Apparently there’s been some debate about whether ethanol production consumes more energy than in creates (not to mention carbon emissions) in the interest of energy independence. This lengthy rebuttal from the Department of Energy downplays the criticism - presumably one lonely Cornell Professor using outdated data. But if that were true, why doth DOE protest so much? Couldn’t they just ignore the guy? Can’t resist the ‘kernel of truth’ pun here.
Does ethanol production waste energy?
July 4th, 2007 · 2 Comments
Tags: statistics · cars · government
2 responses so far ↓
1 admin // Jul 5, 2007 at 8:08 am
Cornell Professor David Pimentel emailed me with this response:
DOE never states what data of mine are out of date. DOE is omitting many of the energy inputs in ethanol production. For example, they omit the energy inputs for farm labor, farm machinery, hybrid corn, irrigation and others. Then they give a credit for the distillers grain of 60% or more. Distillers grain is a feed for cattle not fuel.
Some additional thoughts:
Currently the U.S. is producing 5 billion gallons of ethanol (DOE), without charging for all the oil and natural gas inputs required in producing and converting the corn into ethanol. This is using 20% of all U.S. corn and represents only 1% of U.S. petroleum use. If 100% of U.S. corn were used, it would provide only 7% of current U.S. petroleum use.
The environmental impacts of corn ethanol are enormous:
1. Corn production causes more soil erosion than any other crop grown.
2. Corn production uses more nitrogen fertilizer than any other crop grown and is the prime cause of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
3. Corn production uses more insecticides than any other crop grown.
4. Corn production uses more herbicides than any other crop grown.
5. More than 1,700 gallons of water are required to produce 1 gallon of ethanol.
6. A total of 12 gallons of sewage effluent are released per gallon of ethanol produced.
7. Enormous quantities of carbon dioxide are produced, including the large quantity of fossil energy used in production, large quantities of carbon dioxide are released during fermentation, and when the soil is tilled soil organic matter is exposed and oxidized. All this speeds global warming.
8. Related to the total operation, including the burning of the ethanol, the air pollution problem is significant.
9. Environmental ethics of converting food (corn) into fuel when billions of people are malnourished.
2 Dave // Jan 20, 2008 at 4:55 pm
This is a test of the 2nd comment
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