Issue date: 11/9/07 Section: Opinion

Opinion Columnist: Wes Kimbell

Media Credit: Fred Lambuth [Click to enlarge]

Ethanol these days seems to be designated as the key ingredient in a rehab program to get the U.S off its addiction to oil. Its proponents tout ethanol as a clean, renewable and sustainable energy source and claim that we should invest millions in its production, not to mention the implementation of heavy government subsidies for corn farmers who produce most of the United States' ethanol. It's a cheaper and a more secure alternative to fossil fuels, right? We should ramp up production as much as we can as soon as we can.

But before you go buy that new iPod with the money you think you'll save from the switch to ethanol to fuel you car, there are a few things you should realize - most notably that ethanol is not a truly renewable energy source nor more dependable than oil.

There are a growing number of experts coming out against ethanol as a practical domestic energy source who have less political motivations than ethanol's proponents. These experts are going against the politically motivated proponents of ethanol such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture and even President Bush, who signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 promoting ethanol. The president vowed that the bill would "double the amount of ethanol and biodiesel in our fuel supply over the next seven years."

Meet James and Stephen Eaves. They are two of the many experts that are not so happy with ethanol. They ask two important questions in their article in Energy Policy that have not previously been raised or thoroughly discussed concerning ethanol as an alterative to gasoline: 1) How much gasoline could really be displaced if ethanol was produced in a sustainable way? 2) Is ethanol really more reliable than gasoline?

In their analysis, James and Stephen Eaves convert energy from fossil fuel sources to equivalent amounts of ethanol to rule out the ambiguity of an analysis that mixes fossil fuels and ethanol. First they analyzed the data from the United States Department of Agriculture's findings. The USDA analyzed the total production picture of ethanol and calculated the total energy used in the process to produce one liter of ethanol. From growing the corn to processing and shipping the ethanol, the USDA calculated that a liter of ethanol contains roughly 23.6 MJ of net energy. This also includes what the USDA calls an "energy credit" of 3.8 MJ which is energy in the co-product.

But the report by the Eaveses argues the USDA fails to consider the fact that if a significant enough amount of ethanol was produced to displace significant fossil fuel, this extra "energy credit" would be surplus and new energy would be required to dispose of this surplus. This would then mean 25.6 percent of each liter of ethanol creates a net energy gain.

It's interesting that when using this data, we see that even if the United States devoted all its corn production to the production of ethanol "we could displace only about 3.5 percent of current gasoline consumption." I can only imagine what this would do to the price of corn. This is bad news to the poor who rely on U.S. corn exports to survive. It is also a big problem if our goal is to replace gasoline with even a limited amount of ethanol.

The next important question is the reliability of ethanol as a source of energy. A big reason for the push for ethanol is to decrease our massive consumption of crude oil. We rely on crude oil mostly from volatile areas of the world. If we can adopt a domestic source of energy we could live more securely knowing that the Middle East is not involved.

But again, the Energy Policy report by the Eaveses puts a damper on things. They compare the corn-yield variability to the variability of oil in the period between 1960 and 2005, a period that includes numerous oil shocks and oil wars.

Based on this data, in twenty years we can expect corn yields to decline by 31.8 percent and oil exports to decline by 14.9 percent. Keep in mind that this includes extremely volatile times of oil production around the world. This means if we displaced gasoline with ethanol we would replace geopolitical risks with a yield risk and, as stated by the Eaveses, "history suggests that yield risk is about twice as high."

When we answer the two questions posed by the Eaveses, ethanol is not a sufficient alternative to gasoline. It could provide a small amount of relief, which would be useful to a small degree. But the truth is, we need to continue to search for a better alternative.

You can read the full report by James and Stephen Eaves in Policy Analysis from http://www.elsevier.com and searching for "Renewable corn-ethanol and energy security."

- Wes Kimbell is a senior international studies major.

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