing corn carries a price. Even a March 1997 study by the Government
Accountability Office (GAO) documenting the adverse energy tax effects of
ethanol was viciously attacked by corn interests. After the study, Sen.
Charles Grassley of Iowa in a long letter written June 6, 1997 demanded an
official explanation and a self-investigation by the GAO of itself. Throwing
down the gauntlet, Grassley demanded answers to a series of fiery,
accusatory questions:
Question 2: “[Explain why] the report is most egregiously flawed by giving
the appearance of being a cost benefit analysis when it clearly is not.”
Question 4: “Was it your intention to deceive Congress and the public, or
was this the unavoidable outcome given the narrow, specific nature of the
questions you were required to answer?”
Questions 5 and 6: “Why did you bury your admission on page 23 that this
report should not be viewed as a cost-benefit analysis, instead of
highlighting this crucial point at the beginning?”
Question 9: “Why did you fail to report that the elimination of the alcohol
fuels tax incentives would create additional consumer costs in the
reformulated gasoline markets?”
Questions 12, 13, and 14: “Did you not realize that by framing your
discussion of energy impact by measuring ethanol’s energy security benefit
in relation to its displacement of crude oil instead of [the deadly
additive] MBTE, that you would be obscuring the importance of ethanol in
reducing [deadly] MBTE imports?” Grassley’s letter even excoriated the GAO
for including the history of congressional action on behalf of ethanol.
Question 16: “What purpose was served by Appendix I, Chronology of the
Legislation and Events Affecting Ethanol Fuel Use?”
Despite Grassley’s J’Accuse, GAO officials answered point by point and
reiterated their assertion about ethanol, appending that the additional
attendant military cost was therefore a foregone conclusion.
“We concluded in our report,” reaffirmed the GAO, “that the alcohol fuels
incentives do not significantly reduce petroleum imports. Therefore, defence
expenditures and foreign assistance to protect oil supply lines from the
Middle East were appropriately beyond the scope of this report.”
The ethanol industry itself advocates the least negative study available,
this one by Argonne National Laboratory, which concluded that only
three-quarters of a billion Btu of fossil fuels are required for each 1 mm
Btu of ethanol delivered, or about three quarters of a gallon of petroleum
or equivalents to produce a single gallon of ethanol.
But, says Pimentel, “Argonne left out many of the energy inputs, such as the
energy used by farm machinery and their maintenance. They left out
processing equipment. They even left out the petroleum used in the
production of hybrid corn.”
The ethanol industry trumpets the Argonne analysis because the same study
also concludes that traditional gasoline production requires even more
petroleum, about 1.23 mm Btu of fossil energy consumed for each mm Btu of
gasoline delivered. The higher cost of producing a traditional gallon of
gasoline sets forth the ecologic and economic sophistry that because it
takes more gasoline to make gasoline than to make ethanol, ethanol is
therefore preferred.
In other words, by this thinking, ethanol functions not as a solution, but
the lesser of two energy evils. Either way, these studies ipso facto
demonstrate the inherent inefficiency of the whole concept of gasoline-based
internal combustion. Numerous studies do agree that it takes more than a
gallon of petroleum to produce and deliver a gallon of gasoline.
Importantly, all the key studies generally bypass the oil burned by the
tanks, trucks, aircraft, and naval ships incidental to the oil industry.
American ethanol by definition must work with gasoline. An oil disruption
today would halt or radically reduce ethanol production, depending upon the
severity of the disruption. Therefore, ethanol is not an alternative as much
as an adjunct with a strong lobbying and advertising movement behind it. For
those concerned about an oil addiction, corn ethanol can be compared to a
filter-tip cigarette.
Moreover, ethanol requires massive farmland and heavy petroleum-burning farm
machinery. There is not enough farmland to produce all the ethanol the
nation needs to replace gasoline. Indeed, ethanol industry proponents and
experts believe ethanol comes with a built-in ceiling: only 30 % of the
nation’s needs could be solved by ethanol and even that would require an
estimated two to three decades of additional farm, distillery, and
distribution expansion. Even if do-able, that expansion in ethanol comes at
a significant cost.
The American government pays an unnecessary 51-cent-per-gallon subsidy for
every gallon of ethanol, a price support achieved by a convergence of
lobbying and commercial interests. This subvention is granted to the oil
company blenders as an “incentive” to blend the ethanol yielded by such
giant agribusiness concerns as Cargill and ConAgra.
One of those leading corn interests, Archer Daniels Midland, has been the
subject of multiple criminal investigations, and in October 1996 it agreed
to pay the largest criminal antitrust fine in history, $ 100 mm, this for
lysine price fixing. The company’s executives in Decatur, Illinois, were
indicted right along with the company. Among the statements secretly
videotaped by the FBI’s mole was the assertion: “the customer is the enemy.”
The 51-cent-per-gallon subsidy comes by way of HR 4520, the American Jobs
Creation Act of 2004, signed into law on October 22, 2004, by President
George W. Bush. Within the Jobs Creation Act was the little-noticed
Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit. The next year, 2005, $ 2.1 bn in tax
credits were issued to oil companies to blend some 4 bn gallons of ethanol.
These were not tax deductions, but tax credits that allow a write-off
directly from the oil companies’ bottom line tax bill. In turn, the 51-cent
subsidy boosted ethanol demand which in turn raised the price of a bushel of
corn for producers such as Cargill, and concomitantly inflated the cost of
ethanol at the pump by as much as 30 %. Sources in the ethanol industry
readily concede this subsidy functions as “a pass-through subsidy” to corn
and ethanol producers.
The fast growth of ethanol in large measure is also pegged to
theintroduction of so-called Flex-Fuel cars from General Motors and Ford.
These cars, which employ a capability first achieved decades earlier by
Henry Ford in the Model T, enable twenty-first-century vehicles to
seamlessly operate on a combination of fuels, from traditional gasoline to
ethanol-rich E85. From first appearance, the introduction of Flex-Fuel cars
appears to be a dynamic move toward home-grown energy independence.
Ford has already sold some 2 mm such vehicles in the US through the
beginning of 2007 and adds many thousands more each month. GM is
aggressively marketing E85 in various parts of the Midwest. Flex-Fuel
vehicles make enormous sense for combustibles other than corn ethanol. But
every gallon of American corn ethanol consumed requires the world consume
and endure more petroleum-burning.
America’s ethanol industry is keenly aware of its dependence upon petroleum.
Its industry trade group has called for new processing plants to be
partially driven by renewables and is also investigatingutilizing other
cellulose products, such as switchgrass. But those developments are many
years away.
However the 51-cent-per-gallon corn ethanol subsidy is here today. That has
started a frantic gold rush to produce corn to sell to oil companies to
blend. Those GM and Ford Flex-Fuel vehicles and pumps sprouting throughout
the Midwest and beyond only telescope the market. In 2006, 97 ethanol plants
produced 4 bn gallons. But the industry hopes to double its output by 2012.
Scores of plants are now under construction and many more are fast jumping
from drawing board to construction. But coal is cheaper than natural gas, so
ethanol will now also become a consumer of tons of daily coal. Hence, many
of those new ethanol plants will be rushed into operation as cheap
coal-burning facilities.
For example, as of 2007 the Gold-Eagle Cooperative of Iowa was burning 300
tons of coal daily -- three railroad carloads -- to produce 150,000 gallons
of ethanol a day. Affable Gold-Eagle Cooperative general manager Brad Davis
happily explained that hazardous particulate matter was greatly reduced by
his refineries.
“This is clean coal,” he said proudly. “You can’t even see the smoke coming
out of the chimney.”
Asked if the coal was mined by traditional smoke-spewing, heavy,
diesel-thirsty coal mining equipment, and then transported by diesel trains,
and offloaded and processed by any number of greenhouse-inducing diesel
processes, Davis answered, “I guess it is.”
Ironically, ethanol is achieving genuine green independence for Brazil.
Brazilian ethanol comes from sugar cane, which American soil cannot grow in
cheap abundance. Most importantly, ethanol refineries are driven not by coal
or hydrocarbons but by a sugar cane by-product called bagasse. Hence,
Brazilian ethanol is genuinely renewable and sustainable.
Flex Fuel vehicles manufactured by Ford and GM for the Brazilian market can
use ethanol that exceeds an 85 % admixture. They can run on E100, that is,
100 % ethanol. Zooming petroleum prices in 2006 pushed Brazilian ethanol
into profitability and has already ended the country’s importation of
foreign oil. Indeed, Brazil has been exporting millions of gallons of
ethanol to the United States.
Today, most Brazilian vehicles operate on either 100 % sugar cane ethanol or
a substantial petroleum mix. Brazil owes its success story to more than two
decades of ethanol production heavily subsidized Manhattan Project-style by
the government, plus an intelligent choice of sugar cane as feedstock
choice, and the ability to drive the industry by burning alternative bagasse.
Today, Brazilian ethanol stands on its own, almost free of subsidy, as a
free market fuel -- home-grown and almost pollution free.
Brazilian sugar cane ethanol is produced in a process ultimately eight times
more efficient per gallon than corn ethanol. Yet the American importation of
Brazilian ethanol is profoundly obstructed by a 54-cent per gallon special
tax designed to keep this energy solution out of the country in favour of
petroleum-dependent corn ethanol. Indeed, even American investment in
Brazilian sugar cane ethanol has been restricted by Washington-imposed
restrictions.
The current state of affairs swirling around corn ethanol was not created by
any one branch of government but by a lobby-dollar hungry Congress working
in tandem with a petroliferous White House.
The corn lobby drove this process because the Iowa Caucuses makes corn power
indispensable to political power. That is even truer in a presidential year.
This article is adapted from Edwin Black's bestselling 2006 book Internal
Combustion.
Source: www.energypublisher.com
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