A lot of people are excited about corn alcohol. The alternative fuel, otherwise known as ethanol, is becoming big business in Michigan, just as it is in Minnesota and many other states. At least five ethanol plants are under construction in the state, one of them in Woodbury, not far from Grand Rapids. When all five plants are completed, they will generate hundreds of jobs, millions of dollars for local economies, and nearly 250 million gallons of ethanol per year.
That’s a lot of white lightning, no matter how you look at it.
Many economic advantages are predicted to accrue to Michigan from ethanol production. But how sustainable is ethanol? What will it really do for the Great Lakes State?
The fact is, I am very leery of the big ethanol bonanza. I fear it may turn out to be a big bust. Even worse, it risks diverting our attention from more promising energy production alternatives, such as wind and solar.
You have to give ethanol credit for making some people very happy, mostly politicians. Lawmakers these days seem to jump at any chance to claim that something is being done to make the U.S. less dependent on foreign oil imports. They are also eager to look like conductors on the 21st century alternative-fuel gravy train.
Governor Jennifer Granholm promises that we will see 1,000 ethanol and biodiesel pumps in MI by 2008. You will be able to stop anywhere and fill up on E-10 (10% ethanol, 90% gasoline), or even E-85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline). To many people, that sounds like real progress – and maybe in some ways it will be.
We all are glad to see the new jobs that ethanol is spinning off. In Minnesota, for example, the ethanol industry generated 10,300 employment opportunities and $2.77 billion of economic activity in 2006, according to a recent report from the state's Department of Agriculture. The industry is projected to do $5 billion in annual business for the Gopher State by 2008 and establish as many as 18,400 jobs. (Michigan talks a big ethanol game. But the state has yet to promote meaningful economic data on the industry)
And the politicians are thrilled to be photographed arm in arm with the farmers in the farm states. The growers foresee tidy increases in the selling price of corn, from which ethanol is made. Nobody disputes the notion that the price of corn will rise. In fact, that’s a large part of the case for investing in ethanol production to begin with.
The Arithmetic of Ethanol
All this prompts at least two big questions. One, what will be the impact of using so much corn for fuel instead of food? And two, how much energy will it really produce?
Michigan’s 2006 corn crop was one of the best on record, coming in at roughly 288 million bushels. Somewhat surprisingly, that ranks Michigan 11th nationally for corn production. We produced all this bounty at the rate of 147 bushels per acre, also a very high number.
A bushel of corn produces somewhere around 2.5 gallons of ethanol. So, a little arithmetic tells you it will take at least 94 million bushels of corn to produce our projected capacity of Michigan ethanol. That is corn that we either don’t produce now; corn that we currently use for food and feed; or corn that we buy and import from out of state.
But if ethanol raises everyone’s food prices substantially, will we continue to feel so excited about it? Corn prices have risen 50 percent in just the last year. Prices of other grains will also rise, inasmuch as the grains compete for the acreage on which they grow. Thus, whether ethanol joins the pantheon of forces contributing to the future explosion in food prices remains to be seen.
The energy equation is, if anything, more serious yet. The fact is that ethanol does not pack the energy wallop of gasoline. One gallon of ethanol equals about .65 gallons of gasoline. In other words, if a gallon of gas takes your car 25 miles down the road, a gallon of ethanol would take you only a little more than 16.
Of course, you wouldn’t actually be burning pure ethanol in your car. But the point is a valid one. It means that Michigan’s 250 million gallons of ethanol will not replace an equivalent amount of gasoline. We will have to produce 375 million gallons to do that.
So instead of 94 million bushels, think 144 million. That's half of Michigan’s corn crop in a record year.
Then there's the question of how much fossil fuel energy goes into corn production (fertilizer uses vast amounts of natural gas) and ethanol production (variously estimated at around 0.47 to 0.89 gallons of gasoline equivalent per bushel).
The Choice to Conserve
Michigan burns almost 5 billion gallons of gasoline every year. So if you really hope to replace all the gasoline used annually here with ethanol, you see we have quite a ways to go.
I’ve dragged you through a fair amount of tedious arithmetic in this column, for which I apologize. But it couldn’t be helped. Some things just don’t reveal themselves until you play with the numbers a bit.
This is a broad and complicated subject. It’s not easy to get command of it all. There are many aspects of it that are not considered here, that are beyond the scope and scale of this column. That is why, mostly, I have posed questions, not given answers. There are no easy answers out there in the alternative energy debate, and anyone who tells you different is serving you moonshine.
I do submit all this as further evidence of my contention, which I have believed and said for years, that energy conservation is the low-hanging fruit of energy independence.
We Americans are so profligate in our energy use that we could cut our use substantially without affecting our quality of life in the least. And at some point, I suspect, circumstances will conspire to force us to conserve whether we want to or not.
Photos:
Corn field - courtesy of National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Governor Jennifer Granholm pumps ethonal - courtesy of State of Michigan
Ethanol Plant - courtesy of National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Ethanol Tour Bus - Photo by Andy Guy