GoodFuels

Ethanol Could Evolve From Pond Scum

Making ethanol from algae is getting some national media attention lately, with one story making it an industry controversy and another already denigrating a process that is still in the research stage.

The NYT Greenwire blog headline reads “Ethanol Producers Warily Eye Algae’s Bloom” and has ethanol producers “being a little defensive” over the idea that fuel can be made from pond scum. CNN calls it “Green Goo Biofuel” and happily spreads the notion that algae fuel “still creates pollution when burned, like regular fuel.”

Both articles seem to confuse the use of algae to make biodiesel, which is relatively easy and is being done by several companies, or a next generation ethanol-type fuel - which companies such as Algenol Biofuels are working to perfect. Algenol has partnered with Dow Chemical, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Georgia Tech on technology that uses CO2, salt water, sunlight and non-arable land to produce ethanol.

Whether it will work commercially remains to be seen, but as Matt Hartwig with the Renewable Fuels Association points out in the NYT article, ethanol is paving the way for newer technologies and there’s plenty of room for everyone.

“We’re not talking about an industry left in dust, but rather evolving and becoming part of the solution,” Hartwig said. “We’re going to need it all. This isn’t a situation where we need to rob Peter to pay Paul. We should expand research and development for all technologies to really achieve our goals of energy security.”

Flaws in Indirect Land Use Theory

The study that started all the outcry over ethanol and indirect land use change comes up lacking in the science department.

Two researchers from Sydney, Australia decided to do scholarly analysis of the study by Tim Searchinger et al. and found the science fell far short of acceptable scientific standards. This should actually come as no great surprise, since Searchinger is a lawyer/environmental activist, not a scientist.

In their analysis, Professor John Mathews and Dr. Hao Tan from Macquarie University in Sydney described Searchinger’s study as “more ideology than science and seeking to put biofuels in worst possible light.”

The Searchinger et al. paper is framed in extremely negative terms that depict all biofuel production taking place in the USA and all derived from corn. It calculates land use change effects through the indirect route of assuming that diversion of corn to ethanol in the USA creates a shortfall that has to be made up by farmers planting grain crops in the rest of the world – rather than assuming that farmers are taking decisions to grow biofuel crops around the world using crops adapted to their environment, such as sugarcane in Brazil. The study then deliberately ignores possible trade effects, such as a proportion of this ethanol spike being met by imports from countries such as Brazil. It even ignores the Congressional cap that was placed on US first-generation corn-based ethanol, which was levied at 15 billion gallons (i.e., half the spike used by Searchinger et al.).

“If you wished to put U.S. ethanol production in the worst possible light, assuming the worst possible set of production conditions guaranteed to give the worst possible set of indirect land use effects, then the assumptions would not be far from those actually presented in the Searchinger et al. paper,” commented Dr. Hao Tan. “Frankly, better science upon which to base rule-making is available today.”

All the things the corn and ethanol industries have been trying to point out. Interestingly, the analysis was actually published in BioFPR earlier this year and is just getting a belated, some are calling “mysterious,” PR boost. Regardless, it makes valid points about the assumptions used in the Searchinger model that need to be heard.

Counting Angels on a Pin

It may be easier to count the angels dancing on the head of a pin than to compare the carbon footprints of various fuel types.

That was the conclusion of Ana Campoy writing in the Wall Street Journal blog Environmental Capital about EPA’s methodology in determining the environmental impact of corn ethanol compared to gasoline.

The Renewable Fuels Association, ethanol’s main industry trade group, argues that the corn-based fuel’s environmental credentials should be measured against gasoline made with that kind of oil, not with the lighter and more easily refined crude grades, which are becoming scarcer. That comparison makes ethanol look a lot greener.

“If you’re going to be counting the angels on the head of a pin with ethanol at least take a cursory look at the impacts of petroleum,” says Bob Dinneen, president and chief executive of the group.

The article raises many questions about “how to extricate the real carbon footprint of a fuel from a complex web of interconnections across continents. Where do you begin? Where do you finish?”

In fact, there may be as many variables to the concept of determining the carbon footprint of any one fuel as there are angels on the head of a pin - and just as hard to count.