While there are countless new “green” energy technologies evolving every day, one of the most popular among them in the news media is corn ethanol. Corn ethanol is appealing for a variety of reasons, namely that it supports American farming and is a home grown way to wean ourselves off of imported oil. Of course corn ethanol isn’t that cut and dry, and in fact has several very significant drawbacks which not only revoke the now-coveted green moniker, but also prevent it from ever becoming a truly sustainable alternative energy source. Despite positive news coverage in the past, criticism of the technology has been mounting recently. Now more than ever media outlets are bringing out the big guns against our fairy-tale saving grace and alternative to imported oil.

Corn ethanol has, until now, enjoyed an easy life. Never before has the use of alternative fuels had such a golden opportunity to take center stage and push out the outdated and outmoded fossil fuels of a century past. The time now seems right for a number of reasons, especially considering the skyrocketing price of fuel and a growing international awareness of global warming. In America, corn farmers have conveniently seized this occasion and opportunity to push their versatile and ubiquitous product into the spotlight under flashy headlines that pronounce independence, localism, environmentalism, even patriotism. Of course, if it seems too simple to have Farmer John on his family-owned farm in the heartland supplying domestic, green fuel for the entire nation – well, that’s because it is. In truth and practice, corn ethanol is not the knight in shining armor that its’ media attention has so far suggested. Indeed, the corn ethanol alternative is riddled with holes from all perspectives. Problems stem primarily from the inherent “net energy loss” in the production of corn ethanol, but are ultimately complex and far-reaching, extending from current food market prices all the way to state and federal government and policies over 30 years old.

The most troubling problem with corn ethanol is that it is mathematically inefficient – that is, no matter how it is produced, it consumes more energy than it can, in turn, provide through it’s own combustion, putting itself on the same level as, say, moving in your car like the Flintstones. Sure, you could just push it, but it wouldn’t make sense given the other options – walking, riding a bike, taking a bus – and after a while it would start to hurt.The figures are nearly Flinstonian, in fact: by many estimates, it takes about 1.5 gallons of gas to make 1 gallon of ethanol from corn⁵. Forgetting any of the larger implications of deception or manipulation of the public at large, the first question to untangle this mess should be why exactly is corn ethanol so inefficient?

In order to understand the political and economic pressures that are on corn ethanol right now, it helps to understand where the ethanol comes from and how it is produced. Start from the ground up: like any other crop, before it can be anything, let alone an alternative fuel, corn needs to be planted and taken care of. Corn’s first strike and what sets it apart here from the pack of other staple crops like wheat and soybeans, however, is that it is one of the most fertilizer-intensive domestic crops: it requires a huge amount of chemical nitrogen³, which in turn takes massive amounts of energy – presumably from coal and gas – to produce, ship, and use. Next, consider that corn fields must be tilled and harvested with massive machinery all of which run on more fossil fuels. Then the corn must be cleaned, cut, refined, liquefied, fermented, filtered and finally shipped⁴, via semi-truck to filling stations across the United States. This is energy and resource consumption on a massive level. If ethanol can be so simply attained through fermentation of sugar (done for centuries, see: vodka, ever clear), why does it take such an intense process with corn? The most straightforward explanation is that corn just doesn’t have very much sugar to begin with so it takes a lot of corn to get just a little sugar. Second – and this is strike two – as the refining process takes place, only about 8% of the tangible material (the corn) is useable ethanol – the rest, more than 90%, are water molecules tightly bound with those ethanol molecules. Therefore, heavy processing is required to separate the remaining water to make the mixture safe to burn in combustion engines without completely rusting them out⁵.

For the sake of demonstration, say that it took 1 gallon of gasoline to make 1 gallon of corn ethanol – in other words, the net energy change to produce that ethanol would be 0 – it would balance out. Taking that into consideration, one could reasonably assume that a car with x amount of corn ethanol would perform just as well, perhaps even better, than a car with that same x amount of traditional gasoline. The curious reality here – and strike three – is that corn ethanol actually burns about 30% less efficient than gasoline in modern combustion engines⁶, which means that in a distance competition the corn ethanol car would lose every time by a margin of about one-third.

That negative energy exchange begs the question of why, in a free market, is corn ethanol the most popular new technology if it’s more expensive and less efficient than normal gasoline. First, the corn ethanol market is no longer “free”. It is dominated by two corn-growing giants, Archer-Daniels-Midland and Cargill, who own the incredibly vast majority of the one-time family-owned farms that blanketed the Midwest. Second, the government subsidy system is actually two-tiered. Taxpayers first subsidize the growing of the corn itself, from a profit loss to a profit gain, no matter what eventual product that corn becomes. However, if that corn is destined to become ethanol, taxpayers subsidize it again so that by the time it reaches the gas-pump, it isn’t twice the price of gasoline. Therefore, corn ethanol ultimately needs to be subsidized once to be profitable and then again to be competitive – a distinct advantage no other energy source, let alone product in a free market, can boast of.

The explanation for the prevalence of so many subsidies for such a backwards technology begins in the 1960s when the federal government began propping up financially distressed farmers. While modern technology allowed farmers to produce massive amounts of staple foods, including and especially corn, the federal government has continually subsidized farmers since the Great Depression to ensure that they are afloat to produce enough food for the nation and to keep alive the long-gone ideal of the stereotypical American farmer. As efficiency increased however, so did the supply of food on the market, and just as with any other consumer product like TVs, cars, or shoes, when the supply is too high and demand gets too low, the economy dictates that the prices crash. Instead of stopping the subsidies at that point and letting the free market regulate itself, the government continued paying too many farmers to grow too much (usually corn). In fact, so much corn is being grown now that it is all being sold at a net profit loss before subsidies are applied³.

This glut of corn has to go somewhere, and by now it has found its way into every facet of the industrialized food chain from products we eat directly all the way to feed for livestock which we eventually consume as meat or dairy products. The rising demand for corn ethanol puts pressure on that system. Roughly 70% of the corn produced in the U.S. goes to livestock feed⁵, but as big corn growing corporations, and the state and federal governments who are in the pockets of the corn lobbyists push for more ethanol development, huge amounts of corn must be diverted, raising the price of cattle, pig, and poultry feed, and in turn, raising the price of meat at the supermarket. Furthermore, corn has become an ingredient, usually a filler, in nearly every consumable product at a fast food restaurant or grocery store⁵: it is a starch, a sweetener, an emulsifier – it adds color and can be synthesized to add “natural” flavors³. Of course, increased demand for corn ethanol drives these prices through the roof. To compound this predicament, as more farmers in America turn to corn growing as opposed to wheat growing (to get lucrative and guaranteed federal and state subsidies), the price of wheat skyrockets as well, translating into a price hike for basically anything containing flour. The global market, of course, feels this crunch because the United States is one of the main exporters of wheat and as we export less, the value of wheat in the rest of the world goes up, rising prices across hemispheres – to say nothing of contributing to our already catastrophic trade deficit.

Curiously, we weren’t the first to hatch the idea of using surplus crops to produce ethanol and in fact, we were even late to the party. Brazil has been refining their excess sugarcane into ethanol for decades and using it to efficiently power their entire economy – even exporting it on a massive scale to countries as far away as China. Corn growers saw this as a serious threat from a business perspective and went on the defensive using the only means available to an industry whose only product was inherently unprofitable in a free market: lobbyists. Corn growers formed the aptly named National Corn Growers Association and hired marketing firms to “green” corn ethanol and sprouted up lobbyist groups and PACs to get government support for their initiative, ironically paying countless congressmen off with taxpayer money issued to them through mandated subsidies from their very own seats in the House and Senate. The new corn ethanol was painted as patriotic and environmentally friendly, evoking warm images of vast sun-kissed corn fields, swaying smoothly in the heartland breeze when really it was just another sponge for tax dollars, fossil fuels, and extra corn.

Thankfully, corn ethanol isn’t the only option. Indeed, there are several technologies, new and old, which show a potential to oust corn ethanol from center stage. The most prominent among these is Brazilian sugarcane ethanol, which is far more efficient than corn ethanol and requires far fewer steps to produce². Additionally, sugarcane is a naturally growing crop in Brazil and grows abundantly even without the help of intense fertilization and care. Because of the higher sugar content, ethanol from sugarcane is much purer, so there is far less water and a far higher energy output when used in a combustion engine. Brazil has used sugarcane ethanol to essentially power the country in an environmentally and economically sound way for over a decade.

Of course, because of stiff tariffs brought on by NCGA lobbyists, Brazilian ethanol is not now, and will not be a viable option for the U.S. in the near future. However, there are a few very promising domestic technologies that have recently seen big booms in development. The first is ethanol made from switch-grass, a plant native to the North American prairie, which, when refined properly, offers an extremely high net-energy gain, and which, like sugarcane in Brazil, can grow with little to no irrigation or fertilization in the farm lands of the Midwest¹. Switch grass ethanol is currently in the early stages of development, but the progress seems promising and offers a true alternative to corn ethanol. Another budding technology is “cellulosic” ethanol, which is a somewhat broad term to describe several different processes by which specific bacteria actually break down organic material (organic as in: anything with carbon atoms) and turn it into ethanol. Some variations of the technology have even recently shown that the bacteria can make ethanol out of common household trash.

Those alternatives and the mounting scientific evidence against the sustainability of corn ethanol beg to ask why we’re still determined to push forward with it. The answer is an echo of the half-century old military-industrial complex. The new corn ethanol-complex is cut from the same mold of money hungry corporations riding on waves of government subsidies for programs that could never deliver their promises in a free market, just like the first agricultural subsidies which lead to the absurd surplus of corn in the first place. Corn ethanol could never survive without the continued financial support of the taxpayer – a handicap which will never lead to a sustainable alternative and will forever stymie innovation, holding hostage all the while the potential of any truly sustainable alternative fuel. The detrimental effect of ethanol from corn is felt not only on the balance-sheet of our government but in our own budgets with the products we eat and drink every day. Corn subsidies need to stop before the innovative power of this nation can steer us into the next technological era of sustainable energy sources.

1 Biello, David. Grass Makes Better Ethanol than Corn Does. 8 January 2008. 3 November 2008 <http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=grass-makes-better-ethanol-than-corn>.
2 Bourne, Joel K. Jr. "Green Dreams." National Geographic October 2007: 38-59.
3 Pollan, Michael. Omnivore's Delimma. New York: Penguin, 2006.
4 Renewable Fuels Association. RFA - Resource Center - How Ethanol is Made. 2005. 2 November 2008 <http://www.ethanolrfa.org/resource/made/>.
5 Segelken, Rodger. Cornell News: Gasohol Economics. 1 August 2001. 8 November 2008 <http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Aug01/corn-basedethanol.hrs.html>.
6 zFacts.com. Facts about Corn Ethanol Production. 8 June 2008. 10 November 2008 <http://zfacts.com/p/60.html>.

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