The fuel on the hill

President Bush signed a new energy bill Wednesday, betting the farm that corn ethanol is the best alternative fuel for the future. It isn't.

By Joseph Romm

Read more: Environment, Politics, News, Global Warming, Ethanol

Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

Joined by members of Congress, President Bush speaks during a signing ceremony for the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 in Washington Dec. 19.

Dec. 20, 2007 | We have run out of time to dawdle on global warming. We will need to make deep cuts -- 60 percent to 80 percent -- in carbon-dioxide emissions over the next few decades in every sector of the economy. The toughest sector may be transportation, given the remarkable convenience of liquid fossil fuels and our love affair with cars. Every year, Americans travel some 3 trillion vehicle miles. We consume about 140 billion gallons of gasoline along with 40 billion gallons of diesel.

President Bush signed a new energy bill Wednesday that raises the fuel-efficiency standard for new auto fleets to 35 mpg by 2020, a 40 percent increase from today's 25 mpg. That's a useful start. But to achieve the deep emissions cuts, we will ultimately need much higher standards, coupled with an alternative fuel with low greenhouse gas emissions. The energy bill mandates that the U.S. increase the use of renewable fuels to 36 billion gallons by 2022, of which 15 billion can be corn-based ethanol. Bush is betting the farm that the best alternative fuel for the foreseeable future is corn ethanol. It isn't.

For decades, the country has been pursuing alternatives to petroleum-based fuels without much success. In 2005, 97 percent of vehicle fuel was gasoline or diesel. Most of the rest was ethanol, also known as drinking alcohol, which can be blended directly into gasoline. Fermenting corn provided the overwhelming majority of the 2.8 billion gallons of ethanol used in 2005. The second biggest alternative fuel is MTBE (methyl tertiary-butyl ether), but because it has been found to pollute groundwater, it is rapidly being replaced by corn ethanol. Ethanol use doubled from 2001 to 2005.

In the Energy Policy Act of 2005 -- a rather lame collection of giveaways to the energy industry -- Bush and the Republican Congress tripled the mandated biofuel requirement to 7.5 billion gallons by 2012. Again, corn ethanol is the only plausible biofuel that can meet the vast majority of that target. Also helping corn ethanol are the huge subsidies the industry gets and a large tariff that keeps out Brazilian ethanol made from sugar -- ironically the one food-based ethanol that is a big reducer of greenhouse gases compared with gasoline.

Unfortunately, most biofuels are not a realistic climate solution for one simple reason: Biofuels from most food crops or from newly deforested lands do not provide a significant net decrease in greenhouse gas emissions -- and some may cause a net increase. Most life-cycle analyses show that corn ethanol has little or no net greenhouse gas benefit compared with gasoline because so much energy is consumed to grow and process the corn.

In fact, recent research, led by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, found that corn ethanol might generate up to 50 percent more greenhouse gases than gasoline, when you account for the extra emissions of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, from increased use of artificial fertilizer. That same study found that the favorite biofuel worldwide, biodiesel from rapeseed, releases up to 70 percent higher total greenhouse gas than regular diesel.

As for developing countries, "Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil," explains Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition. In part because of the burning of forests to clear land for palm oil production, Indonesia has become the world's third-leading producer of carbon emissions!

It is also worth noting that ethanol is not a clear win for local air quality, either. The Environmental Protection Agency concluded earlier this year that "ozone levels generally increase with increased ethanol use."

Next page: Why is anyone interested in biofuels at all?