A Corny Idea
By Byron King
Did you know that corn is a type of food? If you do, then you may have keener insight
than some people who write headlines at The New York Times. I mention this because of
the rather curious headline above a Jan. 5, 2007 article in the business section of the
Times: "Rise in Ethanol Raises Concerns about Corn as a Food."
Huh? OK, let me see if I follow the logic. The background issue is that the world needs to
find substitutes for its depleting supplies of oil and natural gas. We know that. We also
know that ethanol is one of those potential oil substitutes. People have been running
vehicles on ethanol for well over a century. And we know that a lot of corn is presently
being diverted to manufacture ethanol. Even so, doesn't corn remain a food first and a
fuel second?
The Old Gray Lady framed the food-versus-fuel issue in the first paragraph of the story:
"Renewing concerns about whether there will be enough corn to support the demand for
both fuel and food, a new study has found that ethanol plants could use as much as half
of America's corn crop next year."
What? The U.S. will use half its corn crop next year to manufacture ethanol? This raises a
kernel of concern with me.
As I am sure you all understand, corn that is used to manufacture ethanol will not be
available for other things, like eating. Nor will this ethanol-destined corn be used to feed
other animals, or turned into other foodstuffs, let alone exported to raise foreign exchange
for the U.S. And of course, the price of corn will rise.
So corn-based food, and products derived from corn, will become more expensive. And I
know, so you don't have to remind me, that farmers will respond to the price signals and
grow more corn. But I hope you also realize that the farmers will do this by using more
tractor fuel, fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, and myriad of other substances derived from
oil and natural gas. There is no free lunch...or free corn.
The U.S. currently has 116 ethanol plants in production. But new plants are sprouting up
across the United States. According to a recent study by the environmental group Earth
Policy Institute, 79 ethanol plants are currently under construction in the U.S. When
completed, by 2008, these new plants will more than double the annual U.S. ethanol
production capacity, to 11 billion gallons. In addition, there are at least 200 more ethanol
plants in the planning stages in the U.S.
The forecast annual U.S. production of 11 billion gallons of ethanol translates into about
262 million barrels. Sounds like a lot of fuel, until you adjust for the energy density of
ethanol, which is far lower, only 59.5%, than an equivalent barrel of gasoline. The
standard, accepted measurement of energy density for ethanol is 26.8 megajoules per
kilogram. This clearly compares unfavorably with the energy density of gasoline at 45
megajoules per kilogram.
In other words, 262 million barrels of ethanol will yield 60% less energy when burned
than an equivalent volume of gasoline. We won't go into a long discussion of that just
now. Nor will we get into the energy return on energy investment (EROEI) of ethanol,
which is about break-even at best. No, we won't go there. Let's take a look at some telling
comparisons...
262 million barrels of ethanol per year translates into about 718,000 barrels per day.
(Divide by 365 days in the year.) In terms of volume, this is the energy equivalent of
replacing about two supertankers full of imported oil every day. OK, not bad, and this
looks like a lot of fuel if you are standing next to one of the two supertankers, but it is a
drop in the bucket of U.S. national aggregate demand for liquid fuel - less than 3.5% of
U.S. daily oil consumption of about 21 million barrels.
Another way to look at it is that each ethanol plant, on average producing 3,680 barrels of
product, will yield the ethanol equivalent of what is commonly considered to be a small
onshore oil field. But consider the EROEI of ethanol for a moment. On an ongoing basis,
the oil field is producing oil with only the "energy input" of the pumps that lift the oil out
of the ground. Even today, with oil drilling occurring in remote locales, in deep waters,
and with wells that penetrate to great depth, the EROEI for the world oil industry is
estimated to be between 25- to-1 and 30-to-1.
By contrast, the ethanol plant requires far more energy to operate, on an ongoing basis,
than does the oil field. The EROEI for corn-based ethanol, produced in the U.S., has been
estimated at anywhere between .8-to-1, or below the break-even point, and the slightly
energy-positive 2- or 3-to-1, depending on who is doing the calculating. Even if you grant
the high number, it is clear that producing ethanol from corn provides about only onetenth the EROEI of current oil drilling (3 for ethanol, versus 30 for oil drilling).
Here is another comparison. 718,000 barrels of ethanol per day is somewhat less than the
amount of oil that the U.S. produces daily from its vast array of humble, old stripper oil
wells, about 900,000 barrels per day. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the
U.S. has 393,000 oil stripper wells in service. And there are about 260,000 natural gas
stripper wells in service. These wells are typically operated by small, independent
companies and pull product out of older fields that are long past their peaks.
The definition of a stripper well applies to oil wells delivering no more than 10 barrels
per day and gas wells
delivering no more than 60,000 cubic feet per day. Clearly, therefore, the stripper well
industry is not in any way capable of supplying the U.S. with anything approaching its
cumulative daily energy demand for liquid fuel. And the corn-based ethanol industry is
still quite a bit smaller than the stripper well industry.
Lastly, wrap your brain around this comparison: The amount of grain that is required to
fill a 25-gallon tank with ethanol, one time, could otherwise feed one person for a year.
So will the U.S. really wind up converting one of its largest food crops into a massive
fuel crop? The answer is no.
According to the statistics, as published in The New York Times, no less, ethanol
production from existing plants and plants under construction is on track to consume
about half of the U.S. corn crop. In some localities of the U.S. Midwest, almost all corn is
already under agreement to be sold for ethanol production, essentially leaving no corn for
other local farming needs. This will certainly cause a ripple effect throughout many
farming communities, all the way to the shelves of the grocery stores. And according to
Cornell researcher David Pimental, if the entire U.S. grain crop were converted to ethanol,
it would still only satisfy about 15% of U.S. automotive fuel needs.
The take-away point here is that the full-court press now ongoing in the U.S. to build
plants and manufacture ethanol from agricultural corn will not provide any sort of longterm energy salvation for the nation. Rather, it will destabilize the nation's food supply
and disrupt traditional export patterns, all for the sake of converting
fossil-fuel based inputs into ethanol. From a national security standpoint, therefore, largescale ethanol production from corn will not make the nation more secure in any
measurable way. We would still need to important billions of barrels of crude oil to
produce our billions of barrels of ethanol. In fact, based on current technologies, we
would consume about 5 to 8 billion gallons of oil equivalent (boe) to produce the 11
billions gallons of ethanol we expect to produce by 2009. I would hardly call that "energy
independence."
Maybe there is a better idea out there for making ethanol from cellulose waste products.
And it is not as if a diversity of energy resources is ever a bad idea. So some production
of ethanol from corn makes sense. But sometimes, just because something is a good idea,
it does not necessarily follow that more of it is a better idea. It is the same thing with
corn-based ethanol. Pro-ethanol agricultural, industrial, transportation, and tax policies
will not provide the country with anything like the volumes of motor fuel that it needs to
run the existing transportation grid. And manufacturing ethanol from corn will
dramatically disrupt the U.S. food supply. Eventually, the nation will reap what it sows.
Dear Rude,
Byron is dishonest in the "Food Scare" argument. Very little corn is consumed directly by
humans. Most of it is consumed by cattle - not poultry and pork. The ethanol can be
extracted and the Wet Distiller's Grains can be fed to cattle. When an ethanol plant is
located in the middle of corn country to minimize transportation costs right next to a
feedlot right next to a packer and manure is burned to co-generate steam and electricity
for the ethanol plant, and the excess electricity is sold into the grid, gasoline can not
compete even though ethanol has 30% less energy content.
Byron ignores the contribution that the Deep South could make through sugar cane
instead of subsidized
cotton...Ethanol from sugar cane is more efficient because you don't have to enzyme
convert the starch to sugar as you do with corn. You burn the waste (bagasse) to generate
the steam and electricity requirements of the ethanol plant. You use varieties of sugarcane
which can fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere via gluconacetobacter
diazotrophicus bacteria in the rootzone...
This eliminates the need for natural gas derived nitrogen fertilizers. This can be done
right now. In the future, as the necessary enzymes are developed, cellulosic ethanol from
the entire sugarcane plant, corn, milo, wheat stover can make a significant contribution.
All of the 36 million acres in the Conservation Reserve Program can grow switchgrass
without impacting current crops at all!
Soydiesel from soybeans which fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere and do not
require natural gas derived nitrogen fertilizers are already making a contribution to low
sulfur diesel. Plus soydiesel has good lubricity vs injectors...
Ethanol was never meant to be the TOTAL solution to U.S. energy independence. It
initially was meant to replace MTBE which was contaminating ground water. E10 and
even E20 is easily achievable. Throw in hundreds of thousands of flex fuel vehicles
which are available now burning E-85, and ethanol contributes significantly to U.S.
energy independence. We simply must achieve energy independence through a
diversified approach:
1. Nuclear
2. Clean Coal
3. Increased U.S. drilling in Alaska and the Left Coast
4. Canadian Tar Sands
5. U.S. Oil Shale
6. Wind
7. Solar
8. Geothermal
9. Hydro-electric
10. Ethanol
11. Soydiesel
12. Hydrogen from electrolysis of seawater with electricity from nuclear power plants
Best regards,
Gary Davis
Kansas Wheat Farmer
-----------------------
Dear Rude,
The production of ethanol from corn only consumes the starch (which is converted to
sugar by enzymes). The protein is still available for animal consumption in the form of
either wet distillers grain (WDG) or dried
distillers grain (DDGS). The germ is also removed before the corn is processed. So Mr.
King evidently did not do much research and certainly did a disfavor to the ethanol
industry by scaring the public when he stated:
"As I am sure you all understand, corn that is used to manufacture ethanol will not be
available for other things, like eating. Nor will this ethanol-destined corn be used to feed
other animals, or turned into other foodstuffs, let alone exported to raise foreign exchange
for the U.S. And of course, the price of corn will rise."
Regretfully,
Jeff Larson
-----------------------------Bryon,
I totally agree with you that making ethanol from corn is silly and wasteful. However,
there are other ways of producing ethanol from plants in the US, namely from
lignocellulosic (woody) biomass as found in switchgrass, poplar, Miscanthus and
eucalypts. All of these biomass crops are perennials, and they all can grow on marginal
lands that are not used for any of the major agricultural crops. There are still many
roadblocks that have to be overcome, but significant progress is being made to reduce the
cost of production to where it does make economic sense to produce ethanol in the US.
Research in these areas should pick up steam this year due to major new funding. A few
days ago BP committed $500 million to funding research in the US to produce ethanol
from biomass, and later in the spring DOE will be awarding a total of $250 to two
research consortia to pursue related projects. The goal of these initiatives is to replace
about 30% of of the gasoline used in the US with ethanol by 2030. This will not save us
from the effects of Peak Oil, but this new fuel source has the potential to ease the
transition to new energy sources for transportation.
Andrew Staehelin, Professor emeritus, University of
Colorado, Boulder