The Ethanol Controversy – Food to Fuel
In the wake of my last post on Ethanol (http://darkpalmer.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/the-case-for-ethanol/), I had a number of people push back with criticisms that I would like to answer more thoroughly here. A couple of these criticisms were on this blog. But most occured on disussion forums and emails that are not visible to everyone here.
So in the interest of consolidating everything to one place, I am going to addreess each of these issues on this blog over the next few days.
Food to Fuel and Back Again
The first issue I’m going to address is the idea that if you make ethanol, then you are diverting the corn that used to be used to make food to corn that is used to make fuel.
This isn’t true.
In my article, The Case For Ethanol I explained that the primary by-product of Ethanol is Dried Distillers Grains (DDG). This DDG is used as animal feed, and so therefore it is not true that if you use grain to make fuel that it isn’t used for food – since the byproduct of the fuel is, in fact, animal feed.
The counter-point was made by a critic that ethanol production removes the calories from the grain, so how can it be used for food once it has been used for fuel.
The answer is that the ethanol production process does indeed remove some of the calories, but not all – fortunately or unfortunately the enzymes simply cannot break the starches down efficiently enough to get all the food value out.
But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing because the DDG by-product is actually healthier in many respects than the grain it comes from. It is higher in protein and various vitamins and minerals.
Super-Duper Corn Flakes for Cows
According to the USDA, ”the nutritional value of distillers grains … equals from 120 to 135 percent of the nutrition of corn in the feed ration”. And that “distillers grains are discounted relative to corn (despite having a higher nutritional value), feeders look for ways to include (substitute) more of it into their ration.”
Here’s a link to that article: http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/rbs/pub/sep06/measuring.htm
Nevertheless, there is in fact a loss of feed volume. A bushel of corn (56 lbs) will yield approximately 3 gallons of ethanol, and provide approximately 17 lbs of DDG. 17 lbs is approximately 30% of 56 lbs, but remember, the nutritional value of this feed is ~130% that of corn. So, really the nutritional value of the by-product of that bushel of corn is about 40% of the input.
Adding DDG to an animal’s ration is a bit like putting vitamins in your morning cereal. Given the same amount of feed, the ration that contains DDG is healthier than the ration that does not.
So, the question becomes: Can we afford to lose this percentage of feed yield?
The answer is that if we were currently producing grain at capacity, then it would be hard to justify using it for fuel. However, we aren’t at capacity. Not even close.
In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, by this time last year the United States had exported a little over 46 MILLION TONS of corn. So far this year?
Over 52 MILLION TONS year-to-date - a 13% increase.
One BILLION Acres
There is no shortage of food – not now, and not in the future. That’s because we have millions of acres of fallow farm ground in this country. As grain prices go up, farmers put more of that ground into production.
Now, the market is providing an incentive for farmers to put these fields back into production.
And the number of fallow acres isn’t just in the United States. According to this article from LiveScience.com, there are around 1.2 BILLION ACRES OF FARMGROUND in the world that could be used to make biofuels.
Now, the average corn farm in the United States produces about 150 bushels of corn per acre. Each bushel will make about 3 gallons of ethanol (PLUS 17 pounds of super-duper corn flakes for cows!).
Assuming all that was used to grow corn, then this currently fallow ground would produce approximately 540 BILLION GALLONS of ethanol – which is 77 gallons for every man woman and child on this planet. And this would have zero effect on the availability of food.
So, can we afford to lose some percentage of our grain yield to ethanol? Of course, all we need to do is put this fallow farmland into production.
But we don’t even need to use farm ground to make ethanol. And that will be the point of my next post. Stay tuned.
July 11, 2008 at 11:01 am
GM ’s sudden stewardship of the environment is simply a way to continue to make gas guzzlers thanks to E85 an extremely inefficient fuel. The CAFE standards call for all car companies to achieve an average MPG for all vehicles. I believe the most recent number is 27 MPG. Well if you make the biggest money off of 10 miles per gallon SUV’s you would hate to say good bye to them wouldn’t you?
The CAFE standards has a loophole, that being that an E85 vehicle operating on E85 miles per gallon are ONLY figured against the actual amount of gasoline in the blend (15%) if you divide 100% fuel by 15% gasoline you get the multiplier to the mpg (666) therefore a gas guzzling 10 MPG SUV is given credit for 66.6 MPG. If you sell one SUV like this you can have 5 vehicles only achieving 20 MPG and this gas guzzling SUV and you average more than 27 MPG overall while not one of their vehicles really met the standard.
GM is not the only one taking advantage of this free ride Ford and Chrysler are too. The big three are heading down the toilet and this is just their hands clinging to the rim.
July 11, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I have seen this same comment by “Corny” on a number of blogs. It appears that he/she is just copy/pasting it to every blog on WordPress that has the keyword, “ethanol” in it.
Corny’s assertions about E85 are only partially correct. It does appear that it creates a loophole for CAFE standards.
However, Ethanol isn’t an inefficient fuel. Typically you will get a slightly diminished mileage on your car, but the fuel is a higher octane which is better for your engine, and burns more completely. So it’s better for the environment.
What people have a legitimate complaint about is the inefficiency of making ethanol out of corn. The truth is that ethanol can be made from a variety of feedstocks – cellulosic processing is 4x more efficient than using corn and sugarcane is 6 x more efficient.
July 11, 2008 at 5:32 pm
In regards to the food-vs-fuel debate……this is all about to be non-existent. Purdue University is about to break with new plant designs that keeps every portion of the corn, except the starch for ethanol, in our human food chain. The ethanol plant will be more like a food processing plant…..with ethanol as only one of the byproducts. The current dry/wet milling method will look like a Model T compared to the Ferrari that Purdue is about to break with. The method is called the Chen-Xu Method. Dry/wet mill plants will be converted to this new method. Also, in regards to corn as a legitimate feedstock for ethanol, this model is more efficient than the sugar can model. That is huge!
July 11, 2008 at 5:52 pm
That’s great feedback Jim. I will take a look at it.
Unfortunately, the whole Ethanol debate is becoming radioactive for many people. They hear Ethanol and have a knee-jerk reaction.
The don’t want to hear anything about it.
July 11, 2008 at 7:24 pm
let me know what you find out. i have a tremendous amount of information on the process.
December 17, 2008 at 5:12 am
Ok maybe we have the land resources, but what about cultural and processing inputs. It requires a great deal of NPK inputs which are currently in short supply. I was talking with a chemical salesperson today about high price issues of Potash and how that is going to effect the farmers bottom line. I was told that next year will prove to be another expensive year as production output is slow and new mine developments have been flushed out by environmental groups. The corn of today is highly domesticated and requires a great deal vitamins (fertilizers) to produce its high yields. Are these inputs sustainable or will there be enough supply in the future to farm ethanol from corn economically?
It is no mistery that ethanol from corn also requires a great deal of fossil fuel inputs to make it work. Nitrogen fertilizer are created by using large amounts of natural gas. 33,500 cu/ft to produce 1 ton of anhydrous ammonia or 82-0-0. Also many of the ethanol distilleries use natural gas or coal in there process. But even if ethanol does have a positive net energy we are still burning the entire energy cost + the entire energy produced. So we are burning or using at least 50 percent more energy than we would be if we were getting our fuel direct from fossil fuels.
That being said I think that in order to reduce our dependence on foriegn oil and help the environment we need to scale back, not produce and use more. Developing more fuel effiencent cars and decreasing our use of petrolium products is the real answer. Not converting millions of acres of marginal farmland into biofuel and ethanol production.
Farming is for food. It requires a large amount of resources and environmental costs to produce the food that we need to survive. It takes large amounts of water (think Colorado River) land, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, fuel, machinery, and labor. It causes loss in plant diversity, degradation of soil, herbicide resistants in weeds, and soil erosion.
Currently we will have to settle with the negative effect of agriculture systems because its system keeps us fed. We should not be promoting anymore agriculture in the name of energy security. Especially when the energy benefits that can be created are of such small significants.
If the energy including capital and resources used to produce the 7.3 billion gallons of ethanol created this years was put toward technology that reduces our energy use I guarantee we could have put a signficant dent on the 390000000 gallons of oil we use everyday.
December 17, 2008 at 2:19 pm
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