ETHANOL IS THREATENING WORLD ECONOMIES

 Selecting ethanol as a viable substitute for gasoline is one of the typical boondoggles by our venerated Congress.  Under the disguise of a solution to a pressing problem, US Congress has come up with another major subsidy for the corporate agricultural sector.  Taxpayers have to pay twice.  They do not only have to pay the subsidies for a pointless and ineffective program, they are forced to pay additionally for a substantial increase in basic food prices.   

Ethanol from biomass is a very poor choice for producing liquid fuels.  After accounting for the energy used for growing, fertilizing, harvesting, milling, fermenting, and distilling corn, there is not much energy left to sell.  The energy from one acre of arable soil, the annual net energy yield, is far too small to justify the growing and conversion of corn into ethanol.  It will never be possible to produce liquid fuel substitutes from corn in quantities that can give the USA or the world lasting relief from escalating oil prices and ethanol can certainly not reduce the dependency of the USA on foreign oil.  Let us look at some energy facts.

During the next fifty years, the world will consume 50 billion barrels of petroleum each single year on an annual average.  In 2007, the US produced close to 6 billion gallons of ethanol.  Converting the energy content of this amount of ethanol gives us the equivalent energy content of less than 0.1 billion barrels of petroleum. 

If we assume for the moment that we need to eventually convert the world’s entire transportation system to bioenergy and will make ethanol the preferred fuel, we will run into one major, unacceptable problem.  It will be necessary to use every acre of available, arable lands and grow corn everywhere.  In this scheme, there is one main flaw.  There will be no lands left to grow foods. 

Ethanol is a political ploy.  Other countries should not follow the US lead and begin to produce ethanol.  Brazil can afford to make ethanol from sugarcane.  Most other countries must be much more judicious in their use of arable lands for the production of food.

It is unavoidable that the world will run out of petroleum around the year 2050 if current trends continue: oil consumption keeps growing and insufficient new petroleum reserves are discovered and are added to the remaining reserves.

There is only one lasting solution.  We must find biomass with much higher energy yields than corn and we must use much more efficient energy conversion processes than fermentation.  Only under these two fundamental, irrefutable constraints is it feasible to replace petroleum with bioenergy and continue to grow sufficient foods for a growing world population.  Finding better technologies is imperative and is becoming extremely critical. 

It will not be possible to increase the use of coal and of natural gas.  We must stop greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion soon or global warming will become more oppressive and destructive at increasing rates. 

World economies cannot flourish and prosper without access to plentiful, affordable, and secure liquid motor fuels.  Conversion of bioenergy into liquid fuels is the only feasible option available to keep our transportation systems functioning and the only option we can still develop soon enough.  If we delay the conversion of our transportation systems from petroleum to bioenergy much longer, the world will be punished by experiencing a severe, global, economic recession.  Our situation is grave.  We need to find alternate liquid fuels quickly or we risk the very existence of our civilizations.  Globalization has made world economies hopelessly dependent on each other.  Inexpensive and fast transportation is the engine that keeps our economies humming.  Large price increases of liquid fuels or unavailability of liquid fuels will bring economies to a screeching halt in weeks.  We are losing the critical ingredient that drives world economies on a continuous basis.  World economies cannot flourish and grow without inexpensive and abundant liquid fuels!

A changeover to biofuels will give us other major advantages.  We will become independent of the OPEC cartel and we will be able to fight the accelerating, major threat to the survival of the world we love; the very real danger of overheating the Earth.

During the next few years, it will become more and more obvious that we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions or the world will heat up much faster than predicted by recent consensus reports of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 

We can sequester limited amounts of carbon dioxide and can store them underground in leak-free geological formations.  We will be forced very soon to clean up the exhaust gases from fossil fuel fired power plants.  Our growing energy consumption by burning more and more fossil fuels in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas continues to emit huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it continues to accumulate.  Carbon dioxide is a gas that can absorb and emit thermal radiation from the Sun and from the warming Earth. 

The most dramatic and immediate consequence of this accumulation is the accelerating melting of land ice.  Mountain glaciers and ice sheets in the Polar Regions are disappearing and are leading to an accelerating rise in sea levels.  We must first stabilize and then stop all greenhouse gas emissions or we will loose large amounts of precious, fertile, and irreplaceable lands to rising oceans.

We must act soon.  Recent warnings from international panels of scientists have not yet disclosed one very consequential and very disturbing aspect of carbon dioxide accumulation.  Carbon dioxide will stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.  The absorption of carbon dioxide into the oceans is slowing and dissolution of carbon dioxide in seawater raises the lysocline, the line below which carbonates are dissolved by excess acid.  Nature is beginning to fight back.  We must listen to nature and change our ill-devised ways of using fossil fuels.