The News Journal, DE
07-31-06
With panaceas so rare, go easy on predictions
"We have the ability to turn American farm lands into fields rich with energy
potential," Sen. Tom Carper wrote in a Delaware Voice essay this month. What
he didn't mention are the potential problems connected with increasing our
dependency on crop-based biofuels.
One of those problems is being felt at the Delaware pumps these days, as a
story emphasized last week. That gasoline containing corn-based ethanol,
principally required because our air is polluted by power plants, is considerably
more expensive.
The problem goes well beyond cost, though, because a number of experts are
now saying that biofuels can never replace gasoline and that greater use of corn
and other crops for fuel can severely affect agricultural markets and prices.
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Intrinsic problems in alternatives to our dependence on oil are not confined to
biofuels. The increasingly touted nuclear energy still scares us with its deadly
possibilities from accidents and its unresolved problem of the disposal of nuclear
wastes. Wind turbines are being deplored for their noise, their danger to bird
migration and even unsightliness. Methane from barnyard wastes is still largely
an infant industry. Drilling for more oil in environmentally sensitive areas has
strong opposition.
That something needs to be done, though, is clear as our nation's oil usage
continues to increase amid a variety of dangers. Those potential interruptions in
the oil supply include terrorist attacks on Saudi oil facilities, Nigerian wells and
pipelines, and Iraqi ports; oil worker strikes in Venezuela and Nigeria; storms in
the Gulf of Mexico and the Black Sea; and the continuing Middle East crises. A
pessimistic article in a recent Esquire also listed the possibility that an aroused
Iran might mine the Straits of Hormuz through which a fifth of the world's oil
supply ships daily.
We still aren't ordering American automakers to increase sharply the minimum
miles-per-gallon for cars and trucks as the U. S. industry lags behind Japan.
Most experts believe that cars propelled by fuels other than gasoline or diesel will
never capture much of the market. Oil refining capacity also remains far beyond
demand and there's no sign that will improve.
So a lot of faith is placed, as in Carper's article, on biofuels. He points out, for
example, that Brazil's vehicle fuels are largely ethanol as that South American
country seeks energy independence. But Brazil has 60,000 miles of paved roads
and uses 10 billion gallons of fuel a year, as compared to America's 4 million
miles and 170 billion gallons. And Brazil's large sugar crop gives it lots of
agricultural waste to make ethanol.
That point was made in a recent Washington Post article by James Jordan and
James Powell, research professors in the Maglev Research Center at
Polytechnic University of New York. They point out even if every square inch of
our country's farmland was devoted to crops to be made into corn-based ethanol,
it would still meet just 15 percent of demand.
Other experts paint an even more dire picture. If too much crop land is used for
fuel instead, the food supply might well dwindle and prices rise sharply. Already a
fifth of this year's corn harvest will be used for ethanol. Robert Wisner, an
economist at Iowa State University at Ames, said in last week's Christian
Science Monitor that "the price of feed corn for cattle, pork and poultry could rise
60 to 70 percent in the next two years" -- another headache for already squeezed
farmers.
Let's explore all the possibilities but before we proclaim something as a panacea
for the oil crisis, let's be sure we've considered all the ramifications of
alternatives.
Harry F. Themal has been writing for The News Journal since 1959.