There’s been a lot of talk lately about the promise of
biofuels -- liquid fuels like ethanol and biodiesel made from
plants -- to reduce our dependence on oil. Even President Bush
beat the biofuel drum in his last State of the Union speech.
Fuel from plants? Sounds pretty good. But before you rush
out to buy an E-85 pickup, consider:
-- The United States annually consumes more
fossil and nuclear energy than all the energy produced in a
year by the country’s plant life, including forests and that
used for food and fiber, according to figures from the U.S.
Department of Energy and David Pimentel, a Cornell
University researcher.
-- To produce enough corn-based ethanol to meet current
U.S. demand for automotive gasoline, we would need to nearly
double the amount of land used for harvested crops, plant
all of it in corn, year after year, and not eat any of it.
Even a greener fuel source like the switchgrass President
Bush mentioned, which requires fewer petroleum-based inputs
than corn and reduces topsoil losses by growing back each
year, could provide only a small fraction of the energy we
demand.
-- The corn and soybeans that make ethanol and biodiesel
take huge quantities of fossil fuel for farm machinery,
pesticides and fertilizer. Much of it comes from foreign
sources, including some that may not be dependable, such as
Russia and countries in the Middle East.
-- Corn and soybean production as practiced in the
Midwest is ecologically unsustainable. Its effects include
massive topsoil erosion, pollution of surface and
groundwater with pesticides, and fertilizer runoff that
travels down the Mississippi River to deplete oxygen and
life from a New Jersey-size portion of the Gulf of Mexico.
-- Improving fuel efficiency in cars by just 1 mile per
gallon -- a gain possible with proper tire inflation --
would cut fuel consumption equal to the total amount of
ethanol federally mandated for production in 2012.
Rather than chase phantom substitutes for fossil fuels, we
should focus on what can immediately both slow our
contribution to global climate change and reduce our
dependence on oil and other fossil fuels: cutting energy use.
Let’s be bold. Let’s raise the tax on gasoline to encourage
consumers to buy fuel-efficient cars and trucks. We can use
the proceeds to fund research and subsidies for truly
sustainable energy.
Let’s raise energy efficiency standards for vehicles,
appliances, industries and new buildings.
Let’s employ new land-use rules and tax incentives to
discourage suburban sprawl and encourage dense, mixed-use
development that puts workplaces, retail stores and homes
within walking distance of each other. Let’s better fund mass
transit.
Let’s switch the billions we now spend on ethanol subsidies
to development of truly sustainable energy technologies.
And why not spend money to make on-the-shelf technology
like hybrid cars more affordable? Fuel-efficient hybrids
aren’t the final solution, but they can be a bridge to more
sustainable solutions.
The focus on biofuels as a silver bullet to solve our
energy and climate change crises is at best misguided. At
worst, it is a scheme that could have potentially disastrous
environmental consequences. It will have little effect on our
fossil fuel dependence.
We must reduce energy use now if we hope to kick our oil
addiction and slow climate change. Pushing biofuels at the
expense of energy conservation today will only make our
problems more severe, and their solutions more painful,
tomorrow.
Julia Olmstead is a graduate student in plant breeding
and sustainable agriculture at Iowa State University and a
graduate fellow with the Land Institute, Salina, Kan. She
wrote this for the institute’s Prairie Writers Circle.
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