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U.S. Corn-Based Ethanol Worse For The Climate Than Gasoline, Study Finds – Watts Up With That?


New study published at PNAS.

Some quotes, emphasis mine.

Significance

Biofuels are included in many proposed strategies to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and limit the magnitude of global warming. The US Renewable Fuel Standard is the world’s largest existing biofuel program, yet despite its prominence, there has been limited empirical assessment of the program’s environmental outcomes. Even without considering likely international land use effects, we find that the production of corn-based ethanol in the United States has failed to meet the policy’s own greenhouse gas emissions targets and negatively affected water quality, the area of land used for conservation, and other ecosystem processes. Our findings suggest that profound advances in technology and policy are still needed to achieve the intended environmental benefits of biofuel production and use.

Abstract

The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) specifies the use of biofuels in the United States and thereby guides nearly half of all global biofuel production, yet outcomes of this keystone climate and environmental regulation remain unclear. Here we combine econometric analyses, land use observations, and biophysical models to estimate the realized effects of the RFS in aggregate and down to the scale of individual agricultural fields across the United States. We find that the RFS increased corn prices by 30% and the prices of other crops by 20%, which, in turn, expanded US corn cultivation by 2.8 Mha (8.7%) and total cropland by 2.1 Mha (2.4%) in the years following policy enactment (2008 to 2016). These changes increased annual nationwide fertilizer use by 3 to 8%, increased water quality degradants by 3 to 5%, and caused enough domestic land use change emissions such that the carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the RFS is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24% higher. These tradeoffs must be weighed alongside the benefits of biofuels as decision-makers consider the future of renewable energy policies and the potential for fuels like corn ethanol to meet climate mitigation goals.

https://www.pnas.org/content/119/9/e2101084119

They also examine the effect of the RFS on food prices, something which became very apparent back in 2008

We found that the RFS stimulated 20.8 billion L (5.5 Bgal) of additional annual ethanol production, which requires nearly 1.3 billion bushels of corn after accounting for coproducts that can be fed to animals (46). This heightened demand led to persistent increases in corn prices of ∼31% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 5%, 70%) compared to BAU (Fig. 1). The increased demand for corn also spilled over onto other crops, increasing soybean prices by 19% [−8%, 72%] and wheat by 20% [2%, 60%] (SI Appendix, Table S1). These outcomes approximate the contribution of the RFS policy specifically, although other factors including changes in fuel blending economics that favored 10% ethanol as an octane source in gasoline (E10) may also have contributed (SI AppendixSupplementary Results for Price Impacts).

https://www.pnas.org/content/119/9/e2101084119

The increase in corn prices relative to other crops increased the area planted to corn on existing cropland by an average of 2.8 Mha* per year [95% CI: 2.4, 3.1], which is an 8.7% increase attributable to the RFS. This additional area resulted from producers planting corn more frequently, including a 2.1 Mha [1.8, 2.3] increase in continuous corn production (i.e., sequential year cropping) and a 1.4 Mha [0.8, 1.9] increase in the area planted in rotation with other crops (SI AppendixSupplementary Results for Crop Rotations and Fig. S1). Collectively, corn area increased most markedly in North and South Dakota, western Minnesota, and the Mississippi Alluvial Plain—regions where the amount of corn increased 50 to 100% due to the RFS 

https://www.pnas.org/content/119/9/e2101084119

Please check out the full study here.

HT/ATHeoK

BUT THERE’S MORE!

It’s rare that I write a post on a study and then late night TV talks about the same study. Looks like Gutfeld beat me to it.

AND EVEN MORE!

There is also a relevant article about the history of gasoline additives and technology from MasterResource published on February 15th.

This article dovetails nicely with the findings above.

“‘Fuel of the Year’ Syndrome:” Methanol in California Revisited

By Robert Bradley Jr. — February 15, 2022

“Yet the methanol initiative is now largely forgotten. And of course, there’s always the problem that EPA regulations do not allow it to be used in automobiles. With natural-gas surpluses now at the point where a national oversupply is being predicted for 2017, however, it may be time to go back and give the California experience a second look.” (Arctic Leaf, 2013, below)

“The Alternative Motor Fuel Act, signed into law by President Reagan in 1988 … provided a waiver of EPA regulations to allow methanol to be used in cars. A year later, President George H.W. Bush became an enthusiast, promising to put 500,000 methanol cars on the road by 1996 and a million by 1998.

The history of energy technology and policy is important for today’s debates. Again and again, historical research uncovers examples of government-engineered energy choices that start with great expectations and end up in failure.

Synthetic fuels in the 1970s (and before) is one example; another is California’s 1980s/1990s love affair with methanol as an alternative to traditional gasoline and diesel for vehicle transportation. (Natural gas vehicles were a big thing too.)

The methanol story is recounted by Arctic Leaf, “When California had 15,000 Methanol Cars” (Fuel Freedom Foundation: October 4, 2013)

Do you realize that California once had 15,000 cars on the road burning methanol? And that those drivers loved their performance? But that whole experiment came to an end ten years ago because – get this – natural gas was too scarce and expensive.

In an era when natural gas is cheap and plentiful – when people in the industry are warning that wells may soon be shutting down because there isn’t enough demand for the product – it may be worth going back and taking a second look at what happened in the Golden State from 1988 to 2004.

California energy planners have a long history of overriding market verdicts with their notion of the common good, or what F. A. Hayek would call the fatal conceit. Arctic Leaf continues:

California, of course, has never been shy about pushing new technologies. At various times the state has pioneered renewable energy, mandated zero-emissions vehicles (electric cars) and tried to establish a “hydrogen highway” for fuel-cell vehicles. Not all these efforts have succeeded, and a few have been notable failures. But the methanol experiment, oddly enough, was fairly successful. Now, at a time when it could be seen as prescient, it is largely forgotten.

Here is the history of the methanol experiment, which included Ronald Reagan on the federal side, dating roughly from the late 1980s until 1998:

The project began way back in 1988, when memories of the 1970s energy crisis were still fresh, and various senators were looking for ways to plug their state economies. The impetus came from a joint effort by Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota. Rockefeller was looking for a way to promote his coal economy, while Daschle had his eye on farm wastes.

The ethanol-from-corn effort was already up and running, but both Rockefeller and Daschle recognized that methanol might work just as well, and that their home states could benefit. Methanol, after all, can be derived from coal, biomass or natural gas. The result was the Alternative Motor Fuel Act, signed into law by President Reagan in 1988, which provided a waiver of EPA regulations to allow methanol to be used in cars. A year later, President George H.W. Bush became an enthusiast, promising to put 500,000 methanol cars on the road by 1996 and a million by 1998.

Auto Companies Join In

Arctic Leaf continues:

Such presidential promises are often wildly exaggerated, but Ford Motor Co. took up the challenge and produced a Taurus model that could run on 85 percent mixes of both ethanol and methanol. This came at a time when gasoline had become cheap again, however, and there wasn’t much interest around the country in alternative fuels. But California took the initiative.

Mike Jackson, who was the lead technical advisor for the California Energy Commission and now works for Fuel Freedom, recalls the experience:

“The original justification was petroleum displacement in response to the 1973-74 crisis, but you learned fairly quickly that that wasn’t sustainable. But we realized there were air quality benefits, so we shifted in that direction.”

The state partnered with Ford and Volkswagen, agreeing to set up a string of fueling stations if they would bring out cars capable of running on methanol. Then the state started buying methanol vehicles for its various fleets. ”

“It was a technical success, but an emotional failure,” Jackson said. “The biggest problem was range anxiety. There were only 10 fueling stations at that time, and it just wasn’t enough. There were times when people abandoned the cars on the freeway because they were afraid they were going to run out of gas.”

Flex-Fuel as a Rescue

Then Roberta Nichols, head of the research and development effort at Ford, came up with an idea: Ford would produce a flex-fuel vehicle (FFV) that could run interchangeably on a variety of fuels. The car could handle blends of 85 percent ethanol or methanol but could switch to gasoline if necessary. Ford produced a Taurus FFV, and the program once again went into high gear. The clean air benefits were adding up, and the state started to consider ratcheting down the NOx requirement to the point where the oil companies would have to add methanol or ethanol in order to meet them.

Suddenly, the oil companies stunned the state by announcing that they would be able to meet the standard by producing a new “blended” fuel.

This was reformulated gasoline, and it ended the methanol experiment:

“Everybody’s jaw dropped,” Jackson said. “Why hadn’t they mentioned this before? But they said they could achieve the same thing by adding MTBE, which is methanol-based, so that was it.”

The MTBE additive created a new problem for methanol. Since methanol was one of the feedstocks for the production of MTBE, supplies began to be diverted, and it became more expensive to use as a substitute fuel. However, MTBE eventually came under pressure because it was getting into drinking water. California and New York banned it in 2004, and most states quickly followed suit.

Ethanol as Oxygenate Takes Over

By that time, ethanol was going strong, with more and more of the corn crop diverted into its production, and the 10-percent ethanol blend became the substitute for oxygenating fuel and reducing NOx emissions.

“We ended up with cleaner gasoline technology,” Jackson said. “But we lost sight of the idea of methanol as an oil substitute.”

By this time, the country had fallen into the “Fuel of the Year” syndrome. Hydrogen had a big run in the late 1990s. Then, after the turn of the century, it was the electric car. Somehow methanol got lost in the shuffle. California’s program limped along until 2004, when the state finally abandoned it. With natural gas selling at $7 per mBTUs and peaking as high as $11, it didn’t seem to have any future.

Now, with natural gas supplies flowing in surplus, the California experiment suddenly seems far ahead of its time. Methanol made from natural gas at $3.25 per mBTU could sell at nearly half the price of gasoline made from $100-a-barrel oil. Methanol from coal could revive the flagging fortunes of the coal industry. Methanol reformed in the field could solve the problem of flaring in the Bakken Shale, which now wastes the equivalent of one-quarter of U.S. gas consumption every year.

Arctic Leaf concluded (in 2013):

Yet the methanol initiative is now largely forgotten. And of course, there’s always the problem that EPA regulations do not allow it to be used in automobiles. With natural-gas surpluses now at the point where a national oversupply is being predicted for 2017, however, it may be time to go back and give the California experience a second look.

Final Comment

As has been said, markets pick winners and government losers. Wind and solar and EVs are now on the firing line where synfuels and methanol were before. The game is to perpetually extend subsidies and enlarge them to keep the uneconomic economic.

But with budget deficits and monetary inflation upon us, the music will have to stop. Unfortunately, the US ship might go down with the alternate energy schemes in full operation.



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