Fossil Fuels: Ancient Storage

In Batteries from the Carboniferous, I noted that fossil fuels are Nature’s ancient method of storing solar and photosynthetic energy in the ground. Inadvertently, fossil fuels have served as a multimillion year old storage battery, which sat in the ground because no species had learned to use it efficiently until human beings figured out how in recent centuries.

Because using it releases a number of pollutants, however, fossil fuels are a somewhat imperfect battery.  These pollutants are: particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, various hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide (the latter two if combustion is less than 100% efficient). [Note: CO2 is not in my list of pollutants. It is the stuff of life, rather than a pollutant. You, dear reader, are 18% carbon, virtually all of which originates in CO2 in the atmosphere. Don’t try to go without carbon!]

An Analogy

In order to figure out whether burning biomass rather than fossil fuels would reduce atmospheric CO2 emission, consider the following analogy.

Whether you pay your electricity bill out of your savings account (analogous to carbon in fossil fuels) or your checking account (analogous to carbon in newer biomass), your total wealth (checking + savings, analogous to total carbon in fossil fuels and newer biomass) is the same assuming the bill is paid out with equal efficiency, i.e., all fees are equal, whichever account you use.

From the electrical company’s point of view, its revenues are also the same.

Although paying it from your checking account makes your savings account larger, you are no better or worse off, on net. So, it makes no difference which account you use, either to your net wealth or the electrical company.

What willmake a difference is being able to decrease your electricity bill or increasing the amount you bring in to your checking account. But if the total bill is the same, it makes no difference which account you use.

Similarly, what carbon is no longer tied up in fossil fuels and in newer biomass ends up in the atmosphere (minus what is dissolved in the oceans and re-used in photosynthesis). Thus, it makes little or no difference to the atmosphere whether one uses new biomass or old biomass (aka fossil fuels).

That using biomass is any more sustainable than using coal, for instance, is based on compartmentalization (between checking and savings accounts). What is more “sustainable” (or “sustainable” for a longer time) — note the quotes, I use the word advisedly, but that’s another story — is either to reduce the use of energy or to generate biomass more rapidly (without displacing something else that would generate equal or more biomass).

Finally, note that for the combustion phase, it is possible to burn fossil fuels more efficiently than biomass. Hence, the former ought to reduce CO2 emissions overall. But a more sophisticated analysis ought to consider life-cycle consequences (including CO2 released in extraction, preparation, transportation, etc., of the two forms of biomass).

Conclusion

Biomass may be renewable, politically correct, and fossil-fuel displacing. But it is unlikely to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations much, if at all.

[Ken Glozer's new book, Corn Ethanol: Who Pays, Who Benefits?, sponsored and published by Hoover University Press, will be released this month. Mr. Glozer is president of OMB Professionals, a Washington, D. C. based energy consulting firm. He was a senior executive service career professional with the White House Office of Management and Budget in the energy, environment, and agriculture area for 26 years.]

“Clearly, reducing petroleum imports with the current ethanol policy is a costly ineffective policy. The nation and its taxpayers and consumers would be far better off if the federal government adopted a competitive market-reliance policy for ethanol and thereby avoided the very substantial costs that current ethanol policy has imposed on the nation’s consumers and taxpayers. The current corn ethanol policies should be phased out over a year or two.”

My new book provides detailed a political history of how the United States ended up with current federal corn ethanol policy.

Part I relates the significant external events that have driven the politics that in turn has driven the policy since 1977. I address important questions about when the policy started, how it evolved, what were the major political and market forces that drove it, and, most important, who were the key officials that formed and shaped the policy.

Part II of the book contains an in-depth objective evaluation of the major claims made by those who have advocated the ethanol policies during the past thirty years. I probe how well the ethanol policy has worked compared to the claims made by two presidents, three federal agencies, and the corn, soybean growers, and ethanol producers.

The book evaluates the Renewal Fuels Standard (RFS), which was first enacted in 1975 then doubled, to a mandatory 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol blended into the nation’s gasoline supplies. The surprising finding—that federal ethanol policy has little to do with energy and everything to do with wealth transfer—is particularly compelling because, after three decades of federal subsidies, trade protection and most recently mandated ethanol blending, ethanol remains uneconomical.

According to the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration, ethanol never has and never will have a significant impact on petroleum imports compared to what could be achieved under a competitive market policy. Thus my sober conclusion: taxpayers and consumers are the victims of the current policy in that they have no choice but to pay and pay.

From the Preface

In recent years, the powerful U.S. economy has stumbled, and its economic core and wealth have diminished. It is therefore essential that American political leadership recognize the importance of designing and implementing cost-effective and environmentally sound policies and programs that complement and promote the market-based economy that has given Americans a high level of prosperity since the end of World War II. Competitive markets have served this nation well during this period, and competitive market policies should be supplanted only when more effective ones are found and proved.

But in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the George W. Bush administration, the Obama administration, and Congress have become enamored with a federal mandate, subsidy, and trade protection policy for corn ethanol. Federal energy subsidies for petroleum date back to the early 1900s, but as documented by two Department of Energy/Energy Information Administration reports, the rate of growth of federal energy subsidies spending is alarming.

Further, these massive and deep subsidies (grants, spending, tax credits, etc.) have been coupled with quantitative, fuel-specific mandates—the Renewal Fuels Standard (RFS) for gasoline—enacted in 2005, then doubled in 2007. This policy is a major federal-market intervention that seriously compromises and impairs a competitive market—much like the ill-fated federal-petroleum allocation and price controls of the 1970s first imposed by the Nixon administration and extended by Presidents Ford and Carter.

The RFS policy is not based on any objective empirical evidence that it works and that it is more effective than a competitive market policy in achieving either energy security or environmental goals.

It is therefore important to have access to the best, most objective information on whether this subsidies/mandate/trade protection policy works. The RFS has existed for more than three years, and there is now enough information to evaluate whether the policy in fact meets the claims made by its advocates.…

From the Conclusion

After completing a comprehensive review of the most important claims made by the advocates for federal ethanol policy, in this author’s view the policy has little to do with energy and a lot to do with wealth transfer. Only one of the claims was found to be true: the policy does create jobs in rural areas, mainly the top ten producing states.

All other claims investigated were found to be questionable or not correct. The evidence used by the responsible federal agencies (Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency) to justify the policy was found to be flawed. Even though the policy in its current form is nearly four years old (dating from the Energy Policy Act of 2005), the agencies continue to use these flawed claims to support it. The lone exception: the recently published EPA proposed regulation for the Renewable Fuels Standard.

The facts and reasons supporting the author’s conclusion were presented in Chapters 3 and 4.

First and foremost, current policy does not, based on EIA’s forecast, significantly increase domestic transportation-fuel supplies over the quantity that would be developed by a competitive market policy. You can get two-thirds the level of ethanol use in the United States without a RFS mandate, a 45 cent-per-gallon tax subsidy, corn and soybean subsidies, and an import fee on ethanol imports.

Second, current policy already has made, and will continue to make, massive wealth transfers from federal taxpayers, gasoline consumers, and food consumers to corn and soybean farmers and ethanol producers. Over $500 billion dollars in costs, it is estimated, have been or will be incurred from 2008 to 2017. The primary beneficiaries are the owners and/or operators of an estimated 270,000 corn and soybean farms located in ten Midwestern states.

Third, the large corn/soybean farms, farmers in these states reap the majority of the benefits. Large farm owners and operators in Iowa, for example, took in or will take in on average an estimated $4.3 million from 2008 to 2017.

Fourth, there is no end game for the policy. Even after thirty years of ethanol subsidies (more than seventy years for corn), the wealth transfer continues year in and year out. The policy gives every appearance of being permanent, despite the fact that it has never—and will never—produce the claimed benefits except for the increases in rural employment.

Fifth, a 2009 CBO report concluded: “It is unlikely that, on average, over the past several decades ethanol producers would have turned a profit if they had not received production subsidies.” That conclusion is compelling, if not startling, because after three decades of federal subsidies, ethanol remains uneconomic—even with the subsidies—as evidenced by the spate of ethanol-related bankruptcies and plant shutdowns in the past year.

Sixth, the safety hazards and costs of transporting the billions of gallons of ethanol produced in the Midwest to the east, gulf and west coasts mainly by rail are of major concern. Rail accidents involving ethanol tank car derailments, explosions and fires are inevitable. An event in Illinois involved tank cars of ethanol exploding and bursting into flames, killing one person and injuring several others.

Finally, under current federal ethanol policy the estimated federal budget cost for each incremental gallon of ethanol produced (on a petroleum equivalent basis) compared to a competitive market policy is $5.91 per gallon or $248.22 per barrel. At this rate to reduce U.S. petroleum imports by two million barrels per day or about 20 percent would cost over $181 billion annually just in taxpayer subsidies.

Clearly, reducing petroleum imports with the current ethanol policy is a costly ineffective policy. The nation and its taxpayers and consumers would be far better off if the federal government adopted a competitive market-reliance policy for ethanol and thereby avoided the very substantial costs that current ethanol policy has imposed on the nation’s consumers and taxpayers. The current corn ethanol policies should be phased out over a year or two.

“We the People” just booted a boatload of spendthrifts out of Congress, after they helped engineer a $1.3 trillion deficit on America’s FY-2010 budget and balloon our cumulative national debt to $13.7 trillion.

And the “bipartisan White House deficit reduction panel” chimed in with a 50-page draft proposal, offering suggestions for $3.8 trillion in future budgetary savings. The proposal targets $100 billion in Defense Department weapons programs, healthcare benefits and overseas bases. It also proposes a $13-billion cutback in the federal workforce and lining out $400 million in unnecessary printing costs.

Yet, amazingly, not even this independent commission was willing to eliminate the $6-billion sacred cow of annual ethanol subsidies! The current 45-cents-per-gallon tax credit for blending ethanol into gasoline automatically expires December 31, as does the 54-cents-a-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. So all senators and congressmen need to do is nothing, and beleaguered taxpayers will save six billion bucks.

We can only hope. Unfortunately, renewable fuel lobbyists is intent on using the lame duck session to perpetuate the special treatment. The National Corn Growers Association, Renewable Fuels Association, Growth Energy, ADM and POET ethanol count as friends incoming House Speaker John Boehner, incoming House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley, other influential Republicans and scores of prominent Democrats.

Perhaps if DePuy or Sofamor Danek donates some spinal implants, enough wavering legislators will find the backbone to challenge the subsidizers and ensure a little adult supervision over the budget process. If this election was about anything, it was about ending business as usual, ensuring energy and economic common sense, and not bankrupting the United States.

Ethanol and earmarks represent a key litmus test for Republicans and fiscal conservatives. Failure to hold the line will create a rocky road for credibility and progress next year. It should be an easy decision. It’s time for action – or more accurately, inaction.

Federal laws already require that gasoline be 10% ethanol, and EPA has announced that it will soon decide whether to allow up to 15% ethanol blends for cars and trucks built since 2007. These mandates already require that ethanol use increase from 13 billion gallons today to 36 billion by 2022, ensuring profitable markets for corn growers and ethanol producers, without subsidies. Even large corn ethanol producers like Green Plains Energy now say the subsidies are no longer needed.

The subsidies and tariffs only fatten profit margins, reduce competition, increase consumer prices, cause frayed relations with Brazil over barriers to its sugar-cane ethanol entering US markets, and stifle technological innovation that could improve production efficiencies and lessen environmental impacts.

As Examiner columnist Timothy Carney observes, “the tax credit won’t boost ethanol consumption at all in the future, because the mandate will set demand. So the tax credit will simply subsidize the ethanol that blenders – ie, oil companies – would have bought anyway.”

The corn/ethanol lobby says ending the subsidies would cost up to 160,000 jobs. However, a recent study by leading agricultural economists at Iowa State University concludes that only 300 jobs would be lost. If so, preserving the subsidies works out to $20 million for each job saved.

Meanwhile, says Louisiana State University professor Joseph Mason, the Interior Department’s heavy-handed offshore drilling moratorium could cost up to 155,000 Gulf Coast jobs. That’s on top of countless billions of lease bonus, rent, royalty and tax dollars the US Treasury will never see, because Interior, EPA, Congress and the White House have made billions of barrels of offshore, Alaskan and Lower 48 oil and gas off limits.

America could produce 670 billion gallons of oil (including 480 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel) from a splinter of ANWR equal to 1/20 of Washington, DC. Doing so would generate enormous revenues, instead of requiring perpetual subsidies. By contrast, reaching the 36-billion-gallon biofuel mandate would require 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol from cropland and wildlife habitat the size of Georgia, plus 21 billion gallons of “advanced biofuel” from switchgrass grown on additional acreage the size of South Carolina.

Opposition to extending the tax credit and tariffs also comes from a growing coalition of meat and food producers, environmental groups and consumer organizations. They emphasize that cooking corn to power cars increases corn prices, reduces farmland available for other crops, and drives up the price of beef, pork, poultry, eggs, corn syrup and all groceries made with those products. It sends meat and egg producers into foreclosure – and means fewer malnourished people can be fed under current USAID and World Food Organization budgets.

The coalition also points out that growing and processing corn into ethanol requires enormous amounts of water for every gallon of alcohol fuel produced. (Cornell University agriculture professor David Pimental estimates the inputs at 8,000 gallons of water per gallon of corn-based ethanol.) Much of the water comes from already stressed aquifers – and growing the crops results in significant pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer runoff into our rivers, lakes, bays and oceans. It also requires vast hydrocarbon resources, for fertilizers, pesticides, tractors and tanker trucks.

Producing ethanol from sugar cane carries much lower water demands and environmental impacts.

Pro-subsidy factions say $6 billion is pocket change in a $3.6-trillion federal budget. It may indeed be a small step. But all the caterwauling suggests it is a giant step for Congress – and a hugely symbolic one that can no longer be avoided. Moreover, if reductions like this are to be rejected as too trivial to trifle with, how do Nanny State legislators justify their intrusive rules on toilets, washing machines, plastic bags and light bulbs? How do they suppose cash-strapped families balance their budgets?

The ethanol mandates are enough interference in what should be a highly competitive marketplace of ideas and technologies for America’s energy future. Congress should not muddy the waters even further, by extending the subsidies and protective tariffs.

(While they’re at it, the lawmakers should also pull the plug on chicken-fat-to-biofuel subsidies. This tax credit is just another unaffordable, feel-good “green energy” boondoggle – that turns waste fat into wasted tax dollars. Reducing effluent streams, garnering positive PR, and selling their “alternative fuel” to oil companies and the Air Force, under utopian biofuel mandates, ought to be adequate incentive.)

These should be easy decisions. They merely take commitment to principles – something our legislators better start discovering, if they want to be around after the next election cycle.

___________

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death.

But the ethanol industry’s opponents are launching a counterattack. And it’s a big one. Last week, a coalition of 36 groups sent a letter to the leaders of the Senate asking them to reject “any attempt to attach a mid?level ethanol authorization amendment during the Senate’s consideration of energy legislation in the coming weeks and months. Such an amendment would be bad for consumers, bad for safety, bad for the environment, and, by placing politics over sound science, bad public policy.”

FollowTheScience.org

The group, which has dubbed itself FollowTheScience.org, may be the oddest coalition in modern American politics. Indeed, the ethanol scam is so offensive that it has united groups ranging from the American Petroleum Institute and the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club.

Members of the coalition include:

American Frozen Food Institute (AFFI)
American Lung Association
American Meat Institute (AMI)
American Petroleum Institute (API)
American Sportfishing Association (ASA)
American Watercraft Association (AWA)
Association of International Automobile Manufacturers (AIAM)
Association of Marina Industries
Bass Anglers Sportsmen Society/ESPN Outdoors
Boat Owners Association of the United States (BoatU.S.)
Center for Coastal Conservation
Clean Air Task Force
Coastal Conservation Association (CCA)
Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF)
Earthjustice
Engine Manufacturers Association (EMA)
Environmental Working Group
Friends of the Earth
Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA)
The Hispanic Institute
Motorcycle Industry Council (MIC)
National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS)
National Association of State Boating Law Administrators (NASBLA)
National Boating Federation (NBF)
National Council of Chain Restaurants (NCCR)
National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA)
National Petrochemical & Refiners Association (NPRA)
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
Outdoor Power Equipment Institute (OPEI)
Personal Watercraft Industry Association (PWIA)
Petroleum Marketers Association of America (PMAA)
Sierra Club Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council)
Snack Food Association (SFA)
Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America (SIGMA)
Specialty Vehicle Institute of America (SVIA)

Can They Stop It?

Obviously, the members of the coalition have a variety of interests, but they are united in their view that any increase in the amount of ethanol that can be blended into gasoline will be harmful. They are jumping into the fray now because the Obama administration, which was expected to approve the increase in the ethanol blend rate in June, has delayed action on ethanol until the fall.

In June Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (former governor of Iowa, the nation’s biggest ethanol-producing state) said, “I’m very confident that we’re going to see an increase in the blend rate.” The “blend rate” refers to the federal rule that limits ethanol blends to no more than 10 percent for standard automobiles. Commonly known as “E10,” the fuel contains 90 percent gasoline and 10 percent alcohol. The Obama administration bailout, which would come via approval from the EPA, will likely allow gasoline retailers to blend up to 15 percent ethanol into US gasoline supplies.

Bad Boating

And that is a big worry to automakers, boat owners, and lots of others. For instance, the National Marine Manufacturers Association, which represents the recreational boating industry, said in a filing with the EPA that any increase in the amount of ethanol in the US gasoline supply “would be premature, without sufficient scientific basis, and potentially harmful to manufacturers, consumers and the environment.”

The group told the EPA that “engine manufacturers specifically advise consumers in their owner’s manual and warranty documents that usage of incompatible fuel, including gasoline blended with more than 10 percent ethanol-blended gasoline, could void the warranty. All marine engine manufacturers warranty their products up the E10, the current maximum allowable legal limit. Marine engine manufacturers are not in a position to provide warranty support—and have not accrued warranty funds—for products run on fuels containing more than 10 percent ethanol.”

There is plenty of evidence that E10 is already causing damage to boat owners. About two years ago, lawyers in Florida sued a group of oil companies for damage allegedly done to boat fuel tanks and engines from ethanol-blended gasoline. The lawyers were claiming that consumers should be warned about the risk of using the fuel in their boats. The lawyers were denied class certification in their lawsuit late last year and their case was dismissed.

While that litigation has gone away, even a casual Google search turns up stories like this one published in July, in which veteran Texas fishing guide Dickie Colburn details the problems that he has incurred by using ethanol-blended fuel in his boat engines. Indeed, the problems with ethanol-blended gasoline in boats are so well known that many marinas are now sourcing ethanol-free gasoline for their customers.

Add in the potential damage to lawnmowers, weedwhackers, snowmobiles, and other equipment that uses small engines, and the potential damage that could occur from a move to increase the ethanol blend rate becomes obvious. That damage helps explain why the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute, which represents companies that make lawnmowers, snowblowers, chainsaws and the like, is part of FollowtheScience.org. The OPEI has said that an increase in the ethanol blend rate “could damage millions of forestry, lawn and garden, and other small engine products currently housed in consumers’ garages.”

Ethanol, which is hydrophilic and corrosive, is simply a poor substitute for refined oil products. And by lavishing subsidies and mandates on the corn ethanol industry (this year alone, federal subsidies to the corn ethanol sector will likely total $5.5 billion) Congress is enriching a very small group of ethanol producers and corn farmers and it is doing so at the cost of consumers and taxpayers. Or in economic terms, Congress is concentrating the benefits while diffusing the costs.

Conclusion

A few months ago, an increase in the ethanol blend rate looked like a certainty. Now, with the anti-ethanol groups on the attack, all bets are off. The good news is that the anti-ethanol forces are on the attack. The bad news: even if they are able to prevent an increase in the ethanol blend rate, the destruction and waste that we are already seeing due to corn-based ethanol will likely be with us for years to come.

“[Government] intervention that impinges on complex market forces can produce both unpredicted and unpredictable results.”

- Robert Bradley, Oil, Gas, and Government: The U.S. Experience (vol. 2), p. 1791.

Of all the environmental boondoggles of recent years, the biggest must be corn ethanol. As MasterResource’s Ken Green wrote in an article summarizing ethanol’s impact on the environment:

Contrary to popular belief, ethanol fuel will do little or nothing to increase our energy security or stabilize fuel prices. Instead, it will increase greenhouse gas emissions, local air pollutant emissions, fresh water scarcity, water pollution (both riparian and oceanic), land and ecosystem consumption, and food prices.

In a recent speech, Green elaborated, pointing out

the absolute fiasco of corn ethanol, which has caused increases in air pollution, water pollution, freshwater consumption, coastal pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and food prices.

In 1997, the U.S. GAO found that the ethanol production process produces more nitrous oxide and other powerful greenhouse gases than does gasoline production. A decade later, Colorado scientists Jan Kreider and Peter Curtiss concluded that carbon dioxide emissions in the production cycle are about 50 percent higher for ethanol than for traditional fossil fuels.

Making ethanol from cellulosic plants such as switch grass won’t help. In fact, researcher Timothy Searchinger and colleagues calculated that ethanol from switch grass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, would increase greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent compared to using regular gasoline.

Then there’s local air pollution. The EPA says using more ethanol fuel would increase ozone-producing chemicals. Mark Jacobson, a researcher at Stanford University, recently estimated that widespread switching to a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline might increase ozone-related mortality, hospitalization and asthma by about 9 percent in Los Angeles and 4 percent in the United States as a whole.

Green then turned to water usage and water pollution.

Messrs. Kreider and Curtiss estimate that growing and refining corn for a gallon of corn ethanol today requires about 140 gallons of water. That would mean the 5.4 million gallons of corn ethanol used in America in 2006 required the use of 756 million gallons of fresh water.

Things do not look much better for ethanol made from cellulose crops, which require between 146 and 149 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol fuel, depending on the scale of production. To meet the Bush administration’s target of 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels production in the United States by 2017 with cellulosic ethanol would require as much water as flows in the Colorado River every year.

There’s a water pollution issue, as well. The National Academy of Sciences points out that expanding corn-based ethanol production without new environmental protection policies would pose a “considerable” threat to water quality. Corn requires more fertilizers and pesticides than other food or biofuel crops. Pesticide contamination is already highest in the Corn Belt, and nitrogen fertilizer runoff from corn already produces the most serious agricultural impact on the Mississippi River.

Fertilizer runoff does not just pollute local waters. Each summer, the nitrogen fertilizers in the Mississippi hit the Gulf of Mexico, creating a large dead zone–a region of oxygen-deprived waters unable to support sea life that extends for more than 10,000 square kilometers. The same phenomenon occurs in Chesapeake Bay.

A recent study by researchers at the University of British Columbia shows that if the United States were to meet its proposed ethanol production goals of 15 billion to 36 billion gallons of corn and cellulosic ethanol by 2022, nitrogen flows to the Gulf of Mexico would increase by 10 percent to 34 percent.

And then the issues that have been most publicized: land consumption and food prices.

In a February Science article, researchers calculated that projected corn ethanol production in 2016 would require 43 percent of the land harvested for corn in 2004 that otherwise was used to feed livestock. This represents an enormous change in land use–to either replace the grain lost to food production by vastly expanding corn fields–or a significant increase in food prices of the sort we’ve already seen due to scarcity of grain raised for human and livestock consumption.

The environmental movement deserves a major part of the blame for the ethanol boondoggle that is playing out in the United States. Ethanol was introduced as a fuel additive intended to oxygenate fuel, reducing carbon monoxide emissions, and its use spread from there into greenhouse gas control, urged on by environmentalists who wanted to pretend that eliminating gasoline would be cheap and easy. Too many anti-market groups went along with ethanol to promote renewables in general. Only with scientific scrutiny has the truth come out that ethanol is negative, not positive, for the environment in important ways.

Epstein on Ethanol

The latest lament of ethanol’s unintended environmental consequences is Paul R. Epstein’s letter in Saturday’s New York Times. (Epstein is associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.)

To the Editor:

Re “E.P.A. Says It Expects to Raise Amount of Ethanol Allowed in Fuel Blends to 15%” (Business Day, Dec. 2):

As the Environmental Protection Agency makes plans to raise the amount of ethanol allowed in fuel blends, there is a critical health and environmental issue to consider: burning ethanol/gasoline mixtures produces volatile organic compounds, like formaldehyde, precursors of smog.

Smog (ground-level ozone) is toxic to the lining of the lungs and traps heat, worsening the “urban heat island effect” whereby the average temperatures are 7 degrees Fahrenheit above rural areas, making urban heat waves particularly lethal. Burning biofuels thus increases vulnerability to climate change and the accompanying increase in heat waves.

The best transport solutions are not alternative liquid fuels (from biomass, tar sands or coal). Electric vehicles, plugged into cleanly powered smart grids, and healthy cities linked by light rails, are a complementary set of solutions that serve adaptation and mitigation (climate stabilization), and come with enormous health, economic and environmental co-benefits.

We must learn to burn less of everything and leave fossil fuels in the ground.

The last two paragraphs revert to climate alarmism (and probably a peak oil mentality) and should be discounted. But the first two paragraphs are reason enough for public policymakers to consider the public good of removing ethanol subsidies. Good money should not be thrown after bad.

Consumers, not politicians, should decide the what, when, and where of energy consumption for transportation as for the stationary market. With environmental groups now pressuring the Obama Administration to reverse course, a rare victory for free energy markets could be possible.

Appendix: Ethanol and Unintended Consequences

A Google search for “ethanol and unintended consequences” lists a variety of issues including higher CO2 from land clearance, higher food and fuel prices, “invasive species” growth, and water depletion in dry places such as California. There are undoubtedly more issues—some foreseen but many not—that can be added to this list by readers.