Biofuel -- The Corn-Ethanol Deception & A Real Solution

There is so much hype, today, about biofuels. They are seen as the savior of our nation -- especially corn-ethanol; especially if one were to compare the subsidization that goes on here. But is this the right approach?

What will follow this is a bit of news, a bit of number crunching, and a lot of personal perspective. Hopefully you'll follow along with me. To start off -- ethanol is widely recognized as being less effective, on a gallon-per-gallon basis, than gasoline as a fuel. For one, it has 30% less energy density -- that is, if you got 100 miles to the gallon with gasoline, you'd only get 70 miles if you used a gallon of ethanol. Ethanol is also horribly hydroscopic (water-absorbing), which creates all sorts of infrastructure problems with its transportation; unlike gasoline, which doesn't draw water into itself -- a trait which allows it to be transported via pipelines. Even so, however, it isn't all that infeasible to imagine a (near or distant) future where these problems just aren't enough to justify the continued use of gasoline, simply on a price basis. Imagine gas becoming so dear that, even with all the additional infrastructure problems & transportation problems (which raise prices), gas is still more expensive -- without subsidy.

This is, effectively, the industrial equivalent of the Malthusian problem -- that there won't be enough energy (normally that'd read food) to go around.

Now, in recent news there has been much acclaim -- and rightly so -- of a start-up biofuel company, LS9, that has created genetically engineered microbes that turn sugars into petroleum -- and, yes gasoline. "We're saved!" we hear, of this -- all those problems with ethanol -- such as its 65% increased energy cost compared to turning sugar into gasoline due to the need to distill the water out of the ethanol -- instantly can go away. Energy independence is just around the corner! We should give these Ls9 people Medals of Honor, or something. Or something, indeed. Via Technology Review:

The biofuel of the future could well be gasoline. That's the hope of one biotech startup that on Monday described for the first time how it is coaxing bacteria into producing hydrocarbons that could be processed into fuels like those made from petroleum.

[...]

LS9's current work uses sugar derived from corn kernels as the food source for the bacteria--the same source used by ethanol-producing yeast. To produce greater volumes of fuel, and to not have energy competing with food, both approaches will need to use cellulosic biomass, such as switchgrass, as the feedstock. Del Cardayre estimates that cellulosic biomass could produce about 2,000 gallons of renewable petroleum per acre.

Producing hydrocarbon fuels is more efficient than producing ethanol, del Cardayre adds, because the former packs about 30 percent more energy per gallon. And it takes less energy to produce, too. The ethanol produced by yeast needs to be distilled to remove the water, so ethanol production requires 65 percent more energy than hydrocarbon production does.

To compare, the most effective gallon-per-acre biofuel crop right now is palm oil, which hovers around 680 gallons-per-acre. So this is more than triple the amount -- and it's good ol' fashioned gasoline to boot! Here comes the number crunching. In 2004, the US used approximately 318 billion gallons of oil. At 2,000 gallons per acre, that comes out to roughly 159 million acres of arable land -- and this is assuming that the cellulosic starch problem can be overcome -- for which there are no hypothetical solutions yet available. According to the CIA's "World Factbook", the US has 9,161,923 square kilometers of land, 18.01% of which are arable. That's 1,650,62 square kilometers. 1 acre = 0.00404685642 square kilometers, so the US has 407,739,281 acres of arable land. To maintain the energy usage levels of 2004 purely from biofuels derived from this process would require ~40% of all arable land in the nation.

And that's if it is gasoline. If it were ethanol -- and we'll assume that same 2,000 gallons per acre per year, which is more than triple the amount derived from any crop yet -- we'd have to increase that by 30% to reflect the gas-to-ethanol energy variance -- and then increase to cover the 65% increase in energy cost to distill the ethanol. We'll be generous and call that a 10% increase. So overall, a 43% increase in area used -- from 40% of all land. That's ~55% (I allow for error here) of all arable land. One thing is certain -- corn ethanol is not a solution. Nor is crop-based biodiesel -- which has at best 680 gallons per acre. It'd take more than 100% of our arable land.

Regardless -- on with the Medals of Honor! (Okay, okay -- I'll turn off my sarcasm chip now.) Turns out, there's more hope "on the horizon" than you might otherwise think, but it's not going to come from turning our crops into fuel. More likely, it's going to come from turning our sewage into fuel. Of all sources, Wikipedia has something to say here:

A company based in Lexington, MA USA has a patent pending technology that is intended to boost algae growth rates so that the oil yields from algae are even higher than the 20,000 gallon per acre amount cited above. The founder of the company believes that his technology may be capable of producing as much as 100,000 gallons per acre. So far, this claim is based only on theoretical calculations. He will begin physical testing of the system in August 2007.

What's sewage got to do with this? Many of the companies involved in algal production are looking at using sewage ponds as the source for algae; those production numbers have already reached 10,000 barrels for a one-acre pond. There are two significant elements to compare algal biodiesel to ethanol or terrestrial-crop biodiesel: 1) The massive increase in output; even if that number only reaches, say, 20,000 barrels and had to be on arable land, it would still only account for 4% of all arable land. 2) It would be most productive in what is currently considered non-arable desert landscapes.

The sole problem with biodiesel is that it can only be used as a fuel source; it is extremely difficult to convert into plastics and the like, unlike traditional petroleum hydrocarbons. And that is where LS9's work comes into the foreground once again. It turns out that fuel products account for nearly 9 out of every 10 barrels of petroleum used in the United States Double that number, and you'd still only be accounting for roughly 8% of all arable land. Round that up to 10% for good measure. (This can even be scalable if the new 'trend' of "skyscraper farms" comes into full swing -- that 10% could easily become 1%).

So, yes -- the next couple of years promise to be very interesting in terms of energy production & energy independence; which even a non-mercantilist can see the appeal of in terms of eliminating US sensitivity to global instability (Read: We'd finally have an excuse good enough to get our government to stop pissing off the entire Middle East). However, one cannot help but ask: What the devil is the justification of the subsidization of corn-ethanol production? Especially in light of the impact this has on the poor of the world? And why is it that our liberal (and conservative) friends cannot see the connection between ethanol and starving the poor of the world?