Editorial: Ethanol in transition

Ethanol distilled from corn is an important part of the United States energy portfolio, especially now, but its environmental benefits are not all they’re cracked up to be. As the nation’s — indeed, the world’s — transportation fleet is undergoing a transition to electric, corn ethanol’s highest use will properly return to Templeton Rye. Iowa must be sober about the future of biofuels as resources shift away from burning fuels.

We should not fool ourselves about the environmental benefits. While ethanol burns cleaner than gasoline, a full life-cycle and land-use analysis from the University of Wisconsin-Madison this week reported that corn ethanol is likely worse for the environment than gasoline. Fertilizer chokes our rivers. Ethanol distilleries pump CO2 into the air and suck up water. Tilling the soil releases carbon into the atmosphere. Higher corn prices from ethanol mandates caused grass to give way to maize. It all adds up to the idea that, at best, ethanol is a wash with gasoline for environmental costs. This is a serious study from a Corn Belt land-grant university published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ethanol blended at 10% is an efficient replacement for gasoline. Production from domestic fracking has plateaued. With uncertainty in oil markets from Venezuela to Russia to the Middle East, it is handy to have ethanol in the tank.

Fuel production consumes about 40% of the nation’s corn crop. It is important for national security and farm income stability that we manage the shift toward electric carefully. We need ethanol in the interim, and we cannot pull the rug out from farmers who have come to depend on it.

Pushing higher blends of ethanol and more mandates that lead to yet higher corn production is a fool’s errand for farmers, for our surface and subsurface water supplies, and in our nascent campaign to temper global warming.

We should maintain our current level of production while encouraging transitions to advanced biofuels that protect our existing producers and our soil, air and water. Quad County Corn Processors is becoming a bioproducts hub that can flourish in a new energy economy that does not depend on corn in gas tanks.

A team from Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy models a zero-carbon energy economy that uses the 40% of existing row-crop acreage to produce biomass for hydrogen production. The economists say it could generate five times more revenue per acre than growing corn for ethanol. Regional biomass conversion facilities would be rational co-locators to existing biofuels producers. The electric F150 Ford pickup is generating the buzz in the Super Bowl commercials, not the diesel with dualies.

There would still be plenty of acres for corn and soybeans to feed hogs and poultry if switchgrass or native grass occupied 40% of Iowa’s acreage. Now, that 40% goes out the tailpipe.

Also this week, scientists confirmed that the West and Great Plains are locked in the worst drought in 1,200 years. The best climate modelers expect it could last a half century. It already has had major impacts in California, the top ag state, and from North Dakota to Mexico. Buffalo Ridge appears to be on the eastern edge of the drought’s range. You won’t be able to grow much corn in Kansas anymore, Toto. (Same with cattle for lack of water.) Food security will rise in people’s minds to the same level as energy security. It’s already happening with complaints over prices at the grocery store. Not all of it is due to the pandemic or snarled supply chains. Wildfires and heat have either destroyed groves or caused Golden State farmers to cull them. The San Joaquin is toasted.

Markets reacting to Nature will force us into different land uses. Corn ethanol is an important energy source during the transition. It has been a guide into new biofuels and innovations in by-products. It has been and is useful, and deserves government support as we wean off it. Don’t bet the farm on corn ethanol, or think that it’s all we have in our hand to play. It’s part of a transition to something better for everybody, not a bane or a bounty, but necessary for now.