Boots & Sabers

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Tag: Ethanol

Study: Ethanol Policies Drove Massive Release of Carbon

It’s almost as if the ethanol policies weren’t about the environment and were more about driving money into the pockets of special interests. Hmmmm…..

Federal ethanol subsidies aimed at slowing climate change have triggered the release to the atmosphere of about 30 million tons of carbon a year as farmers have cleared land to plant more crops for production of the renewable fuel, UW-Madison researchers said Wednesday.

The first comprehensive measurement of climate damage associated with ethanol was being presented at a conference in Texas by its lead author, graduate student Tyler Lark, and graduate research assistant Shawn Seth. The study will be submitted to a journal for peer review within weeks, said geography professor Holly Gibbs, who is also an author.

The researchers spent years examining satellite imagery and high-resolution maps showing the vegetation and soil types on land before it was cleared for new crop acreage.

[…]

The researchers determined the amounts of grasslands, prairie, wetlands and wooded parcels that were gobbled up from 2008 to 2012 during a period of high crop prices after federal policies began pushing ethanol as an environmentally-friendly fuel that could constrain burning of fossil fuels in cars.

A portion of the carbon was released when grasslands were burned, but plowing up soil exposed organic matter and began the process of decomposition began the slower release of about 75 percent of the carbon, Gibbs said. Most of that carbon would be released from soil over a period of decades, but some could take a century or more, she said.

Ethanol Research Grants Coming to an End

This is a revealing story.

A UW-Madison research center that has used the university’s largest-ever federal grant to develop ethanol technology over the past decade will shift its focus to other alternative fuels after winning another major award from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center will use the five-year grant to learn more about how to sustainably produce energy from switchgrass, poplar trees, sorghum and other dedicated bioenergy crops — those that, unlike ethanol, are not also used for food, director Tim Donohue said Monday.

The center received $267 million over 10 years from the Department of Energy for its ethanol research, which Donohue said will wind down over the next six to 18 months.

[…]

Ethanol has been embraced by the energy industry over the years, Donohue said, and putting greater emphasis on research to develop other biofuels fulfills the center’s mission “to generate next-generation technologies.”

Donohue said the Department of Energy encouraged the shift, pushing researchers to focus on potential fuels that would not be grown on land that is now used for agriculture, or compete with other uses for crops such as corn — what he described as a “food-vs.-fuel” issue.

The other biofuels could also have greater potential than ethanol when it comes to replacing fossil fuels across different transportation industries, said Donohue, a professor of bacteriology.

It is a maxim of employee compensation models that people will do what they are paid to do. It is a nod to human nature that people will usually act within their own self interests. That is not a bad thing, but it is something that one must acknowledge and understand when crafting policies. It is something that our Founders understood when creating our Constitution based on competing self interests instead of appealing to people’s idealistic nature.

Many of us have long argued that a significant amount of the “science” that supports some political initiatives like global warming policies or ethanol subsidies are the result of the fact that the scientists are being paid to have those opinions. Look at this story as an example of that. For a decade, the researchers at  Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center received hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money to conduct research on the use of ethanol as a fuel. Accordingly, they have spent the last decade telling us that ethanol is great and a wonderful fuel alternative.

Now they will receive a ton of money to study other biofuels. And right on cue, here is the director telling us that “other biofuels could also have a greater potential than ethanol…” Of course they could, because that is what he is being paid to study. The money would dry up pretty quickly if he said, “nah, ethanol is still the best.”

People do what they are paid to do.

Iowans Ambivalent on Ethanol

We can only hope that this is true.

The electorate here in the early voting state often defined by its vast expanses of corn has long demanded that candidates pledge allegiance to government production mandates for millions of gallons of ethanol, the homegrown product. But as the 2016 White House hopefuls traverse the state, they are seeing that Iowans have grown strikingly ambivalent.

The Republican presidential contender now polling strongest in Iowa, Ted Cruz, is campaigning on an energy platform that would have been a death wish in elections past. Cruz, the U.S. senator from Texas, is an unabashed opponent of giving ethanol any special government help. He derides it as the worst kind of central planning. He champions legislation to wipe out the decade-old Renewable Fuel Standard, which mandates large amounts of ethanol get blended into the nation’s gas supply.

“Voters here are just not that interested in ethanol anymore,” said Steffen Schmidt, a professor of political science at Iowa State University. “You don’t even hear the word come out the mouths of candidates much.”

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