The government is hopping onto the ethanol subsidy train, toting it as the solution to our energy problems, both in terms of emissions and less reliance on foreign imports. All the presidential candidates have endorsed ethanol subsidies to some extent, with Obama supporting it the most. Is this a good idea?
Ethanol is currently made from only certain parts of corn (see my post on corn). The corn is grown using industrial farming techniques (industrial fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides) and then harvested and trucked to the plant, where it is fermented and distilled into a fuel source. Then it is further trucked to gas stations, where it is used in cars.
Ethanol burns cleaner than oil, resulting in fewer emissions from its use. It can replace the polluting and possibly health damaging additive MTBE in gasoline for a somewhat healthier fuel. If we grow the corn and manufacture the ethanol ourselves in large enough quantities, we’ll need to depend less on the volatile countries that supply oil. At the surface, ethanol has some good qualities then.
But – of course, we must go deeper. First, the glaring problem of using polluting industrial farming techniques to grow yet more corn, which we already overgrow so much that we sell below-cost to other countries. Corn is a needy crop; it has high water needs and high pesticides/herbicides needs. Water is a scarce resource in much of the world, and it’s the same for the West and mid-West, where most of this corn is grown. Herbicides and pesticides pollute our water, hurt animals, and harm our health.
So, ethanol encourages the further overproduction of corn, which strains our water resources, and pollutes our environment and selves with pesticides/herbicides, for a system that is wasteful (by only using small parts of the corn plant) and inherently unsustainable and energy-inefficient, due to the farming practices, large amount of trucking and petroleum-based chemical inputs involved.
There is a more efficient ethanol called cellulosic ethanol, which can be made using many plants, and whole plants. The most common plant used is switchgrass, which is a native plant of the mid-West, and requires less water and chemical inputs than corn. Since switchgrass is not a food crop, it might help bring down food prices (which are currently high due to corn demand for ethanol), though it would depend on governmental subsidies and oversight. So, this is a better solution than corn, but the plants are more expensive and the technology a bit more nascent than corn-based ethanol. It still runs into the same problems of inefficiencies with all the trucking needed and the energy needed to manufacture it.
So why is the government supporting it? My bet is the loud farm lobby, made up of the large agribusinesses (Monsanto, Cargill, etc.) and large-scale farmers, which have profited hugely already from the increase of the price of corn due to ethanol demand, and will do so further. Also, it allows politicians to tote their greenness in front of their constituents while still supporting appropriations- and favors- style politics.
My favorite real sustainable energy source is the sun. If we put half the subsidies into solar power as we do oil and farming, solar power would be able to be a much more competitive factor. And with the extra research and development money, scientists would be freed up to find more efficient ways of collecting and storing the sun’s power. Considering all the impermeable surfaces in the world – parking lots, roofs, etc. – there is a ton of space available to harvest the sun’s power that doesn’t involve eating up open space like wind farms (though now people can buy a wind turbine for the top of their house).
So before you jump on the Ethanol train, take a little time to examine what it is that train is made of.
