Environment Waffles – With Corn

Conflicting information seems to be a current mainstay of environmental issues. Shifting to renewable corn ethanol instead of gas was considered the right thing to do. Now it is getting a bad rap. Wanting to be a good environmental citizen, what should you do?

The May 12th Business Week has an article titled “Is Ethanol Getting a Bum Rap? Corn-based fuel isn’t the villain critics contend, but shifting to other crops is critical” by John Carey.

According to Carey, last year, of the record 13.1 billion bushels of corn produced by farmers in the US, 22% went to make ethanol. The remaining 78% was enough to cover all domestic uses, plus an increase of exports to record levels, and still allowed a 10% surplus stockpile. Carey also suggested that the amount of corn ethanol produced could more than double by 2015 without planting more acres or reducing the amount available for food or feed. All this would be thanks to continuing improvements in yield.

Unfortunately, however, ethanol made from corn requires a lot of fossil fuel energy to produce. There is fuel for the tractors, nitrogen fertilizer made with natural gas and manufacturing plants that require lots of energy to run. In addition, as prices for corn and other food products rise, areas of rainforest (that absorb greenhouse gasses) are being cut down to grow biofuels.

It seems that the idea of using boifuel is not necessarily bad, we just need to rethink what we are using for the “bio” part.

Sugarcane is one option. It does not grow in the Amazon area so forests would not be cut down for its production. It can also be turned into other fuels like biodiesel and jet fuel, in addition to bio-gasoline. Even better are feedstocks like switchgrass. Switchgrass is a perennial prairie plant with nine-foot-deep roots so it can thrive in spite of droughts. There are many places it can be grown that do not displace food crop production or result in the loss of forests or prairies.

Ethanol is serving a useful purpose. It has been estimated that gas prices in the US would be 15% higher if we were not currently producing ethanol, so using it is helping keep costs down.

So my answer to the question is: keep using ethanol for now, but encourage the government and universities to find and use other biofuels that work better, cost less, and don’t promote removal of the rainforest.

There is seldom an easy answer, but as we say at my company, “Notyak!” (We should all do what makes sense for us, moving forward not backward.)

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Notyak! You don't have to become a yak herder to do something good for the environment. www.notyak.com

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See green articles our President, Dixie Schmatz, has written for businesses at www.EvanCarmichael.com/Going-Green/

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