More Ethanol Follies

Stanford University's Woods Institute researchers, Diana Ginnebaugh and Mark Jacobson presented a paper at the December 15, 2009 meeting of the American Geophysical Union in which they find that combustion of E85 produces different byproducts than does the burning of gasoline, including higher amounts of aldehydes, which are precursors to ozone. The additional aldehyde concentration compared to gasoline is smaller at higher temperatures, like in Los Angeles, but it is markedly higher in colder temperatures like here in Minnesota.

Cornell Professor David Pimentel was one of the earliest and most prolific critics of ethanol, both from the energy balance side as well as from the ecology and biodiversity side, which is his specialty.

In 2006, then Cargill CEO Warren Staley came at it from a totally different angle:"If it's ethanol and biodiesel, we have to look at the hierarchy of value for agriculture land use: food first, then feed and last fuel," he said. Using scarce land for transportation fuels was not good stewardship when world food production would have to double in the next twenty years in order to feed growing and more affluent populations.

What kind of dollars have we thrown at this folly? A recent study by Rice University's Baker Energy Center finds that the U.S. government spent $4 billion on biofuel subsidies in 2008 in order to replace about 2% of the domestic gasoline supply. The average cost to the taxpayer was about $82 a barrel, or $1.95 a gallon.