Naturally Interesting

From the WSJ, some interesting numbers on Biofuels.

To create just one gallon of fuel, ethanol slurps up 1,700 gallons of water, according to Cornell’s David Pimentel, and 51 cents of tax credits. And it still can’t compete against oil without a protective 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on imports and a federal mandate that forces it into our gas tanks. The record 30 million acres the U.S. will devote to ethanol production this year will consume almost a third of America’s corn crop while yielding fuel amounting to less than 3% of petroleum consumption.

In December the Congressional Research Service warned that even devoting every last ear of American-grown corn to ethanol would not create enough “renewable fuel” to meet federal mandates. According to a 2007 OECD report, fossil-fuel production is up to 10,000 times as efficient as biofuel, measured by energy produced per unit of land.

Now scientists are showing that ethanol will exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions. A February report in the journal Science found that “corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years . . . Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%.” Princeton’s Timothy Searchinger and colleagues at Iowa State, of all places, found that markets for biofuel encourage farmers to level forests and convert wilderness into cropland. This is to replace the land diverted from food to fuel.

A bit disingenuous though because it does not address the myriad tax incentives and subsidies that oil receives. Nevertheless, biofuels have some big problems and the mandate should be repealed in favor of more R&D money.