Living the American Green

An Ethanol Molecule. You know... Science Stuff!

The other week, I posted a few things about Ethanol: how the lobby was holding up the Waxman Bill, etc.  As per my usual, it was one part educated conjecture, one part politics, one part research a six parts B.S. (essentially, the patented  LtAG 9 part system!)

After Mark made the fair point that numbers might be a good thing, I tried… but lets be honest — I don’t know much about “science”.  On the other hand, I know people who know things.  Some of them even know a lot of things.

One of those people, a Mr. James C, was kind enough to tell me a little ’bout Ethanol, and about why we shouldn’t let that ship sail off to the proverbial land of the elves just yet.  (Yeah, that was a LoTR reference.  So what?)

James works for a company makes enzymes for the corn ethanol industry, so he has a dog in this fight.  However, he also has “knowledge” of “science” stuff, so we have to suspect that he knows what he be talking bout.  The following is all his words, and let me tell you: they make sense.

“I have come to believe that while corn is not the ideal crop, it is the currently the only means to reduce emissions in cars on the road today. Even when we look slightly into the future, technology is still lacking. While electric cars will become more of a reality in the future, the battery technology is not here yet and they will likely be expensive when it is. Also, we have to think about where the electricity is coming from (ie, coal is worse that solar but solar costs a lot).  Funding into fuel cells has been cut by the DOE as it’s not really a feasible technology.  Algal biodiesel likely will never happen (it’d be great if it does but there are too many hurdles such as how to collect it). (Editors Note: Crap!  We were really jazzed about that!)   Finally, we can make more efficient cars, but they will still need liquid fuel likely in conjunction with electricity (hybrid electric).  
So, while ethanol is the best thing we have going for us (we can actually significantly reduce CO2 equivalent emissions and dependence on foreign oil!!), it has unfairly gotten a black eye from the people who should be championing it, the progressives.  (Ed. Ooops.  Our Bad.) There are two mains places were it’s been knocked: food v fuel and energy/emissions balance.  There has been an overwhelming amount of misinformation surrounding corn ethanol specifically hovering around the food v fuel debate.  Put simply, there should not be a debate. Corn ethanol is made from breaking the starch into glucose using heat + enzymes.  The glucose is then fermented to ethanol and the ethanol is distilled. What comes out of the bottom end of the distilling column is dried and sold as cattle feed and known as distillers dry grains or DDGs.  DDGs are a better cattle feed than corn because it contains a higher amount of protein as the starch was removed during fermentation.  Cattle cannot digest starch, so there is no loss in nutrition.  As about 70% of the corn we eat has been densified into cattle, no corn has been taken out of the food supply.  So, when you hear about the price of tortillas being too expensive for a family in Mexico, it’s not because of ethanol. Who benefited the most from high food prices?  The food manufacturers.  You’ll notice that food prices have not tracked the price of corn – they’ve remained high while the price of corn has fallen. Why is ethanol still being blamed for this?
The other place where ethanol is knocked is in its energy and emissions balance.  One of the first studies done on the energy balance of corn ethanol was conducted by a prof at Cornell at the request of the oil companies…and of course, he found that it took more energy to make a gallon of ethanol than you got out of it.  Later studies done on corn ethanol said that you got about 1.1x the energy out with about a 25% reduction in CO2 eq emissions.  These studies used old plant data, so they didn’t include the increase in efficiency that has occurred.  Here’s a link to a new study that came out in February that shows how the emissions change when these improvements are taken into consideration.  I highly suggest reading the executive summary (~4 pages).  It says that in 2005, we’re at about 40% reduction in emissions and 1.4 net energy ratio.  Both are projected to continue increase by 2015.

It’s very discouraging to be working hard on making the world a more sustainable place only to hear a large clamour from the environmental movement that ethanol is bad. For me, it comes down to whether it’s better to drill for oil, send money out of the US, and be linked to the social/political turmoil associated with it or grow our own fuel and reinvest that money into the US.  My purpose in this is to continue and start dialogues.  Please let me know your thoughts.

Hmmmm.  Initial thoughts are that James probably has a better conception of this then I.  (Ed. no shit)   I’d like to hear more about the barriers for Algae (and other) ethanols, because the numbers that I’ve seen for what they can potentially produce are staggering.  I also have a lot of trouble arguing with anything in the closing statement of that letter — yet it gets me back to the concern that I have that the piecemeal improvements in Ethanol are being trumpeted by Exxon and BP as a reason to not put more work into truly renewable modes of travel and of power.  As James says: “I have come to believe that while corn is not the ideal crop, it is the currently the only means to reduce emissions in cars on the road today. Even when we look slightly into the future, technology is still lacking”, a statement that makes sense to me.

My concern is that this stuff takes… well, that it basically takes too much resources away from the other stuff.   (Ed. can you be any more vague??)  I don’t want to say that this means Ethanol is dead in the water: obviously, James says it isn’t and I believe him.  But my concern is with the over all direction of the movement is always always at stake.  As long as everyone sees this as a bridge technology, I’m down.  If it’s an end game, I’m real worried.

Who wrote this one?  TheAmericanGreen - The founding member of the American Green institute, and a New York based producer and writer hoping to make the jump from "freelancer" to "documentary producer". Read more from this author