Ethanol:

More Corn Pone

EDITORIAL / Wall Street Journal 20may2002

[More on ethanol]

Majority Leader Tom Daschle recently pulled off a coup d'corn, mandating billions of gallons of ethanol use across the country in the new Senate

We've already noted how this would raise gas prices by as much as a dime a gallon. But recent news suggests that the damage from subsidizing the corn-made fuel is far worse than even we thought.

Reading their Archer-Daniels-Midland cue cards, ethanol supporters make two arguments. They say that as a replacement for fossil fuels ethanol lessens U.S. oil dependence. They add that ethanol, an oxygenate, reduces tailpipe pollution. If this sounds too good to be true, read on.

Scientists have been looking for a cheap, clean "miracle fuel" for years. But the problem with most replacements—including ethanol—is that they have to be manufactured in processes that are both energy-intensive and expensive. A study last year by Cornell University agricultural scientist David Pimentel shows that it takes so much fossil fuel to create ethanol, that we end up with a net energy loss.

The numbers go like this: It takes 131,000 BTUs to grow and convert enough corn for one gallon of ethanol. A gallon of ethanol, however, has an energy value of just 77,000 BTUs. In other words, it takes about 70% more energy (which comes from fossil fuels, by the way) to produce ethanol than the energy ethanol creates. It'd be easier—and less costly—for consumers to pour most of every gallon of gas they buy down a sinkhole.

Professor Pimentel also looked at the cost of making ethanol. He found that ethanol costs $1.74 a gallon to produce, compared with 95 cents to produce a gallon of gas. That's why "fossil fuels—not ethanol—are used to produce ethanol," he says. The growers and processors can't afford to burn ethanol to make ethanol." We might add that drivers can't afford ethanol either, which is why the government subsidizes it at the pump.

And then there's the question of clean air. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it was investigating ethanol-producing companies for pollution. The EPA says factories are producing carbon monoxide, methanol and "additional emissions that weren't anticipated" at levels "many times greater" than the companies promised.

This might be acceptable, if ethanol made skies bluer. But it doesn't. Annual emissions of the worst auto exhaust pollutants have dropped by more than half since the 1960s, but most gains have come from better emissions equipment and cleaner engines. Two years ago the National Academy of Sciences concluded that ethanol had "little impact in improving ozone air quality." In short, the U.S. pumps out pollution to make a product that itself does little or nothing to help air quality. And under Mr. Daschle's plan, the amount of that pollution will triple by 2012.

Which raises the question, if there are no energy or. pollution gains, why use ethanol at all? The answer is that it is an easy way for Mr. Daschle to transfer billions of dollars in tax-payer subsidies to farmers in his native Mid-west. Farm-state senators get corn votes this November, while Americans get to pay more for gas and breathe dirtier air. What a deal.