Iowa’s Ethanol Plants Create 15 Percent of its Emissions
The Des Moines Register reported the other day that Iowa’s ethanol plants contribute 15 Percent — 7.6 million metric tons out of a total of 52 million metric tons — of greenhouse-gas emissions found in the state’s new inventory of major manufacturers, businesses and power plants.
Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources found that the largest portion of the state’s overall emissions came from fermenting grain at the plants and not from burning natural gas or coal. In addition, burning biomass such as switchgrass at various industrial plants added another 0.13 million metric tons.
- » See also: GreenlightAC Launches with Electric Car Charging Station Infrastructure
- » Get Gas 2.0 by RSS or sign up by email.
The emissions generated by ethanol production are one reason why some environmentalists downplay the benefit of renewable fuels, while others insist they are far more beneficial than burning fossil fuels.
It may be getting worse. As Global Warming brings more rain to the corn belt, it affords farmers the opportunity to grow even more corn, something the farmers are looking forward to.
Under four different scenarios of climate change, which vary by projected temperature increases, yields in Iowa and the rest of the Corn Belt could increase anywhere from 5 percent to 19 percent by 2030. With adaptations by farmers, yields could rise by even more, 6 percent to 23 percent.
Adapting to climate change also will mean figuring out ways to combat expected increases in diseases and pests that are expected to flourish in the warmer, more moist conditions. In temperate climates such as Iowa’s, scientists say global warming is likely to mean more flooding like the deluge this spring that devastated corn and soybean crops.
With more carbon dioxide in the air, weeds are expected to be hardier and grow faster. USDA research has found that at least one major weed, the Canada thistle, could become immune to Roundup weed killer, which is used throughout agriculture and on the vast majority of soybean fields.
If reliance on foreign oil isn’t bad enough, this could leave us at the mercy of genetically modified seed companies, who patent and sell the next years disease resistant fuel crop.
Source: Desmoines Register
Photo courtesy of Sroemerm via Creative Commons License
Isn’t corn a carbon sink? Doesn’t Iowa grow a lot of it? Has anyone calculated that offset? How much energy is consumed extracting petroleum from the ground and putting it into your tank (drilling, transport, refining, etc.)? Not to mention the emissions involved in doing so.
The production of ANY fuel consumes rnergy and therefore produces emissions. Even hydrogen requires electricity, which has to come from somewhere. Solar panel have to be manufactured. CNG has to be drilled for. But the real benfit of these alternative fuels is environmental, more than monitary.
Until the magic bullet that turns water into fuel without consuming mass amounts of enrgy comes along, solving all our energy problems, these are questions that should be asked to provide a conterbalance to criticizm and give an honest picture of the alternatives.
We can keep looking at the oil barrel and ask if it’s half full or half empty….or we can look at full bushels of homegrown alternative crops and tell OPEC to choke on their oil.
fully agree with LonnieB, corn ethanol is better than gasoline when you look at the well- to wheel factors. I find that ethanol couldn’t be any more worse for climate change than regular gasoline. The only difference is that it takes america off of its addiction to oil, sending that money out of the country, and instead sending it to american farmers. Higher food costs? That corn was going to go to cattle to feed the developed world and/or it was going to be sent to be refined into high fructose corn syrup, and was not going to end up in the hands of those who needed it most(the poor countries/people). Take a deep breath america, quit whining about food costs when every restaraunt i go too i see obese people leaving after not cleaning their plates(i.e. there was too much food there for even their fat selfs to finish).
Lonnie & Ross, It is not just the additional pollutants from making the fuel. It is also the 40% of additional fuel required to cover the same distance. Ethanol is just a very bad source of energy for automotive use.
A switch to diesel would provide an increase in mileage of about 30% without additional changes. Biodiesel from algae could replace all of our automotive needs and algae eats CO2 while releasing O2. Additionally biodiesel is looking good as an ingredient for a jet fuel replacement. Boeing is looking at this with several airlines.
Now what we need to do is convince our legislators to grant a five year tax moratorium to the development and production of alternative fuels. The tax moratorium will eliminate the need for tax subsidies. Effectively the developers will create their own subsidy, at no cost to us while generating jobs that would result in other taxes being collected.
Hasn’t this been analyzed to death?
There’s a net reduction from 0-15% from corn. So yeah, the fermenting process releases a lot of C02. But the gas burned in its place would release the same or a bit more C02, when taken altogether from oil well to tire vs. farm field to tire.
In the mean time, we develop the infrastructure for cellulosic ethanol. It will have a net reduction of 85%.
Good morning Chuck,
You seem to have a bad taste in your mouth for ethanol (no pun intended). I’m sure you have your reasons, but please allow me to counter them, if I may.
I must agree that in their current configuration, FlexFuel vehicles are very inefficient, especially in the E85 mode. That’s because they are set up to use both fuels, but not either very efficiently. They rely on a computer to change the ignition timing. But that doesn’t fix the compression issue. Advancing or retarding the timing is a bad substitute for that. E85 has an octane of 103, therefore it requires a higher compression ratio of approx. 13 to 1 (min.) to be at it’s most efficient.
Engines built from the ground up with ethanol in mind are very efficient. Drag racers have used alcohol blends for decades due to it’s superior horsepower potential. The Indy Racing League has mandated E85 useage exclusively, and NASCAR is under pressure to do the same.
Some more positives are that alcohol burns cooler, and more thoroughly than gasoline, therefore reducing damaging heat build up in your engine. Because of the reduction in heat and unburnt fuel by-pass, fewer oil changes are required (that translates to less petroleum consumption there, as well). It produces a fraction of the emissions that gasoline does and none of some of them.
It doesn’t require drilling in pristine wilderness or coastlines, nor does it require supertankers to transport it, possibly leaking catastrophically. In fact, just last year a tanker truck loaded with ethanol (not yet blended with unleaded) crashed and leaked a few thousand gallons onto the freeway, here in the Dallas area. How did the clean it up? Firefighters simply stood by and let it evaporate, then hosed the area down as a saftey measure. No hazmat clean up required. Finally, you can obtain a lisence from the Feds to brew your own fuel in your own backyard (subject to surprise inspections, of course, but why would you want to drink raw alcohol when it’s cheaper and easier to motor down to the local bozze shop and get the good stuff?).
Yes, it does take up to 20% more fuel to get the same range or mileage as gasoline, but an easy fix for that is to have a larger tank installed, if range is an issue.
Converting to E85 is less expensive than CNG and the compression issue can be addressed in several ways. All of them cheaper than the thousands of dollars it take to convert to CNG.
Hydrogen? Forget it! Unless your wealthy enough to buy the extremely expensive cars available on extremely limited numbers.
Electric cars? Again, very expensive to buy. The batteries don’t last all that long and the production and disposal of them is one of the most polluting processes on the planet.
The price at the pump isn’t the only issue with gasoline, I don’t think I need to list all the other negatives, environmentally and politically. Ethanol eliminates so many of them that it would seem ridiculous and almost unpatriotic not to go with it as a “bridge” fuel until other, more efficient and available fuels come along.
To be honest, though, I have my pro-ethanol motives. I am currently forming a business (in planning stages, right now) to build and sell E85-powered crate engines (engines that are shipped to the buyer in crates), so someone who owns a car they really like can directly swap a gasoline burner for a booze burner.
I hope this has given you a broader view of ethanol.
Diesel is a strategic fuel. In times of national emergency, the average civilian will have limited access to it. Tanks, ships and bommbers will take top priority, followed by trains and long-haul trucks. Bio-diesel may address this, but can it be produced in quantities that would take up the slack if petroleum diesel becomes rationed or hard to find?
Looks like a lot of opportunity to me.
We are now gearing up to capture the wastes and emmisions from many sources including bio-processing centers, municiple sewage, farm manures, oil drilling, mining and refining and from electrical generating plants, to grow green algae.
This algae will produce not only a huge amount of fuel, but also vast quantities of high protein human food and animal feeds, pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, plastics, and fertilizers.
Of course corn processing for highest values does likewise.
Making anhydrous ammonia for nitrogen fertilizer from bio-sources instead of petroleum based sources is one of the next big events in the exploding world of bio-technology.
Another will be filtering farm and industrial run off thru algae beds to purify the water before it gets into our rivers. Having algae ponds below their feed lots, farm house septic system, and scattered thru their farm field drainage systems will soon be a profit center for farmers as they will sell the algae while purifying runoff and controlling erosion. When more or less fully implemented it will be significant in cleaning up rivers and the so called ocean dead spots, which are actually teeming with algae that will also be harvested.
They are now using algae ponds to purify industrial brown fields and pollution from petroleum drilling, mining as in the tar sands mining, and refining.
There might be a pollution problem, but the solution produces very profitable value added products so mitigation is a win/win.
larry hagedon.
yea algae is great and all, but still everyone just seems to rant so much about corn ethanol, yea it isnt perfect, but its clean, american made, and a start, so maybe one day cellulosic ethanol/ biodiesel from algae can take its place. We are still going to need those large corn ethanol refineries(basically big stills, with some molecular sieves) to refine the cellulosic ethanol. Actually i see batteries and electricity as the next big wave atleast for cars. The batteries are fully recylceable and they can be charged with renewables. However we will need liquid fuels until that happens and for planes and such…so who knows…but i would like to know how much greenhouse gases the refineries down in the gulf states emit…probably alot more than these ethanol refineries..
Ross,
The down side to batteries is that the production of them is one of the most energy inefficient and polluting industries on the planet.
Now if we were to get off the planet and develop them, as was one of the original goals of the Space Station, it might be different.
Yep, that’s right. One of the many goals of an orbiting space sation was to experiment with alloying lead and aluminum, to produce lighter, more efficient batteries. Of course and as usual, politicians stuck their grubby little fingers into that pie and ruined it. Just like they ruin everything they ever touch.(Can you tell that I REALLY despise politicians?)
As I have read and understand the process for Prius batteries, it goes like this: The nickle is strip-mined in Canada, sent to China to be made into nickle foam, which is sent to India (if I recall correctly) to be made into batteries which are, in turn shipped to Japan to be installed in Prius’s that are shipped to good ol’ gullible America. Real efficient, huh? How much energy went into, and therefore generated pollution because of every battery in every Prius?
As far as all-electric cars go, the battery making process would be the same AND fossil fuels would generate the electricity to charge them, just like they do for eveery home not served by hydroelectric, solar, wind or nuclear technology.
Besides, from a car nut’s point of view, how badass can an electric car be? Electric drag races? Electric NASCAR? An electric Indy 500?
Please shoot me before those come to be!
The earth is cooling, thanks to the quiet solar cycle. We’ve gotten through a medieval warming and we’ll get through the current spurious warming. The Sun cycle drives weather, not CO2. The only reason some academics want to punish C02 emissions is they hate capitalism and want to bring the west to it’s knees. Fuck the socialist murderers! Screw the parasites of the so-called intellectual class. Let them sweat and earn their bread by WORKING, not thinking (which they do poorly). “Do you want to super size that?” says the wymen’s studies major, because she can’t write and she can’t do math so she’s just a breeder without a brain.