Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you've probably at least heard about "biofuels," particularly biodiesel and ethanol. These fuels have two particular benefits over petroleum-based fuels: they're cleaner-burning with greatly reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and they're made from renewable sources like corn, grain, sugarcane, and (in the case of biodiesel) things like peanuts, canola, and other plants that yield vegetable oil.

That's all well and good. But like with many things in our world, changing one thing in our economy or environment almost always has some sort of ripple effect. In the case of biofuels, I think we really need to stop and think: is it really a good idea to be putting our food crops into our gas tanks?

Let's step back for a minute and go over how this biofuel thing works. At its most basic, what you're doing is taking organic matter - plants, manure, vegetable oil, that sort of thing - and running it through a chemical and/or biological process to produce some sort of fuel that can be used in an engine.

For example, from manure and organic waste you can get methane, which can be burned as a fuel. From vegetable oils and fat you can create biodiesel. And you can put crops like sugarcane, corn, and so on through what amounts to a big distillery to get ethanol, which is a form of alcohol.

Now, I think it's an awesome idea to take organic waste and turn it into something productive. While burning methane still puts out carbon dioxide, that's a whole lot better than releasing the methane itself into the air: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, yes, but methane is even worse. So in that case I think we should take the lesser of the two evils and use it in a good cause. But more on that in another podcast.

What I wanted to focus on here were the fuels from food crops. In particular, I want to take a closer look at ethanol. Remember, ethanol can essentially be used as a substitute for gasoline, although a car has to be specially tweaked to use it. Ethanol sounds really good because it's cleaner burning (like methane, burning ethanol gives you water and carbon dioxide) and is from a variety of crops, which are renewable: you plant more crops, you can make more ethanol.

But there's a problem buried in here that a lot of folks aren't seeing but that Lester Brown spells out in pretty chilling detail in his book Plan B 2.0. What's going to happen to the price of food as the demand for crops to feed ethanol distilleries grows?

I can tell you that one real easy: the price is going to go up. Basic high school economics, and the price hits are already here. According to Lester Brown and the Earth Policy Institute, corn prices have doubled over the last year, wheat futures are trading at their highest levels in ten years, and soybean futures have risen by fifty percent. The USDA believes that the wholesale price of chicken (remember, chickens eat grain) is going to go up by 10 percent this year, a dozen eggs will go up by 21 percent (ouch!), and milk is going to go up by 14 percent.

And that's just here in the U.S. Other countries are feeling the pinch even worse, because the U.S. is the world's grain basket: when something happens that affects our grain production, the entire world feels it.

Another problem with ethanol is that you just can't go out somewhere and start growing more corn or whatever. Erosion, fertilizer usage, destruction of forests, and water usage are all huge factors in how much grain you can grow. Water, in particular, is becoming a big factor: the other day in our local paper there was a front page article on water prices that will be shooting up, if you'll pardon the pun. Most of the water we use is for agriculture as it is. Using more will just help drive up the price of water for everyone, and if we really start running short of water for agriculture, then we're really screwed!

On top of that, something that people don't often think about is just how ethanol is made. Distilling ethanol (remember, this is a type of alcohol, a lot like you'd make in a moonshine still) takes a lot of heat. And where do you think that heat comes from? In many distilleries in the United States, that heat is provided by natural gas. And natural gas, while much cleaner burning than coal, gasoline or oil, is another non-sustainable fossile fuel, and natural gas prices are going to climb as worldwide demand grows.

But I have to say that the most idiotic thing I've seen for ethanol production thus far is what I saw on the Grist web site: coal-fired ethanol plants. My friend, what exactly is the point of using coal - the dirtiest and most polluting fossile fuel technology - to create a cleaner-burning fuel for our cars? The companies doing this, as usual, are just looking at their profit margin: coal is cheap for them to buy, since they don't have to pay the hidden costs of coal (you and I get stuck with those).

Now, on the upside for ethanol, it can be made from some other plants like switchgrass that wouldn't have a direct impact on grain production. But there are a lot of tradeoffs and other factors (on top of water availability and so on) that have to be taken into account. Any time we do things like this there are downstream environmental and economic impacts that right now aren't being managed on a national level, and so we're in real danger of getting ourselves into trouble.

Stepping back and looking at the big picture with Lester Brown, using our crops for fuel in our cars is doing something else: it's literally killing people. World hunger is on the rise, and if the demand for ethanol drives up the market price of our grain (remember: any time there's more demand than supply, the price goes up!), more and more poor countries won't be able to afford to buy it. The result? Lots of people will starve.

But that's okay, right? They're not Americans. To heck with them - I've got ethanol for my Hummer, by gosh!

All I can say is, "NOT!"

Finally, Lester Brown in Plan B 2.0 said something that kind of sums up the whole ethanol thing: if the United States dumped its entire corn harvest into our gas tanks, it would be enough for about 6% of our transportation needs. Six freakin' percent. Now think about what would happen to the price of food - here in the U.S. alone! - if no corn were available.

Remember, corn is used in tons of things we eat,not just corn on the dob! Take a gander at labels at the grocery store next time you go and see how many different things (including soft drinks) have "corn syrup" in them. It seems like it's in everything except maybe shampoo! Then there's the corn we eat ourselves, and - very importantly! - there's livestock feed. What the heck are all those chickens, pigs and cows (both dairy and burger-on-the-hoof) going to eat? Sure, the ethanol production process can yield biproducts that can be used as feed, depending on the source crops. But those byproducts don't come close to replacing the grains that went into the process in the first place.

And I've focused a lot here on corn, but other crops like wheat and soybeans are also affected. You can use almost any crop that we can eat to make ethanol, but corn seems to be the current ethanol champion in the U.S. and I just used that as an example.

Listen, friend, here's the way I see it. While ethanol can play an important role in our energy future if it's properly managed (which isn't happening now), I don't want to put my family's food in our gas tank. It's not going to help us to have cleaner burning fuel for our cars if we can't afford to eat. And I also don't want some poor guy and his family somewhere overseas to starve because some joker driving a Hummer here could pay more for ethanol (and the grain it comes from) than the poor guy's country could for the grain. And we're already heading for a water shortage, so planting new crops all over the place isn't necessarily the right answer, either.

Then what *is* the right answer, you may ask? Personally, I believe the answer lies in a mix of full electric  vehicles and plug-in electric hybrid/multi-fuel vehicles. The sun, wind, and ocean waves are clean sustainable sources of the electricity we need for our commuting (most of us commute less than 50 miles round trip, which is within reach of many EVs today), and that technology is here today in the form of green power. And plug-in electric hybrids (PHEV) with multi-fuel capability can handle short trips on battery power and longer trips on a variety of fuels (including ethanol). The technology is here, it's just a question of waiting for the car manufacturers to catch up and effectively managing the emerging biofuel industry to ensure that it grows in a truly sustainable way without screwing up the world's food markets.

And as always, vote with your wallet! If you have a choice, my recommendation is to steer clear of ethanol technologies for now unless you want to make your own. Ditto for biodiesel, which can be made from used vegetable oil that fast food restaurants pay to have someone haul away (you could take it off their hands for free!), and methane from decomposing organic waste. Any opportunity we can take to recyle into fuel what would otherwise be wasted is awesome, but taking our food grains and pouring them into our gas tanks is something I'd like to avoid unless it's properly managed so that it's truly sustainable and isn't going to send the price of food through the roof.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather eat than drive!

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	05-04-2007 21:36
	Thanks Caught your podcast. I really agree with a lot of what you say. I like the way you say it.    Alot of what you are saying is more of a cautious approach. I think many in the climate change environemtnal side sometimes jump at solutions and we don't ask the right questions.    I go to a Peak oil conference in Yellow Springs Ohio. It is wonderful. It is put on my Community Solutions. You should check it out if you have not already. right up your alley.    Thank you so much for the podcast about the lightbulS and recycling them or disposing of them properly! I didn't even know that and I try to stay pretty informed. But again.. everyone is pushing these lightbulbs but leaving out that important bit. I had to hear it from Rush Limbaugh!! ugh.    I have a worm bin for my compost. I really like it.  I keep it in my basement.     HOw much energy does your composter use? That was the only concern I have...     Thanks for a great podcast.    Peace  Caelidh Report

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	06-04-2007 19:01
	Thanks Caelidh - Thanks for the comments!     And I agree about what's happened with how a lot of the environmental movement has come across, particularly to those of us who are fairly (or really) conservative. It's all in the marketing, as the saying goes!     Anyway, as far as the Naturemill automatic composter goes, the information on the Naturemill site claims that it uses 10 watts. However, I used a Kill-o-Watt meter to measure the actual usage, which was 18 watts. But for me, it's still worth it: I know I'd never use an outside composter, and this thing composts just about anything easily... Report

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