Corny arguments muddy ethanol debate
GERRY MALLOY FOR THE TORONTO STAR
The Corvette car that paced the Indy 500 last Sunday got a lot of attention. Powered by E85 fuel and driven by Emerson Fittipaldi, the car promoted its — and the race’s — green credentials.
Bobby Rahal's race car carried ethanol sponsorship; all the cars in the race were fuelled with ethanol; the TV commercials touted ethanol; even the Corvette pace car was powered by E85 ethanol, and festooned with eye-popping signage to promote that fact.
A few days before the race I took a ride around the Brickyard in that pace car, at speed, with former Formula One champion and double-Indy 500 winner, Emerson Fittipaldi at the wheel.
Fittipaldi also drove the pace car on race day.
But on the day I was with him, he was more interested in talking about ethanol than the race.
Among his many business interests, Fittipaldi owns an ethanol refinery in his native Brazil and he has been a big backer of the industry in that country since its inception in the 1970s.
Currently, every filling station in Brazil has at least one 100 per cent ethanol pump and the use of ethanol has surpassed that of gasoline as a transportation fuel.
More than 90 per cent of all new vehicles sold there are flex-fuel capable. That is, they are able to run on gasoline or ethanol or any mixture of the two.
So why isn't that successful model being duplicated in North America? For a lot of reasons.
For one, unlike gasoline, which is produced from a relatively consistent feedstock (crude oil) by relatively common processes (fractional distillation and cracking), ethanol can be produced from multiple feedstocks by multiple methods.
That flexibility is both one of its major benefits and one of its major problems.
Problems because how and from what ethanol is made can dramatically affect both the energy balance and the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inherent in its production.
And those resultant differences are great enough to determine whether or not it is an environmentally beneficial and/or an economically feasible fuel.
In Brazil, for example, virtually all ethanol is made from sugar cane – a simple fermentation process that is highly energy-efficient.
In North America, to date, almost all ethanol is produced from corn – a much more complex and energy-intensive process.
The numbers vary depending on what source you choose, but even the most optimistic ethanol boosters concur that a positive energy ratio of 1.4 (1.4 units out for 1.0 units in) is about the best to be expected in the corn-to-ethanol process.
According to Marcos Jank, president of UNICA, Brazil's largest ethanol cooperative, the corresponding energy ratio for ethanol production from sugar cane is about 7.0 – with the corresponding cost benefits that go along with that.
With corn-based ethanol, there is also the contentious issue of using food crops for fuel and the corresponding effect on corn prices and food shortages, which have recently cast doubt on the overall desirability of corn-based ethanol.
Sugar cane is now grown primarily as a non-food crop in Brazil, said Jank, so that argument does not apply there.
The corn-ethanol industry denies that ethanol use is responsible for the increase in corn prices, saying that it results from the runaway price of oil, and noting that corn exports from the U.S. last year were the highest ever – but the perception persists.
Indeed, even this newspaper, on its editorial pages, has opposed the passing of Bill 33, which mandates 5 per cent ethanol content in gasoline.
So why don't we sidestep the problem by producing ethanol from sugar cane, or sugar beets, which grow well in temperate climates?
I put that question to Jank. It is because the price of sugar is so heavily subsidized in the U.S., and sugar imports so highly tariffed, that it is simply not economical to use the crops for ethanol in North America, he said.
There are other alternatives, however. Very attractive alternatives, which we will discuss in another column.
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