Corn-based ethanol, which for years has been mixed in huge quantities into gasoline sold at U.S. pumps, is likely a much bigger contributor to global warming than straight gasoline, according to a study published Monday.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contradicts previous research commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) showing ethanol and other biofuels to be relatively green.
President Joe Biden’s administration is reviewing policies on biofuels as part of a broader effort to decarbonize the U.S. economy by 2050 to fight climate change.
“Corn ethanol is not a climate-friendly fuel,” said Dr. Tyler Lark, assistant scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment and lead author of the study.
The research, which was funded in part by the National Wildlife Federation and U.S. Department of Energy, found that ethanol is likely at least 24% more carbon-intensive than gasoline due to emissions resulting from land-use changes to grow corn, along with processing and combustion.
Geoff Cooper, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, the ethanol trade lobby, called the study “completely fictional and erroneous,” arguing the authors used “worst-case assumptions [and] cherry-picked data.”
Under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a law enacted in 2005, the nation’s oil refiners are required to mix some 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol into the nation’s gasoline annually.
The policy was intended to reduce emissions, support farmers, and cut U.S. dependence on energy imports.
As a result of the mandate, corn cultivation grew 8.7% and expanded into 6.9 million additional acres of land between 2008 and 2016, the study found.
That led to widespread changes in land use, including the tilling of cropland that would otherwise have been retired or enrolled in conservation programs and the planting of existing cropland with more corn, the study found.
Tilling fields release carbon stored in the soil, while other farming activities, like applying nitrogen fertilizers, also produce emissions.
A 2019 study from the USDA, which has been broadly cited by the biofuel industry, found that ethanol’s carbon intensity was 39% lower than gasoline, in part because of carbon sequestration associated with planting new cropland.
But that research underestimated the emissions impact of land conversion, Lark said.
h/t Rúnar O.
Read rest at Reuters
First, as a Canadian farmer most of my life… Replacing the EU / US agriculture subsidy wars, which had regressively replaced market forces with wealthy government programs was the right thing to do. Because this prior antifarmer policy had impoverished farmers from EVERY PART OF THE WORLD EXCEPT THE EU AND THE US! Replacing them was a very good thing! My province of Saskatchewan for example, had 80% of our farmers driven UNDER THE POVERTY LINE by the time these terrible programs ended. They sparked a wave of farm rallies across every province from Ontario west across Canada. They culminated with more than 12,000 concerned farmers in the Agridome in Regina, Saskatchewan. The resulting political pressure helped replace these terrible programs with something more positive for farmers. Think of it as putting 60 million acres into fuel tanks as a strategic reserve of food security for the world. It entirely reversed the fortunes of farmers. Because it ended the war on farmers by the treasuries of the EU and the US.
Second, until lawyers, politicians, and television journalists learn the basic science of our carbon-based life on earth, they will continue to make self-destructive public policy based on the lie that CO2 drives climate. It doesn’t. CO2 drives life on earth, not death. EVERY CO2 DRIVEN CLIMATE MODEL EXAGGERATES PROJECTED WARMING COMPARED TO ACTUAL MEASUREMENTS BY WEATHER BALLOON AND SATELLITE DATA. AND EXAGGERATES IT BY A LOT! Because, in climate, CO2 is a follower, not a significant cause of temp change. In nature, CO2 levels go up and down after temperature changes, not before. Eight hundred thousand years of ice core data make that clear. Because CO2 solubility depends on temperature. For thirty years, the regressive “progressives”, have been howling false portents of doom because they fail to see the big picture. Yes, using fossil fuels breaks down coal, oil, and gas into primarily CO2 and H2O (the two most important molecules for life on earth). However, because too many lawyers and schoolchildren aren’t taught even the basics of the science of life, our regressive progressives think of CO2 as “pollution”. Because they are completely unaware that all life dies without it! Completely unaware that life on earth is entirely made of little carbon sacks of water called cells. And that life’s carbon all comes from CO2. Making carbon and oxygen the most abundant elements in life on earth – by a considerable margin. The energy we get from long-chain carbon compounds has made us the best fed, longest-living, most prosperous human beings that have ever existed. Yet regressive progressives howl endlessly about the end of the world! One that never comes. AOC calls it in-ev-it-a-ble! She is the epitome of a regressive progressive. Howling doom and gloom from one of the most privileged positions in society. Her ignorance makes her paranoid. And she pushes her fear on a gullible public. A public so poorly educated that they have a complete lack of awareness that ALL LIFE DIES WITHOUT CO2! A complete lack of awareness that CO2 is the basic ingredient of life on earth! And a complete lack of awareness that life essential CO2 has been dangerously and inexorably DECLINING from life’s birth in CO2 concentrations more than twenty times those of today. DECLINING to within 30ppm of the lack of CO2 beginning of the death of all things.
Great Post. Here’s my little take on the subject:
Ten or so years ago, National Geographic did an extensive article on the doom of, I believe it was, Global Warming back then. The segment on ethanol stated that it takes 1.0 gallons of fuel (equivalent) to make 1.1 gallons of corn-based ethanol. My takeaway from that went something like this: OK, so the farmer, and all the other users of fuel to get that 1.1 gallon of ethanol, burn up one gallon of fuel. That gallon of fuel produces x amount of CO2. The new 1.1 gallon of ethanol is then burned in, let’s say, a car driving down the road, with another x amount of CO2 being produced. So now we’ve burned 2.1 gallons of fuel to make the car go down the road for ~25 miles, or whatever mpg the car gets. If only gasoline had been used, without all the hassle and expense of making the ethanol, only 1 gallon would have been burned instead. This also omits the fact that ethanol is a lot less energy dense than gasoline…more waste to subtract from the formula.
Did you miss the part where ethanol replaces the fuel used to produce it? I don’t agree that it requires a gallon of fuel to produce a gallon of ethanol. I know my numbers on my farm, and you are wrong. Also, the making of ethanol produces distillers dried grain, a protein supplement that is much the same as soybean meal. CO2 produced from the fermentation of corn is valuable to the soft drink business.
I’m just quoting the National Geographic that it takes 1.0 to make 1.1…… You’ll have to take it up with them. They’re sky-is-falling climate alarmists as you may well know. Oh, and “valuable to the soft drink industry”? Now that’s a worthy cause.