America is in the grip of bioethanol mania. The fossil fuel substitute (or additive) – which is derived from corn, wood chips, or switch grass – is receiving a publicity blitz thanks to President Bush’s State of the Union Address, in which he announced his support for biofuel research. Residents of Eugene even have their own ethanol fueling station, which has supplied many citizens with fuel and many politicians with photo opportunities.
During his speech, President Bush promised to decrease America’s reliance on fossil fuels – a laudable goal, perhaps – though his solution is predicated on supporting efforts to increase bioethanol use. That’s the catch. Supporting bioethanol use requires subsidies, and if President Bush follows through with his promises, these subsidies will increase. The government currently supplies ethanol producers with an excise tax credit of 51 cents per gallon of fuel, which amounts to more than one billion dollars per year in subsidization.
Bush’s pro-biofuel pronouncement was not as curious as it first appeared. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been a proponent of ethanol for years. This makes sense because the USDA is expected to support any legislation favoring governmental subsidies for farmers, regardless of the legislation’s efficacy.
Yet, many people still think ethanol is effective as a gasoline alternative. Supporters of bioethanol speak of it as if it were some sort of magic elixir – a potion of unimaginable power capable of decreasing green house gasses and thus paving an environmentally friendly path toward energy independence. This runs counter to the growing mountain of evidence declaring ethanol counterproductive at best and a sham at worst.
It takes approximately one bushel of corn to produce the equivalent of three gallons of gasoline, making it terribly inefficient to produce, especially when you consider that corn is not an infinite resource. But global warming remains a fashionable worry, and for good reason – most scientific data indicates that weather patterns are changing as a result of human-created greenhouse gasses. This creates a central question: What will the global effects be in 25 to 50 years if we do not change our current level of oil consumption? Ethanol, therefore remains a fashionable solution, and the reasons aren’t very good – economic and scientific data show that it is costly and only marginally effective in reducing greenhouse gasses.
Oregon has been quick to jump on the ethanol bandwagon, but not everyone views this positively. Economists at Oregon State University recently released a study stating that the net energy produced from ethanol can be as low as 20 percent, according to The Register Guard. One of the study’s authors, professor William Jaeger, also spoke out against ethanol in Salem’s Statesman Journal. “There is a commercial market for biofuels in Oregon given current subsidies,” said Jaeger. “But success in the marketplace doesn’t mean cost-effectiveness in achieving the state’s goals of energy independence and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
So, in addition to the USDA, farmers, and pandering politicians, who exactly supports these pro-ethanol endeavors? The ethanol lobbying industry, clearly. Bob Dineen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, released a press release shortly after Bush’s State of the Union Address:
“Recognizing the potential of our nation’s ethanol industry, President Bush used the unique forum of the State of the Union Address to elevate the significance of ethanol and renewable fuels to our nation’s energy future by calling for 35 billion gallons of alternative fuel use by 2017,” Dineen said. Dineen continues by saying that Bush’s proposed policies indicate that he is interested in maximizing “the economic, environmental and energy benefits ethanol and other alternative fuels offer.” This seems like a good thing, but it is insignificant on a grandiose scale. To put this into perspective, if the United States wanted to produce 35 billion gallons of ethanol in one single year, it would take the country’s entire corn crop, and even then it would only amount to one-fifth the amount of fuel that Americans burn each year. Spread this out over the course of 10 years, and you see that it amounts to a very small drop of ethanol in a very large bucket of gasoline. There are viable alternatives to fossil fuels out there; ethanol is not one of them.