Sunday, May 11, 2008
Editorial: Rethinking ethanol
America needs an energy source that does more good than harm. Ethanol isn't it.
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
The same day U.S. senators were holding hearings about whether the government had made a mistake in promoting the use of grain-based ethanol for fuel, a Southwest Virginia company announced it would spend $300 million building four new ethanol plants.
The plants would use barley rather than corn as a fuel source, but the repercussions are similar.
Everyone wants to increase the use of renewable sources of energy, but as food prices rise globally at least partially in response to the increasing use of grains and tillable land to produce energy rather than sustenance, the wisdom of ethanol is coming under harsh questioning.
At congressional hearings last week, the focus was on corn ethanol, but the problem is with any kind of grain-based ethanol that diverts food to energy consumption and encourages tillable acreage to be turned over to fuel production.
That includes barley, of course.
The company said that the barley it uses won't compete for food, because it will be grown during the winter on cropland that would otherwise lie fallow.
But soil can produce only so much grain -- at least without a lot of chemical fertilizers and other help that has a huge environmental impact.
Add in the fuel required to plow, plant, harvest, process and refine ethanol, and there's a real question about whether the alternate fuel really makes a difference.
In fact, two independent studies released earlier this year found that grain-based biofuels actually do more harm to the environment than gasoline, primarily by encouraging clearcutting land to grow crops.
Private companies like Osage Bio Energy and investors like First Reserve Corp. have every right to invest in ethanol production if they believe it is viable.
But Congress needs to rethink U.S. policy offering subsidies and other incentives and mandates.
The United States needs the energy equivalent of a Manhattan or Apollo project: a long-term, concerted, organized and well-funded effort to develop truly clean and renewable energy sources that don't create more problems than they solve.
Ethanol -- in its current form, anyway -- apparently does more harm than good.
