GoodFuels

Daily Show Dishes Ethanol Misinformation

Former Vice President Al Gore with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” this week perpetuated the myth that ethanol is bad for the environment.

During an interview promoting Gore’s new book “Our Choice,” Stewart said that making choices to help the environment can be confusing for people. “We were told ethanol was the answer, turns out that’s worse for the environment,” Stewart said. The former VP, who supported corn-based ethanol while in office, did little to defend the fuel in response to that statement. “Yeah, but the new forms of ethanol that they’re coming up with now actually are not bad for the environment and we can switch to the new kinds that will be much better,” Gore said.

Nice try, but no cigar. “All ethanol, regardless of its source, is more sustainable and environmentally-friendly than gasoline,” said Renewable Fuels Association President and CEO Bob Dinneen in response to the exchange. “When compared directly to gasoline, ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 60% - and that is with the technologies we have today. New technologies and processes will make current ethanol production as well as future production even more sustainable.”

“Failing to understand the issue and continuing to propagate factually inaccurate information, even on a faux news show, is dangerous and undermines the legitimate debate about our energy future,” said Dinneen, who hopes that Mr. Gore will “visit any of the nation’s ethanol facilities and to attend the industry’s annual conference next February in Orlando, Florida. The RFA would welcome the Vice President to present his ideas and engage in a frank discussion about the role of biofuels in our environmental future.”

Ethanol May Be Falsely Accused

The story made headlines around the country last week - Excess Ethanol Blamed in Police Car Breakdowns.

Baltimore city officials blamed an ”unusually high amount of ethanol in gasoline” when over 200 police cars experienced engine problems after fueling up at a city-run pump.

Bad publicity when the ethanol industry is asking for approval to allow higher blends of ethanol in gasoline, no doubt. Problem is - this may be a case of the wrong suspect being accused of the crime.

A Baltimore Sun blogger is now reporting that the gasoline supplier, IsoBunkers, conducted its own tests and “found the gas was 10 percent ethanol — just what it was supposed to be.” IsoBunkers officials noted that only police cars were affected by the breakdowns, not other city vehicles that used the same pump. City officials are now saying they will continue the investigation to determine exactly what did cause the problem.

Unfortunately, the IsoBunkers revelation today was relegated to the blog (not that there is anything wrong with blogs, mind you) - but it didn’t make front page news like the original story did last week. If it turns out they pinned the crime on the wrong suspect, the damage may already be done. The innocent will still be tainted.

The evidence was flawed from the start, however. City officials said only it was an “unusually high amount of ethanol” but did not quantify that. Sure, if there was 50 percent ethanol in the gasoline that could very likely cause problems in vehicles that are not flex-fuel. Maybe as little as 20-30 percent could even be a problem. And there is a possibility that a blender could have made an error and blended ethanol at a higher than approved rate. The city needed to do a more thorough investigation before “making an arrest” in this case. They tainted the reputation of both the supplier and the fuel by jumping the gun.

I certainly hope the media in Baltimore follows up on this story and not only gets to the bottom of this who-done-it mystery but reports it to the public as well.

Andrew Sullivan Dishes Up a Brazilian Nut

The Renewable Fuels Association has a few things to say to serial ethanol critic Andrew Sullivan (of The Atlantic) in response to today’s Daily Dish column, “Captive to Corn“:

“In his continuing diatribe against American farmers and ethanol producers, Andrew Sullivan chose to highlight the views of an international consultant who has worked closely with Brazil. This consultant criticizes Senator Charles Grassley’s decision to delay consideration of a nominee to be Ambassador to Brazil who advocates eliminating a secondary tariff on imported ethanol. Without the tariff, US taxpayers would end up helping to subsidize the Brazilian ethanol industry.

“Senator Grassley is absolutely right when he explains that the tariff on a portion of imported ethanol (a great deal of ethanol is imported without any tariff) offsets the tax benefit provided to all blenders of ethanol. And this is President Obama’s policy as he stated in a letter to Senator Grassley yesterday, “The Obama Administration is committed to developing our domestic biofuels industry in order to reduce US dependence on oil imports and increase our use of renewable energy sources. There has been no change of policy with respect to the U.S. import surcharge of $0.54 a gallon on ethanol. The Administration has no plans to seek changes to the import surcharge.”

“Sullivan’s source, David Rothkopf, attacks the secondary tariff on ethanol by making the outrageous and totally unsupported claim that “There is not a single credible analyst of biofuels [...] who thinks that corn ethanol makes a hint of sense.”

“Well, in fact there are numerous credible analysts, academicians, and economists who think corn ethanol makes a whole lot of sense – from reducing US dependence on foreign oil, to helping keep the price of gasoline down for consumers to expanding economic opportunity in America’s heartland to providing a platform for the development and production of ethanol from wood chips, switch grass, municipal solid waste and other feedstocks.

“Finally, David Rothkopf and his online host Andrew Sullivan somehow believe (quite wrongly) that ethanol is only produced in Iowa when in fact it is produced in 25 states including New York, California, Texas and Louisiana to name a few not located in the Midwest.

“Some day, it might be of interest to hear why Sullivan, Rothkopf and others seem to think increasing reliance on oil imports is better than producing a cleaner burning, domestic renewable fuel like ethanol.”

Real Money Lobbyists

Definitely file this one under the category of “unbalanced reporting.” It just really made me wonder what the agenda is for some news media.

When I saw a story on CNBC that the Renewable Fuels Association spent $166,000 “in the first quarter to lobby on energy and fuel standards legislation,” I thought, “Why is this news?”

Seriously. First of all, the lobbying report for the first quarter came out in April. Second, there are lots of other organizations that spent WAY more than that on fuel standards and/or ethanol-related lobbying.

According to the Lobbying Disclosure Act Database, if you query for “fuel standards” as an issues search, you will find the American Petroleum Institute spent $1.8 million, Chevron spent $6.8 million and Exxon spent $9.3 million.

Query for ethanol and you will find that the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association spent at least $720,000 and Tyson spent almost $500,000.

Why even do a story on what RFA spent in the first quarter of this year on lobbying? It seems like a pretty small amount compared to companies and organizations lobbying against ethanol. Guess that depends on one’s agenda.

Time Flunks Ethanol Fact Test

The same guy who brought us “The Clean Energy Myth” cover story in Time magazine last year has a similarly biased story in this week’s issue filled with inaccuracies and down-right falsehoods.

I hope that “Stress-Testing Biofuels: How the Game Was Rigged” by Michael Grunwald is supposed to be commentary, rather than actual reporting, since it clearly features the writer’s anti-ethanol bias and opinions.

Grunwald cites “Princeton scholar Tim Searchinger” as his primary resource for the evils of ethanol, the same environmental lawyer and author who was the basis of last year’s cover story, despite the fact that his theory of international land use change has been refuted by actual scientists. Grunwald writes as if Searchinger’s “work” is proven fact:

Yet the real problem with farm fuels, as Searchinger and others have shown, is in the indirect effects on land use: when an acre of land is used to grow fuel instead of food, an extra acre somewhere else is probably going to be converted into farmland to grow food. And that acre may well be an acre of wetland or forest that would otherwise store loads of carbon. So farm fuels become a lose-lose deal: exacerbating the deforestation that already creates one fifth of the world’s carbon emissions, and driving up global food prices.

More than 100 scientists and researchers disputed this assertion in a letter to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger earlier this year, saying the science of indirect land use is “in its nascent stage, is controversial in much of the scientific community, and is only being enforced against biofuels.”

Regarding deforestation, the letter from the scientists noted that “most primary forest deforestation is currently occurring in places like Brazil, Indonesia and Russia as a direct result of logging, cattle ranching and subsistence farming. Adding an iLUC penalty to biofuels will hold the sector accountable to decision-making far outside of its control (i.e. for decisions related to the supply chains of other products), and is unlikely to have any effect on protecting forests or mitigating GHG emissions as a result of land management practices.”

In blaming biofuels for driving up global food prices, Grunwald links to a February 2008 Time photo essay which paints a dire, heart-rendering picture of starving people around the world. The implication is that ethanol is responsible for children rummaging though garbage for food in Somalia. This goes beyond irresponsible reporting into downright lying, especially considering a recent Congressional Budget Office report found that ethanol was responsible for just 10 percent of last year’s increase in domestic food prices while oil prices were responsible for 36 percent. In addition, the U.S. exported a record amount of corn last year even with higher ethanol production, which belies the notion that because we are making food into fuel we are depriving the world of needed sustenance.

Renewable Fuels Association president Bob Dinneen has written a letter to Time magazine “objecting to the unbalanced and factually inaccurate reporting/editorializing on biofuels by Michael Grunwald” and attempting to set the record straight. We’ll see if it gets published.