It is Final - Corn Ethanol is of No Use

Biomass/Biofuels / Resource Evaluation

Date posted: 02/23/15

Dr. Conca asks, can we please stop pretending biofuel made from corn is helping the planet and the environment? The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released two of its Working Group reports at the end of last month - WGI and WGIII, and their short discussion of biofuels has ignited a fierce debate as to whether there are any environmental benefit at all. The summary in the new report also states, that increasing bioenergy crop cultivation poses risks to ecosystems and biodiversity. The report lists many potential negative risks of development, such as direct conflicts between land for fuels and land for food, other land-use changes, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity and nitrogen pollution through the excessive use of fertilizers. The International Institute for Sustainable Development was not so diplomatic, and estimates that the CO2 and climate benefits from replacing petroleum fuels with biofuels like ethanol are basically zero. But it would completely disrupt food supplies, livestock feed, and many poor economies in the Western Hemisphere because the U.S. produces 40 per cent of the world corn. Seventy percent of all corn imports worldwide come from the U.S. Simply implementing mandatory vehicle fuel efficiencies of 40 mpg would accomplish much more, much faster, with no collateral damage. The most common natural oils used are rapeseed and canola oil, but a particularly promising candidate is oil from algae. Algae production uses non-productive land and brine water and produces over 20 times the oil production of any food crop. An acre of algae can produce almost 5,000 gallons of biodiesel. It does not compete with food crops for arable land or potable water and could produce over 60 billion gallons per yr that could replace all petroleum-based diesel in the U.S.