The environmental value of corn ethanol got a ringing endorsement Thursday from EPA chief Stephen Johnson.
Johnson declined a request to cut the Renewable Fuel Standard embedded in the 2007 Energy Act. The RFS mandates 9 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol be blended into the fuel supply this year, rising steadily to 15 billion gallons by 2015, and then holding steady at 15 billion gallons until 2022.
To produce 9 billion gallons this year, ethanol makers will churn through about a third of the U.S. corn crop. If corn production holds steady through 2015 -- not an unreasonable assumption, considering that it's already pretty much maxed out -- we'll be turning 55 percent of the U.S. corn crop into car fuel within seven years.
Consider that the U.S produces about 40 percent of the world's corn -- more than any other nation by a wide margin. The U.S. mandate has been pretty definitively linked to a rise in global food prices that could push 100 million additional people into poverty conditions.
Consider also that corn is an extremely heavy user of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, which emits a greenhouse gas called nitrous oxide. The EPA itself terms nitrous oxide a greenhouse gas "about 310 times more powerful than carbon dioxide."
Finally, consider that every gallon of ethanol that gets mixed into the fuel supply costs taxpayers $0.51. Given the mounting challenges of climate change and energy scarcity, do we really have $4.5 billion-$7.5 billion to drop on a program that most serious people consider environmentally worthless, at best?
Yet the EPA's Johnson can see nothing wrong with this wild-eyed rush to turn half of the corn crop into car fuel. Here's what he declared in a press release upholding the RFS:
The RFS remains an important tool in our ongoing efforts to reduce America's greenhouse gas emissions and lessen our dependence on foreign oil, in aggressive yet practical ways.
Riiiiight. Of course, getting a ringing endorsement from Johnson on environmental grounds is like having Al Capone sign off on the legality of your gun-running operation. Guy's got a bit of a credibility problem.
Of course, no one really challenged the RFS on environmental grounds. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) requested the RFS waiver on economic grounds -- specifically, on grounds that higher corn prices are crimping the profits of industrial meat producers.
"Governor Hairdo," as he's known in certain Austin circles, learned crony capitalism at the knee of his predecessor, Goerge W. Bush. And Perry evidently learned well. From the Houston Chronicle:
Poultry producer Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim spent more than $9,000 on airfare in June so Gov. Rick Perry could attend a news conference promoting a waiver from federal ethanol mandates that Pilgrim wants.
Perry requested the waiver from the federal Environmental Protection Agency in April after meeting with Pilgrim in March. The Houston Chronicle reported this month that six days after that March meeting, Pilgrim donated $100,000 to the Republican Governors Association, which Perry heads as chairman.
This is one of those pox-on-all-your-houses deals. Yes, we need to gut the RFS. Turning half the U.S. corn crop into car fuel is insane. But we also need to rein in the vast environmental abuses of industrial-meat giants like Pilgrim's Pride.
EPA demands attorneys remove video critical of cap-and-trade
Comments
View as Flat
John former Marine Posted 10:19 am
07 Aug 2008
Beef/Pork CAFO production
High fructose corn syrup
I actually think that ethanol is probably only the 3rd worst thing you can do with acreage/fertilizer/energy and food. In fact, if ethanol is putting a squeeze on factory farms, I'd say it's a good thing.
It would probably be better if we just didn't grow the corn at all. Let's take the ethanol out of gas, get more efficient cars (or give up the cars), swear off CAFO meat and soft drinks/processed food.
Il faut cultiver notre jardin.
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Jonas Posted 10:38 am
07 Aug 2008
This is already happening, but not fast enough.
Remember: 75% of the world's poor are farmers. They urgently need investments, and this only happens when agricultural prices stay high.
The worst thing that could happen to the world's poor, is a drop in food prices, back to the catastrophic levels seen over the past decades.
So that's the only real benefit I can see in America's corn ethanol adventure. It is stimulating the most important investment cycle of the past 200 years, capable of ending world poverty and hunger once and for all.
But that's a huge benefit, isn't it?
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:34 pm
07 Aug 2008
If the millions upon millions of fertile yet unused acres of farmland he has alluded to in past posts really exist, why are grassland, wetland, and forest carbon sinks in Africa and South America going under the plow?
With three billion more mouths in the pipeline, just how smart is it to divert arable land to car fuel?
Agriculture has played a minor role in decreasing poverty in South Korea, India, and China and it will have a minor role in Cuba, North Korea, and African countries as well. Agriculture is too dispersed and easily mechanized to provide high incomes for dense populations. Food prices high enough to end poverty in Africa would starve (are starving) millions both in Africa and elsewhere.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 1:59 pm
07 Aug 2008
I was using 296, but I'll take that.
The vital fact on ammonia fertilizer is that the nitrous oxide it emiotsd is equal in GHG effect to 2/3 of the CO2 that the crop absorbs.
So even if one would buy the fallacy that corn ethanol is carbon neutral because it emits CO2 that was previously absorbed by the crop, that would set the purported (fake) neutrality back by 2/3.
That's a big cut.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Ron Steenblik Posted 4:09 pm
07 Aug 2008
In the case of U.S. corn specifically, that would have meant restoring its price to levels reflecting production costs, rather than levels that for years fell below production costs.
But -- no surprise -- resistance to that kind of approach has been strong among crop producers in the USA and the EU. So, rather, we have gotten instead a new Farm Bill that maintains the status quo, and a biofuels policy that has driven grain prices far above long-run production costs.
Jonas's enthusiasm for that policy is bizzare, for the reasons BioD explains. The kind of gradual return to market rather than policy-determined prices envisaged by the agricultural policy reformers would have allowed both producers and consumers in the developing world time to adjust to the new situation. The kind of boom-bust situation that we are experiencing instead is good for few people other than those who own good arable land already and supply the inputs to farming, and of course those adroit speculators who can make a fast buck in the commodity markets.
These are only my personal opinions.
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vakibs Posted 7:30 pm
07 Aug 2008
World's resources are finite and these are being exploited by a select few, in total disregard to the rest.
USA is a huge country. It has enormous energy, land and water resources. It is sparsely populated (if you compare with the densities in Europe, Japan, China or India). So in principle, USA should be comfortably taking care of itself.
But no. It is importing a lot of highly finished products which depend on a lot of raw materials. For example, animal feed is being imported from other countries. Finished goods which require a lot of energy, water and metals are being imported from China. And energy is being imported from middle east.
Americans leave an enormous footprint everywhere else in the world. Several places where they leave their footprint are still unindustrialized and suffer continued poverty. For energy, Americans use 7794.8 kg of oil equivalent per capita per year.
USA is not alone in doing this. Japan leaves a huge water footprint everywhere else. No industrialized country can escape this guilt.
If the size of these footprints can be reduced, the rest of the world will have an access to resources. This can be done very painlessly, due to increased efficiency in our technologies. We should just stop wasting resources - whether energy, land or water.
Each step in reducing this wastage will help the rest of the world grow in prosperity.
Biofuels are only a minor footnote in the list of resources that Americans are hogging. Further, as long as biofuels are not being imported, they will remain purely American and leave no footprint elsewhere in the world.
If Americans can reduce their energy demands, the energy prices will fall and the rest of the world will be able to afford energy.
As the noble prized economist Amartya Sen demonstrates, it is not the quantity of food available that is responsible for famine, but the affordability of food amongst the poor.
When the world's population grows rich uniformly, there will be no hunger anywhere. The poor countries lack capital for investment in automating their means of production. When this capital arrives somehow, their economies will grow and their farm yields will also improve.
What Jonas says is that biofuels might push American investors to invest in farmlands abroad. I think this is plausible, but we don't have to wait for biofuels to release this investment.
In fact, providing this investment is a promise made by USA, Europe and Japan in their commitment to the millenium development goals. 0.7% of their GDP is sufficient kickstart economic development in poor countries.
As long as this is not done, poor countries will remain poor. They cannot afford either food or energy.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 7:52 pm
07 Aug 2008
The issue of displacement has been hashed and rehashed on Gristmill for months if not years. It is the central premise of Tim Searchinger et al.'s (2008) analysis of the net GHG effects of devoting arable land to the production of biofuels.
You mentioned that "animal feed is being imported from other countries". Why do you think that is so? In part it is so because more and more grains (feedwheat, barley, oats) that would have otherwise gone into the production of animal feed are being displaced by corn and now have to be produced in other countries.
In 2007, U.S. farmers expanded their corn acreage by 19.5%, mainly at the expense of soybeans. Some of that reduced U.S. soybean production was displaced to formerly forested land in Latin America.
We live in an integrated world. We cannot expect that a massively inefficient import substitution policy will not have knock-on effects elsewhere.
These are only my personal opinions.
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justlou Posted 9:37 pm
07 Aug 2008
Moving up the demand curve toward 55% of the corn crop along with tight supplies and short carryovers will keep corn prices high enough to make corn ethanol unprofitable. And should that 55% become completely untenable when a major Midwest drought significantly lowers crop yields, the government would be forced to enter the market, ration supply and at least temporarily reduce the corn ethanol squeeze.
Should Obama become president, I don't expect any change in the policy with a new EPA administrator. And especially not if Bayh, a champion of corn ethanol, becomes his VP.
In a technocracy, chosen technologies, good or bad, along with the ideologues, special interests, investors, and compromised politicians and appointees have a long shelf life and momentum -- the blind stampede. And it is largely those of us who have fuel tanks to fill and who are geared to the technocratic machine that are ultimately responsible for this fiasco. But even though we are dependent on it does not mean we have to defend it or justify it by furthering irrational or insane course adjustments.
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Allen T Posted 2:04 am
08 Aug 2008
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archigeek Posted 2:08 am
08 Aug 2008
The mellotron is your friend.
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Biodiversivist Posted 4:13 am
10 Aug 2008
We purchase a relatively small percent of our oil from the Middle East, which could be entirely eliminated with properly inflated tires, reduced speed limits or an increase in average gas mileage from 24 mpg to 26 mpg.
Environmentally speaking, corn ethanol has been shown by numerous independent peer reviewed scientific studies to be far worse overall for the environment than even gasoline.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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