GoodFuels

RFA paper: Ethanol has little impact on land use changes

The Renewable Fuels Association has released a paper this morning that says that land required to produce the 15 billion gallons of ethanol in 2015 is likely to be less than 1% of total world cropland.

“Using unsupported assumptions, imprecise economic models, and questionable logic, some have suggested growth in U.S. biofuels like ethanol would indirectly cause significant conversion of forest and grassland to agriculture in the United States and abroad,” said the report. “Unfortunately, the current state of land use change science is far from conclusive and no consensus exists on how best to analyze the potential indirect land use impacts of expanding biofuels production.”

Earlier this year, this argument was one of the most repeated by ethanol critics. This paper refutes claims that ethanol production causes deforestation and takes land away from other uses.

The report is available for download here.

Edit: The New York Times’ blog Green Inc. has also written about this paper. Go here to check it out.

More Efficient Ethanol Production

New studies released by the Illinois Corn Growers Association have confirmed that production of ethanol leaves a smaller carbon footprint than gasoline and continues to get more efficient.

Dr. Steffen Mueller, principal research economist at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Energy Resources Center, studied the carbon footprint of the Illinois River Energy facility near Rochelle, Illinois which produces 55 million gallons of ethanol annually.

“We found conclusively that the global warming impact of the modern ethanol plant is 40 percent lower than gasoline. This is a sizable reduction from numbers currently being used by public agencies and in the public debate,” said Mueller. “The study also documents the significant net energy benefits of ethanol when compared to gasoline. And, additional opportunities exist to expand that margin even more through technological improvements and on farm changes in corn production that reduce green house gas emissions. Furthermore, corn supply for the ethanol plant was primarily met through yield increases in the surrounding area and, as documented with satellite imagery, without conversion of non agricultural land to corn.”

That last point was the subject of a second study by Ross Korves, economic policy analyst at ProExporter Network. That study suggests that sufficient amounts of corn will be available to increase ethanol production from the current level of 7.1 billion gallons last year to 33 billion gallons by 2030 with current technology and predicts that the global warming impact (GWI) of the average ethanol plant would decline dramatically through increased efficiencies in coming years.

“The GWI of the average ethanol plant is expected to decline 27 percent by 2030,” said Korves. “By that year, the GWI of corn ethanol processed in a plant using a biomass combined heat and power system will be less than one-third of the GWI of gasoline.”

According to the ICGA, at this level of reduction, corn to ethanol could be categorized as an advanced biofuel based on the performance requirements in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

Download pdfs of the studies here.

Ethanol production helping bolster livestock feed supply

In a story by Robert Pore of the Grand Island, NE Independent, there could be roughly a 50% increase in distillers grains (DDGS) in the 2008/2009 marketing year.

Now, what does this have to do with ethanol? DDGS are a nutrient rich co-product of the ethanol production process that is used as livestock feed, an often ignored benefit to ethanol production.

Scott Richman, senior vice president of Informa Economics, said as a result of the growth in the U.S. ethanol industry this year, 22.8 million tons of DDGS were available for global use in the 2007-2008 marketing year. He said that’s nearly a 50-percent increase from the 2006-2007 marketing year.

Richman said that in the 2008-2009 marketing year, which began Oct. 1, there’s likely to be an additional 50-percent increase in the availability of DDGS, reaching 31.3 million tons.

Earlier this year, meat and poultry producers attacked ethanol as the source of their financial woes, blaming ethanol production for using valuable corn. Hopefully this increase in abundant livestock feed (available as a result of ethanol production) will allow these producers to lower their costs and pass the savings onto their consumers.

Check out the whole story here.

Photo by Glynnis Ritchie.

DOE study on higher ethanol blends

The US Department of Energy has released a preliminary study in which the impact of higher level ethanol blends were studied in “conventional vehicles”.

Currently, the maximum amount of ethanol allowed in gasoline blends is 10%, except for flex-fuel vehicles which are specifically designed to run on ethanol blends up to 85%. The tests were designed to compare tailpipe emissions, catalyst and exhaust temperatures, materials compatibility, and overall performance in both regular road vehicles and smaller engines (such as those found in lawnmowers) using E15 and E20 against conventional gasoline.

The results found that performance difference between the two fuels was minimal, if it existed at all, which is consistent with earlier studies, such as those conducted by the State of Minnesota.

Bottom line, using ethanol will not affect engine performance or drivability in your car, according to these analyses. This opens up higher level blends for more study and refinement. If we’re ever going to break away from importing foreign oil, this is definitely a huge step in the right direction.

Check out the Minnesota study here (executive summary; see link above for complete report).

Check out the DOE study here.

(Image via Columbia Tribune)

Ethanol has positive energy balance

Hoosier Ag Today has posted about a some recent research by the Nebraska Center for Energy Sciences Research.

Ken Cassmen, the director of the center, says that they found that ethanol has as much as 2-3 times more favorable energy balance than previously thought. He stressed that it is important to understand that ethanol has a net energy balance. In other words, ethanol contains more energy than it takes to produce it.

Cassmen added - we estimate that 13 gallons of ethanol are produced for every gallon of petroleum used in the production life cycle for corn ethanol. Alan Tiemann, a member of the Nebraska Corn Board, added that greenhouse gas emission reductions are also more favorable than previous estimates when compared directly to corn and ethanol production.

This disproves another “anti-ethanol” talking point. Great research! Read the story in its entirety here.