Residual Forces

That’s the ratio of water needed to produce just one (1) gallon of ethanol according to a Cornell ecology professor.

A lot of people are coming to the conclusion that growing corn to create ethanol is a bad alternative for our fossil-fuel addiction, as reported in my column last week. If you have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, check out the lead editorial Wednesday, titled “Ethanol’s Water Shortage.” The editorial says, in part: “Heavily subsidized and absurdly inefficient, corn-based ethanol has already driven up food prices. But the Senate’s plan to increase production to 36 billion gallons by 2022, from less than 7 billion today, will place even greater pressure on farm-belt aquifers. Ethanol plants consume roughly four gallons of water to produce each gallon of fuel, but that’s only a fraction of ethanol’s total water habit. Cornell ecology professor David Pimentel says that when you count the water needed to grow the corn, one gallon of ethanol requires a staggering 1,700 gallons of H2O.” (Source: MSM Money)

Say what you will about not believing how much water is needed to grow the corn, but you can’t argue with the fact that the ethanol plants alone slurp up 4 gallons of water to make a single gallon of ethanol produced.

In Minnesota we produced 550 million (550,000,000) gallons of ethanol in 2006. That means ethanol refineries consumed 2.2 billion (2,200,000,000) gallons of water just to make ethanol. The production of ethanol in Minnesota is expected to go up to 620 million gallons (620,000,000) in 2007, meaning 2.48 billion (2,480,000,000) gallons of water will be consumed by ethanol plants this year alone. (Source: MN Dept of Agriculture)

That is just in Minnesota.

I’m asking for intellectual and political honesty here. Is it worth it?

I know politically, a lot of people think it is ridding ourselves of our “addiction” to middle east oil, so it is worth it. BUT we get more of our oil from the Americas then we do from the middle east. In fact, in 2005, Mexico was our top oil supplier. Plus we have a whole lot of our own domestic oil we won’t allow ourselves to get due to environutter policies.

Take a look at the graphs below. See if you notice a problematic trend?

(Source: EIA)

Oh, and please don’t forget that we get thousands of different products from crude oil. It isn’t just used for gasoline, take a look at just a brief sample of what else comes out of crude oil.

That’s where intellectual honesty is required. New extraction processes for oil are far more environmentally friendly than than consuming billions of gallons of water simply to produce an alternative fuel like ethanol. It is supposed to be renewable, and well sure you can grow more corn, but what about the water? It is kinda hard to replace that. Not to mention the long term risks of pollution from pesticides and herbicides from agricultural runoff into lakes, streams, and rivers. And then, you have to take into account, all the subsidies required for ethanol in the first place. Oh, and then, you have to still import some crude, to make all the other products.

So ask yourself, is ethanol worth it, just to feel good and green politically?

I’m praying we stop this insanity, before it is too late.