The Hypocrisy Of Biofuels

It’s amazing that self-proclaimed environmental activists can point fingers from their city dwellings and accuse farmers of destroying the environment.

Recently, a great fuss was made of the fact that farmers in Brazil were burning off their fields in preparation for the growing season.

An article appearing on the MPR News website on Aug. 8, 2019, discussed a United Nations IPCC report evaluating the effects of agriculture, deforestation and other land use on greenhouse gas emissions, which they say generates about a third of all human greenhouse gas emissions (over 40% of methane).

“Emissions from agricultural production are projected to increase,” says this report. “Delaying action” to solve this problem could cause “irreversible impacts on some ecosystems.”

Yet ironically, millions of acres of the farmland in Brazil is now used for growing sugar cane for – you guessed it – ethanol. In the United States, the crop converted into ethanol is corn. Ethanol, or ethyl alcohol, is the same kind of alcohol used in alcoholic drinks.

In the 1970s, the OPEC nations arbitrarily cut their oil exports to raise the price of oil, creating fuel shortages. At that time, it was believed that petroleum was a scarce, nonrenewable resource.

With more oil fields being discovered every year, however, we now know that this isn’t the case at all.

The real reason ethanol began to be added to gasoline in the United States was a deal a group of Democrats led by Congressman Henry Waxman made with the corn lobby decades ago.

In exchange for its financial support of their political campaigns, they engineered a mandate to blend corn-derived ethanol with gasoline as an amendment to the 1990 Clean Air Act.

Advertised as another great source of alternative, clean energy to solve the world’s energy problems, ethanol started being added to gasoline in amounts up to 15% without the consent of the consumer.

It is now difficult in many parts of the United States to find service stations that offer consumers the option of pure gasoline without ethanol.

This is true even though gasoline containing ethanol quickly destroys boat and lawnmower engines.

Many consumers have had the unfortunate experience of having lawnmowers and rototillers destroyed because they were never warned about the damage the gasoline/ethanol mixture causes in these small engines. Ethanol-blended gasoline can be devastating to power equipment.

It damages rubber and plastic components of fuel systems, especially in older models built of materials that aren’t resistant to this type of damage.

This includes gaskets, which become brittle, two-cycle carburetors and primer and return lines, which start leaking after a while.

If this type of fuel isn’t burned within as short a time as sixty days, it will literally decay. This is because ethanol fuels are hygroscopic. They attract water, and fuel separation can occur and damage the engine’s carburetor.

A fuel that has decayed in this way contains varnish and sludge deposits. A fuel that is 15% ethanol, called E85, cannot be used in a vehicle unless its engine has been modified.

With biofuel mandates now in over 60 nations, the competition between ethanol and food for agricultural land has become a moral issue. Groups like Oxfam and the Environmental Working Group oppose biofuels because they raise food prices.

Ethanol production has become a big business. Millions of acres of virgin prairie and wetlands have been plowed up for the first time ever.

The increased use of nitrate fertilizers in growing these crops has caused massive runoffs of nitrates into creeks and rivers, contaminating water supplies in Midwestern states. Cleaning up this water has become very costly.

An article by Daniel Strohl reported a study concluding that 4.2 million acres of additional land, an area double the size of Yellowstone national park, is now being used for such farming practices.

A gallon of gasoline delivers 116,900 BTUs [British Thermal Units] of energy, but a gallon of ethanol delivers only 76,000 BTUs of energy, about two-thirds the amount of energy from ethanol as gasoline delivers.

So, a car gets fewer miles per gallon of gasoline/ethanol blend as it does on pure gasoline. According to David Pimentel in an article published in the Harvard Review, it costs $3.95 to produce one gallon of ethanol from corn.

He also reported that “nearly 9 billion gallons of ethanol is produced in the United States, using about 33 percent of US corn grain. Yet these nine billion gallons of ethanol represent only 1.3 percent of total oil consumption in the United States.”

And at the same time, almost 800 million people in the world are malnourished.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported a 45% increase in the world food price index during the 2008 food crisis.

In just one year, wheat prices increased by 130%, soy prices rose 87%, rice 74%, and maize prices by 31%. A big cause of this crisis was the growing demand for biofuels.

Government subsidies for the corn industry include tax breaks, grants, loans, and loan guarantees. The amount of such subsidies has been estimated by a Purdue University study at between $1.42 and $1.87 per gallon of ethanol, raising everyone’s tax bill.

Consumers are paying for this through increased fuel prices resulting from having to fill up more often due to decreased engine efficiency and miles per gallon.

In 2007, as part of the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) passed by Congress, the Renewable Fuel Standard version 2 (RFS2) committed the United States to the production of fifteen billion gallons of corn ethanol per year by 2015.

The University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin, along with the National Wildlife Federation, conducted a comprehensive analysis of land-use change across the US as a result of the passage of this bill.

The leader of this study, Chris Wright, expressed his concern that native grassland was being converted to agricultural land, with a very negative impact on the environment.

The Environmental Protection Agency noted in 2011 that this practice is causing increased soil erosion and loss of wildlife habitat. These are unfortunate and unintended consequences of using this type of alternative energy.

“It is now clear that the federal corn ethanol mandate has driven up food prices, strained agricultural markets, increased competition for arable land and promoted the conversion of uncultivated land to grow crops. In addition, previous estimates have dramatically underestimated corn ethanol’s greenhouse gas emissions by failing to account for changes in land use.”

These ill-advised federal biofuel policies have also adversely affected farmers who raise livestock and related businesses because it costs more to buy corn and soy needed for feeding animals.

It is downright immoral to use agricultural land that could be growing food for fuel. The revolution in Egypt called “Arab Spring” started with riots caused by food shortages that were directly caused by this newly instituted practice.

But then, believe it or not, “human-caused climate change” was blamed for these rising food prices.

Herr Jean Ziegler commented, “It is a crime against humanity to convert agricultural productive soil into soil which produces foodstuff that will be burned as biofuel.”

Biodiesel fuel is a blend of about 80% petroleum diesel and 20% biodiesel, which is produced by treating soybean or another oil with methanol and a catalyst.

This industry receives substantial government subsidies from the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP 9010).

Producers are reimbursed up to 50% of their cost with payments extending for up to five years for herbaceous feedstock and up to 15 years for woody plants.

Section 9003 of the Biorefinery Assistance Program guarantees loans to producers for the construction, development, and retrofitting of commercial-scale biorefineries.

Here again, these alternative sources of fuel are viable and competitive only by placing a substantial burden on the taxpayer. In some states such as Massachusetts, forests are clear cut, and the trees are ground up and burned to produce energy.

These forests are replanted with just one or two species of trees, reducing biodiversity from 10-20 species of trees to just one or two species. This practice is harmful to the environment in many ways, disrupting the balance of nature in these habitats.

Forests owned by the state of Massachusetts “are being logged at drastic, nearly clear-cut levels and at unsustainable rates,” reported R. G. Cachat, in the article, “Massachusetts: The Hoax of Biomass and Modern Forestry”.

Biomass is an appealing ‘easy out’ for wasteful energy policies and land barons hungry for quick cash. This sweetheart deal for big landholders is being sold as ‘carbon neutral’, but is really a carbon hoax.

Burning wood produces about 1.5 times as much carbon dioxide per unit of energy as burning coal. Forests in North Carolina are clear cut and the wood shipped 3000 miles to be burned in an electric generating plant in Britain. Why? To meet the alternative energy quota imposed on them by the European Union. This makes no sense.

Since there is now a surplus of petroleum and natural gas, there is no need for ethanol and other biofuels that compete with the raising of crops for human consumption and otherwise damage the environment.

The government policies responsible for this scam represent the epitome of incompetence, corruption or a combination of the two.

Lynne Balzer taught science at the high school and college levels for about twenty years. A project director for Faraday Science Institute, she has studied this issue for a long time. Her new book, The Green New Deal and Climate Change: What You Need to Know, is available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle format.