An Inconvenient Truth: Biofuels Have a Carbon Footprint

Actually, farmers are becoming more productive and effiecient each year. U.S. Farmers produced a record corn crop this last year providing enough to support food, fuel, export and a surplus. With this increase in productivity extra land is not needed for farming.
Also, something never noted in articles like this is Dried Distiller Grains, a byproduct of corn ethanol, which is a very high-protein livestock feed. 1/3 of the corn used for ethanol production is used as DDG’s.
A lot goes into a decision about land-use, people have been changing landscapes for years, its nothing new due to an increase in biofuel production. If you want to look at serious land use change, check out some tar sands in Canada. That land is ruined forever, never to be productive again.
Ethanol is helping reduce our dependance from foreign oil and is the starting point of our world’s future in clean, renewable energy.

the flaw in the logic seems always to be that proponents look only at the angle they are pushing. obviously to do a ‘fair’ analysis (and who doesnt want that!) is to do a full 360 view. the IMPACT of the additional (or shifted) land use, the fuels used to grow and convert the plant, the impact on availability of food because of this reassignment etc. Since the cultivation and harvesting do require energy and since NO system is better than 100% efficient we must be looking at relative efficiencies. And the only way to do valid comparisons is ti use ONE metric cradle to cradle.  My analysis of biofuels by and large indicates that it is useful in some applications, but corn-based ethanol is neither a viable nor reliable base for energy.

A well framed argument that is very necessary now.  These points need much greater presence in the national debate.  First generation biofuels are an ecological and food supply catastrophe in many ways.  And carbon footprint cannot be the only consideration.  The carbon reduction benefit from first generation biofuels is hardly anything.  The harm done is vast.

John, if farmers are so good at producing ethanol, then can we stop the corporate welfare program of 54 cents per gallon, that mostly goes to the giant lobbing firm of ADM and not farmers anyway? The “TAX CUT” welfare program is for refining, farmers don’t refine.

The author didn’t mention the use of carbon based fertilizer and the ground water pollution those chemicals cause, soil erosion, water consumption,  and the fact that ethanol only gets a fraction of the gas mileage, 66% by memory, so more ethanol is used to travel an equal distance.

Go to the Gulf and check out the dead area in the Ocean at the mouth of the Mississippi River, caused by fertilizers, if you want to see serious damage.

Why do studies never take into account how the oil in the ground was produced in the first place?  The oil and gas that we are extracting today is dead plant and animal matter from thousands of years ago.  A full life cycle analysis should take into account replacing this matter deep into the ground.

Corn Ethanol is not the long term solution, but it is allowing the. U.S. to become less dependent on foreign oil and creating a market for future biofuel.
If you want to talk subsidies,fossil fuels received $70B over the last seven years compared to $16B corn ethanol has received.
Corn Ethanol is not creating food shortages, other countries governments are the problem. Do you honestly think there are additional starving people in the world solely because of corn ethanol? Get real. Why is the U.S. setting export records, ethanol production and crop production records? Because farmers are producing more without having to use more land.
If you want to talk about land use, look into what tar sands are doing to our planet. That land is gone forever, never to produce anything again. Gone! But no one talks about international land use change for BIG OIL.
I guess Dave and JB are cool with destroying the Earth and continuing to rely on foreign oil for our nations energy supply.

John,
I agree, Eliminate, ALL subsidies especially to big oil and ethanol, then cut state and federal sales tax for all AE infrastructure and equipment and watch the $$$ green revolution take off.

Level the playing field for ALL AE solutions, not just government selected and authorized special interest deals that cause other viable solutions to compete against government supported corporate welfare programs.

Corn ethanol has got to be about the most inefficient methods of generating alternative fuels out there. Of all the energy putinto growing corn, and all of the biomass that grows, we only use the corn kernel itself. At least with sugar cane the whole plant it used to generate the sugar used to fermetn into alcohol. But even then the amount of solar energy that falls on one acre of corn gives us a total of 300 gallons of ethanol, or less than 1000 miles of vehicle usage - for the whole year. If that same one acre is used for photovoltaics, and even used to generate hydrogen, then you get 4000 square meters in an acre, average that with 4.5 kwh/day times 365 days (the 4.5 kwh average includes dartk days) you get 6.6 gigawatt hours/year. Using 46.8 kwh to give you a kilogram of hydrogen, you get 140384 kg/year of Hydrogen, times 60 miles/kg you get 8.4 million vehiclee miles per year for that same amount of land. EVs are even more impressive, if you assume 350 Wh/mile you get 18.8 million vehicle miles for that same acre.
88350 acres would provide enough electricity to power BEVs the equivalent of all vehicle miles traveld in 2007, 7.7 million acres alone in Minnesota were planted with corn.

ETHANOL IS A HUGE WASTE OF RESOURCES!

If we really wanted to get of our oil dependency, we would stop screwing around with ethanol.

seems pretty obvious that the reason oil companies are so avidly backing this ‘assumed’ green resource is all about logistics.  if you think about it, they have poured years and trillions into a LIQUID fuel based delivery infrastructure.  from pipelines to oil tankers to trucks to petrol pumps.  when it comes down to it, just like in warfare, its not the strategy, its the logistics that will win the battle.  if they are to compete against an increasing tide of electric vehicles, they will lose the utility of their pipes to the electron pipes owned by the utility companies.  plain and simple.  this so dangerous in that it can also, easily, scrape up all sorts of cheap populism and lobbies for the agriculture industry….suggesting that this is an american home grown greenwashed solution to our energy problems!  my advice to big oil is to burn the boats and take stock in HTS

I am always amazed where people talk abut the forests being the lungs of the earth that they forget the ocean and the algae conversion of carbon dioxide to oxygen.  There is a lot more ocean than forests.  even if the conversion is less per acre, it still must be significant.

“Ethanol is helping reduce our dependance from foreign oil and is the starting point of our world’s future in clean, renewable energy.”  The cost of production is so high and so well subsidized, the farmers are selling their ethanol in EU countries cheaper than it can be produced there.  The US is effectively subsidizing the EU, exporting fuel, still buying imported oil, and the farmers are laughing all the way to the bank.  Government by the lobbies and for the lobbies.  Ain’t it wonderful.