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Hazards that ethanol poses to some motor vehicles not specifically designed to accommodate ethanol are a relatively minor problem in the energy industry. More serious is the impact that ethanol production -- through diversion of once food-destined crops to produce ethanol -- has on the food chain and on global warming.
With ASEAN nations currently employing strategies to produce ethanol and simultaneously deal with the rising costs of both food and fuel, one might ask whether humanity is dealing with another loaded gun. Remember the nuclear fuel industry promised to be safe but instead led to difficulties in safe storage -- for thousands of years -- in spent radioactive fuel and fuel rods? Ethanol production comes with its own built-in problems, including accelerated global warming, consumption of more fossil fuel energy to produce ethanol than is actually produced by the process, and higher prices of food produce and animal products.
In a Center for Research on Globalization report dated April 7, 2007, University of Minnesota professors C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer warned that the world's poor could literally be starved by the move to ethanol. The two economics professors cited huge increases in the price of corn in the United States brought on by the demand for ethanol, and pointed to corresponding increases in the price of other crops either directly or indirectly related to ethanol production.
Sugar is just one example, the price of which here in Thailand has recently risen by a least three baht (US 10 cents) per kilogram. Flour is another example of a food staple being impacted by demand for ethanol and rising fuel prices. A baker we spoke to in Fiji recently told us that flour prices there have risen so much she had to raise the price of the cakes she supplied to locals, making her product less competitive and likely to diminish in sales.
Such food price hikes hit the poor much harder, restricting quantity and quality of food available. For instance, globally pork and poultry -- to name only two -- have become much more expensive for consumers because of ethanol-related demand for former food agriculture.
Back in 2005 Cornell University's David Pimenthal, an ecologist, warned against ethanol and biodiesel from corn and other crops. His objections centered around a well-known but somehow unaccepted truism that ethanol production actually uses more energy than it produces. Said the professor in a Cornell University and University of California-Berkley study, "There is no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel."
He added, "These strategies are not sustainable."
The study revealed that in ethanol production, corn needed 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel actually produced, and wood biomass even worse – 57 percent. Biomass, the professor indicated, was fine for using in heating homes -- burning logs, for example -- but not as a liquid fuel, which is really the main objective of governments today over and above the other aim of reducing greenhouse gases.
Even more friendly studies and policy statements, such as The Truth about Ethanol, a report available online and authored by the Union of Concerned Scientists, indicate harmful side effects of ethanol production. The USC report states, "If land is converted from forest to cropland, there can be a significant increase in global warming pollution." Referring to corn production for ethanol, the statement says, "Corn production requires a significant amount of fossil fuel inputs for farm operations and fertilizer production. Corn production also generates a substantial amount of nitrous oxide, a global warming pollutant, as unused fertilizer breaks down in the field."
Reflecting on how apparently ineffective replacement of fossil fuels by ethanol has been, the study said, "As of the end of 2007, roughly 20-25 percent of our corn crop was being used for making ethanol, yet this displaced less than 3 percent of the gasoline we used for our cars and our trucks. Even if we used all our corn to make ethanol, with nothing left for food or animal feed, we would only displace about 12 percent of our gasoline demand."
Despite experts' opinions and warnings, however, world ethanol demand and production continue to rise, in large part due to government and political pressures. Industry statistics published by the Renewable Fuels Association reveal that just in the United States alone, fuel ethanol production rose from 175 million gallons in 1980 to 6,500 million gallons in 2007. On a global basis, the United States ranked No. 1 in 2007 ethanol production, followed by Brazil, the European Union, China, Canada, and Thailand -- the latter with 79.2 million gallons -- in that order.
The negative impact of ethanol production on food, its questionable benefit -- many insist that it's not a benefit at all but a problem brought on by ill-considered policy decisions -- for the environment, and significant rearrangement of national infrastructures to accommodate ethanol use point to a very possible future abandoning of fuel ethanol unless more beneficial alternative energy sources are quickly exploited. They include wind and solar power, two technologies that are well-developed and have been shown to pay for themselves with minimal environmental impact. Another recommended energy-conservation tool is to reduce frivolous use of automobiles and electricity-consuming appliances.
The United Nations has not been asleep during all the talk about pros and cons of ethanol production. It will offer governments attempting to draw a proper line between food and fuel a five-module software tool titled "Ethanol Production 101." The program analyzes land use assigned to bio-fuel production versus that of food, and provides overviews that will assist with policy and implementation decisions. The software is being field-tested in Peru, Tanzania and Thailand before being made available to other governments.
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(Frank G. Anderson is the Thailand representative of American Citizens Abroad. He was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer to Thailand from 1965-67, working in community development. A freelance writer and founder of northeast Thailand's first local English language newspaper, the Korat Post -- www.thekoratpost.com -- he has spent over eight years in Thailand "embedded" with the local media. He has an MBA in information management and an associate degree in construction technology. ©Copyright Frank G. Anderson.)