Something Fishy with Ethanol?

From Sustainablog, a report on turning grass (not just corn) to ethanol, and doing it in a way that does not rely on fossil fuel (for production, at least) and may have ancillary benefits to local farmers.

Still, we need to keep questioning whether ethanol is really a useful solution. From zFacts: For conventional production, it takes 3 units of input energy to make 4 units of ethanol energy, not a great efficiency. Biodiesel on the other hand yields 3.2 units of energy for each unit of input energy. ChuBlogga whacks ethanol hard in overall energy efficiency.

So perhaps this is why poor old Dan Rather was blindsided again in a CBS "60 Minutes" report on ethanol, where some car company executives are getting all dewy-eyed on ethanol's suddenly rising potential. When big corporations start supporting a non-fossil fuel energy strategy that relies heavily on fossil fuel to produce, you have to say "hmmmm."

From a great book, Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change (New Society Publishers):

"Ethanol's potential has been blocked by the oil companies, however. In the early 1920s, cars needed an additive to boost octane and eliminate engine knocking. With its high octane rating, ethanol was the perfect choice, but it would have displaced 10 percent of the gasoline, so the oil industry chose to add lead instead. By 1970, lead's harmfulness had caused it to be banned. Once again, the oil industry could have chosen ethanol. Instead, they reformulated their gas to include more benzene, toluene and xylene. By 1990, the government had to limit these because of their toxicity, and Congress required the oil companies to add 2 percent oxygen to their gas in big cities. This can be achieved by adding 6 percent ethanol. About 20 percent of gasoline now does contain ethanol, but for the remaining 80 percent, the oil companies chose MTBE, an oil-derived product that causes groundwater pollution when it leaks. Thanks to MTBE, communities from California to New England now have polluted groundwater."

MTBE is really toxic stuff that persists in the environment, too.

I like ethanol's use of organic waste that otherwise might just rot unproductively. And at least it's home-grown (wave the flag here). But if the nation's resources are used to back it exclusively as the fossil-fuel alternative, we're being sold a bill of goods. We need to ask tough questions about ethanol while keeping the goal of reduced oil dependence in the forefront.

-- Paul Andrews, GreenforGood

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