by Cate Montana

Are biofuels the wave of the future? Are they cost effective to produce? Will they provide a viable alternative to gasoline? Are they really “cleaner” fuels than petroleum based fuels?

In the September issue of The Bleeping Herald we ran an article about a New Mexico energy company that in three short years researched and built two fueling stations offering ethanol blends and biodiesel blends to the driving public. Last month one of our readers pointed out an article in Audubon Magazine that flagged potential downsides to ethanol production, especially agricultural pollution. Both our article on Peak Oil and the Audubon article fell far short of presenting the total picture. In a way, both articles represented two extreme sides of a very complicated subject.

Peak Oil, Peak Opportunity presented a picture geared towards consumer need for a fast answer to sharply rising energy prices and the uncertainty inherent in our dependence on foreign oil. The vision of an instant panacea is tempting. “Biofuels,” we think. “Great. Let’s grow lots and lots of soybeans and corn. It will help the farmers out, provide an alternative fuel that comes from a renewable source and provide the country with a new industry that will give the economy a shot in the arm. It’s a win-win situation.”

It may well be. However there are complicating factors which get completely lost in such an overly simplistic approach.

On the other side of the coin is the vision presented in the article Drunk on Ethanol, which, while making some very valid points, also makes such sweeping condemnations against ethanol production as: “In addition to showing there are ‘no environmental benefits’ to ethanol, science clearly shows that there are enormous environmental costs.” The article then goes on to extensively quote Cornell University agricultural scientist David Pimental, who is the leading agricultural voice against ethanol production as well as biodiesel production.

Pimental’s argument is that biofuels across the board are net-negative. In other words, it takes more energy, more barrels of oil, to produce biofuels than you get out the other end. For the environmental lobby, rightfully concerned about erosion, runoff and agricultural pollution from increased use of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers used by agribusiness raising millions of acres more corn for ethanol each year, this is the perfect counter argument. There are, however, more balanced voices on the subject.

“Thirty years ago he was right. It was a net-negative,” says Chad Kruger, Dir. of Outreach for the Climate Friendly Farming Project at Washington State University’s

Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Resources. “The consensus is he’s not giving enough credit to advances in energy efficiency in terms of production of feed stocks and the processing in starch-based ethanol. We were all shocked to see he was down on biodiesal too. Biodiesel – every life cycle we have seen on it has been very positive, better than 3 to 1.”

What does this mean? It means there are simple views and extreme positions, none of which help move us along the path to understanding, let alone solving, the very pressing problems we face today in energy production.

“There are very few people looking at this [in a holistic way],” says Allen Dusault, Program Manager with Sustainable Conservation in San Francisco, California. “This is a national dialogue that’s desperately needed and overdue. The soybean industry and the corn industry have a perspective that does need to be heard….. You have the environmental communities’ perspective that needs to be heard. The petroleum industry has a perspective that needs to be heard. But we do need a dialogue. I think it’s really important … to form a partnership on this in a very big way.”

In the next several issues, The Bleeping Herald will present a series of articles which attempt to address biofuels from a more holistic perspective. This month we begin to take a look at the agricultural production of oil seed crops and environmental pollution.

Growing Energy

What methods of production can we find that are economically viable, environmentally sustainable and potentially work to improve the environment? Is that feasible? I think the answer is yes.

Allen Dusault, Sustainable Conservation

According to the USDA, ethanol production in the United States has grown from 175 million gallons in 1980 to over 2.8 billion gallons in 2003.

This boost in ethanol demand has created a significant new market for corn. "The United States is producing more ethanol from corn and other domestic, renewable resources than ever before," says Kevin Hicks, research leader in the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA’s Crop Conversion Science and Engineering Research Unit. "Almost 10 percent of the U.S. corn crop is used to make fuel ethanol.”

Although there have been substantial federal and state government subsidies to farmers who will grow corn for ethanol production over the last 30 years, the vast majority of the funding has gone to large agribusinesses such as Archer Daniels Midland, and Conagra, who not only grow the crops but also operate refineries that separate the fiber, germ (oil), and protein from the kernel’s starch before it's fermented into ethanol.

So far the cost of making starch-based fuel ethanol is not price competitive with gasoline. In addition, most of the leading industry experts now rate starch-based ethanol as a very low net-energy product. On average it takes 1 barrel of oil (energy) to produce 1.4 barrels of starch-based ethanol. Compared to the 100 to 1 ratio of fuel production from Saudi Arabian light sweet crude (it takes 1 barrel of oil to make 100 gallons of gasoline) starch-based ethanol doesn’t look like much of a deal. However the “cost” of Saudi oil is much higher when less tangible issues such as the vulnerability of foreign oil dependence and the necessity of militarily protecting our foreign oil interests are brought to bear.

In comparison, biodiesel, which is primarily made from soybeans and waste animal and vegetable fats, has an average 1 to 3.2 net energy yield. This is comparable to many less efficient methods of producing gasoline. For example, the net energy yield of gasoline from the Alberta Tar Sands in Canada is slightly less than biodiesel at a 1 to 3 ratio.

Another down-side to starch-based ethanol is that corn is a heavy feeder crop that requires large amounts of nitrogen-based fertilizers, as well as pesticides and herbicides, to produce crop yields that are profitable even for the large agri-businesses. These fertilizers and pesticides are costly, often prohibitively so for smaller, family-based farms.

In areas of the country, such as the mountain states and the Pacific Northwest, corn and soybeans are just not viable crops due to a combination of factors, including climate, growing season, soil types and availability of irrigation. Traditionally against ethanol production and its use, California, which is the country’s largest agricultural producer in terms of total dollar revenues, is now looking at oil seed crops which can be used for biodiesel, such as canola and sunflowers.

Unfortunately, according to Kruger, most of the government grants for research in oil seed production are still heavily slanted towards the traditional corn and soybean models; this despite the continuing low energy yield of starch-based ethanol production. However studies on the yields of something called cellulosic ethanol show tremendous promise.

“The real future is cellulosic ethanol,” says Peter Moulton, Dir. of the Harvesting Clean Energy Program at Climate Solutions, in Olympia, Washington. “Instead of getting at the sugars in the sort of fruiting bodies of the plants (like corn kernels), it gets at the wood sugars that are intrinsic in wood fibers, like in woody debris, wheat and barley stubble, and switch grass. Up until quite recently it was cost prohibitive to do it, [but] they’ve brought down the cost … by a factor of 30-fold. Especially where fuel prices are going, all of a sudden cellulosic is now very competitive.”

In Washington State, where winter and spring wheat are huge cash crops, cellulosic ethanol production refineries are being considered as viable agricultural industries to subsidize by the state legislature. Farmers could harvest some of the left-over wheat stubble as an additional “crop.” As long as they returned sufficient stubble as biomass to the soil by tilling it back in, soil health and vigor would not be reduced. In addition, by planting other kinds of seed oil producing crops, like mustards and canola, in rotation with their regular wheat crops, farmers could supplement their income while improving the health of their fields. Alternating canola crops, for example, with wheat, can bolster wheat production the following year by as much as 25%. Mustard, which contains a natural fumigant in its root system, can be planted in rotation with potatoes.

The mustard cover crop, harvested before potatoes are planted helps with nematode reduction. “Including the cost of putting in the mustard cover crop and then tilling it in,” says Kruger, “farmers are seeing a net savings per acre of about $100 in terms of reduced pesticide use.”