Crude oil dependency

With the increasing concerns regarding global warming and dependency on oil in the U. S.

, the search for alternative fuel sources is becoming a major point of discussion among economists, environmentalists and politicians. According to Gal Luft, a director at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, dependence on Middle East nations for oil supply poses a threat to national security. Luft is quick to remind us that this has more to do with the fact that the relationship of the United States with the Muslim world is “at an all-time low,” than it does with the political instability of its nations.As such, Luft promotes flexible non-oil fuel alternatives primarily as a means of eliminating the political liabilities inherent in supporting oil producing nations. (Parmley, 2007) In addition to this, a Yale University survey in 2005 revealed an overwhelming belief among adults in the United States believe that the nation is too dependent on foreign oil imports, and desire government action to initiate development of clean energy.

The survey noted that over 90 percent are concerned with the aforementioned dependence as well as mileage standards in automobiles.The survey’s findings were consistent across Democrats, Republicans and independents. (Green Car Congress, 2005) Mike Millikin, an evangelist for sustainable mobility, argues that it is crucial to address the dependency on oil for fuel, remarking that such a situation stands in stark contrast to the power generation industry which has shown a willingness to diversify its energy sources to encompass solar and wind-based options, in spite of the vested corporate interest in exhausting the profitability of fossil fuels. (Kancler, 2005)The imminent end of cheap oil, as argued by geologist Colin Campbell and petroleum engineer Jean Laherrere, only stresses the alarming consequences of this continued dependence. In a study published in Scientific American, the two raise criticisms about the exaggerated self-reports furnished by the oil industry utilize the most convenient figures in their findings to make distorted representations of the current state of oil reserves.

(Campbell & Laherrere, 1998) Millikin also argues that the motivation for change is not going to come from rising prices but from a wake-up call over issues of sustainability and environmental responsibility.Even improvements made to engine efficiency are not enough, Millikin argues. Every accompanying application of new engine technology has been devoted to increasing power rather than reducing consumption. (Kancler, 2005) It is under these circumstances that biofuels like ethanol are being adopted as a fuel alternative. Indian-American venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has argued in favor of them. In an article detailing a four-story manure-powered ethanol facility in Nebraska producing 25 million gallons of ethanol annually from corn, he argues that ethanol is a crucial step towards “kicking our oil addiction.

It is an addiction that reaches 140 billion gallons a year in the United States alone. (Khosla, 2006) But what is ethanol fuel? The U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) describes ethanol fuel as a “renewable transportation fuel” whose manufacture is derived primarily from starch crops, such as corn, though it is also derived from sugar cane. Ethanol may also be produced from cellulosic biomass, such as crop residue or old newspapers, and the DOE further asserts that breaking down such materials to produce the component sugars required to distill ethanol is a major research focus. (DOE, 2007) The DOE (2007) also goes on to state that U.

S. gasoline currently contains ethanol in a low-level blend designed to reduce air pollution, and its energy potential in combustion is about a third less than that of gasoline. Ethanol’s high-octane levels also mean that it can generate more of the power that is crucial to the operation of high compression engines such as those found in high-performance automobiles. Khosla’s endorsement of biohols such as ethanol is largely founded on his belief in a ‘biohol trajectory’ which projects that fuels like cellulosic ethanol and corn ethanol will yield a continuously increasing potential for energy density and engine efficiency than oil.

He also goes on to suggest that the potential yields of other biofuel sources could reach dizzying figures. (Khosla, 2006) There are, however, several things to consider before we embrace the rosy portrait of the sublime biofuel future with a clean, worry-free conscience. Environmental journalist Richard Manning says that ethanol is a “distillation of politics” just as much as it is a distillation from grain, and argues that the boost in “its political octane” comes primarily how much interest industrial agriculture has in its adoption.Mannings argues that every dollar of profit that Archer Daniels Midland makes on ethanol costs the American taxpayers eleven dollars. (Manning, 2004) Manning is also a staunch opponent of corn-based agribusiness and how its homogenous and unsustainable approach to agriculture has detrimental effects on the environment, potentially recreating the conditions of the The Great Dust Bowl, which saw hundreds of thousands of would-be wheat farmers plow the soil to death to profit from golden grain .

In just a few short years, the rush had parched a landscape that had taken decades to turn from arid desert to fertile plains. (Manning, 2004) Mindy Lubber (2007) argues that the same thing is happening once more with corn-based ethanol boom. Sustainable farmer Tom Philpott (2006) argues that Manning’s arguments that ethanol benefits industrialized agribusiness are not entirely without merit. Philpott notes that because Archer Daniels Midland’s ability to sell high fructose corn syrup depends upon how their prices compete with sugar.ADM lobbied against foreign sugar imports ostensibly to protect local sugar, but such lobbying also ensured that the price of local sugar remains inflated. With Brazil’s increased production of sugarcane-based ethanol, ADM benefits by allowing them charge more for corn syrup without fearing that sweetener-dependent companies switch to sugar.

Sustainability consultant Alan Atkisson (2008) doesn’t hold much stock into the ethanol future either.A stronger proponent of hybridized electric automobiles, Atkisson muses that owning a “Flexifuel” car on 85% bioethanol fuels, made him rather complacent in his “self-congratulatory beliefs” while being simultaneously shielded by his “imperfect command of Swedish”. However, between recent scientific concerns regarding corn-based ethanol production’s effects on the food supply, as well as protests that erupted in Mexico City centered around the rising prices of corn tortillas, Atkisson worries that his concern for climate change increases the economic stress of others.Because the manufacture of corn-based ethanol requires grain from the existing food supply, production of the biofuel has a direct affect on the price of food around the country.

“Ethanol has raised the incomes of farmers” and “given new hope to flagging rural economies” but economists are concerned that the pricing effects of corn have an impact on a vast number of food commodities. Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute said, “This unprecedented diversion of corn to fuel production will affect food prices everywhere. As such, the production of corn-based ethanol must be approached with caution. (Barrionuevo, 2007)Also, in a recent study regarding the conversion of forest and grassland into new farmlands, a team of researchers led by Timothy Searchinger (2008) calculated that greenhouse emissions have doubled due to the rapid change in patterns of land use incited by the growing ethanol industry. Because a substantial amount of grain production has been diverted towards the biofuel industry, farmers have converted grasslands and forests to compensate for this.The study asserts that such a massive land-use change will double greenhouse gases over the next three decades, and it would take close to two centuries to pay back the carbon losses incurred from the soil, though the figures would be lower if switchgrass feedstock replaces corn to produce cellulosic ethanol.

(Searchinger, et al. , 2008) It is important to note that the study does not assert that the production of corn ethanol increases greenhouse emissions. Rather, the findings suggest that land use changes in the magnitude of six times the current production incur costs that would need to be paid back.Therefore it would be unwise to reject it as the political tool of conglomerated businesses with no interest in a clean, sustainable tomorrow. (Searchinger, et al.

, 2008) In another study led by Joseph Fargione (2008), the direct impact of land clearing for biofuel crops is examined. Whereas Searchinger and his team focused on land use and conversion in the wake of food production displacement, Fargione and his team examine the costs of claiming new lands for the growth of biofuel feedstock.They note that the conversion of rainforests, savannas, peatlands and grasslands create a carbon debt by releasing about 420 times more carbon dioxide than is compensated for by replacing fossil fules with biofuels. The study declares that biofuels made from waste biomass or perennials incur drastically smaller carbon debts that give them a sustainable greenhouse gas advantage. They are therefore, much more desirable.

Alex Steffen (2006) notes that any environmentally minded solution should take into account “not the natural capital we currently have, but the smaller pool of capital” that will be present once any change actually takes effect. In essence, Steffen’s argument suggests that the development of sustainable solutions will require the same kinds of resource consumption that non-sustainability does, and that the future relies on having the courage to make such wagers. The environmental costs of land use conversion are therefore not the cause for alarm that ethanol opponents make them out to be.Many mainstream publications have taken reports like those of the Searchinger and Fargione’s study and reduced them into a general condemnation of the viability of ethanol as an environmentally friendly fuel alternative.

The New York Times reported on the Searchinger study with the headline “Biofuels Deemed A Greenhouse Threat”. This headline oversimplifies the study, though to the Times’ credit, it also notes that Nicholas Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program maintained support for biofuels.Nuttall framed the issue by stating that biofuel solutions require a well-developed set of sustainability criteria, rather than being treated as the “silver bullet of climate change” that is all too easy for opponents to find fault with. (Rosenthal, 2008) David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has argued against such an interpretation of these studies. Morris notes that the majority of land being used for corn production at present has already been growing corn for generations, and that future ethanol plants are converting to use renewable energy.

Additionally, farmers who make use of cultivation methods with a minimum of soil till would add about half a ton of soil carbon per annum which “would offset part of the carbon losses incurred from bring new land into production. ” (Morris, 2008) The World Watch Institute has made a proposal on the myriad of ways to make ethanol production more sustainable, specifically with regards to Iowa, the leading state of ethanol production.Among these suggestions are a) incentives for minimal-till agriculture and the creation of riparian buffer zones that absorb the impact of climate change, b) support for the growth of perennial grasses and fast-growing trees as sustainable fuel crops, c) adjusting subsidies to promote fuels based on waste or cellulose while discouraging those that cannibalize the existing food supply, and d) accelerating the development of cellulosic biofuel and related infrastructure (Sierra Club, 2007) Cellulosic ethanol is also being touted as an increasingly brighter possibility for the ethanol future.Evan Ratliff points out that the fundamental obstacle facing the adoption of cellulosic ethanol is the difficulty of producing it at a commercially feasible cost. This is because cellulose is a notoriously difficult molecule to break down. The natural processes of breaking down cellulose into the simple sugars necessary to distill ethanol that exist in bacteria and herbivorous animals are difficult to replicate.

However, Ratliff endorses its potential because of its abundance, its dramatically better energy yield and the ability to produce it from non-food crops.The short word on all this is that ethanol and other biofuels still have a sustainable future, land use costs notwithstanding. In fact, it is already happening in several corners of the United States. (Ratliff, 2007) In Illinois, General Motors has partnered with Coskata Energy to convert organic material such as corn husks and municipal trash into ethanol at a cost of less than one dollar per gallon, which helps address the crucial issue of corn and sugar ethanol production’s effects on the food supply.

Using gasification technology that makes use of ethanol-excreting bacteria while requiring less heat, pressure and water, Coskata is able to produce five gallons of ethanol from two bales of hay at a cost of about forty cents and with drastically less greenhouse gas emissions. The process is hardly location bound because, as Richard Tobey asserts, one can use whatever feedstock is available in the locality be it wood waste or municipal waste. Each region has been blessed with the ability to grow its own biomass,” he says. (Squatriglia, 2007)Lee Lynd, an environmental engineering professor from New Hampshire believes that the future of cellulosic ethanol is in developing a process called consolidated bioprocessing and trying to stuff it into one microbe. He and his associates at the company he founded, called Mascoma, are looking into developing one bacterium that does the dual task of breaking down the cellulose into sugar and fermenting it into ethanol.

Joel Cherry, a leading research executive at a bio-industrial company called Novozymes is currently heading a similar initiative. However, instead of looking into genetically modified bacteria, Novozymes is looking to transplanting enzyme producing genes into a tropical fungus that will degrade cellulose under high heat conditions. (Ratliff, 2007) In Texas, chemical engineers at Rice University have successfully found a way to manufacture ethanol and other chemicals from waste glycerin.Using a strain of E. oli, they have identified metabolic process and conditions that allow it to produce ethanol from glycerin at about forty percent the cost incurred from corn-based ethanol production. This development is a boon to the existing biofuel industry because of the amount of waste glycerin it produces.

(Boyd, 2008, Squatriglia, 2007) Cellulosic ethanol is not without its cons, though. Current automobiles need to be converted to run on it, while the existing oil pipeline infrastructure can’t transport it.However, Lynd argues that these problems are not the limitations of cellulosic ethanol’s potential as a fuel, but rather problems tied to the difficulties of converting cellulosic biomass into sugars. (Ratzliff, 2007) However, ethanol, whether corn-based or cellulosic, do not solve fuel problems by themselves. While they are carbon neutral, that doesn’t mean that they do anything to address global warming.Despite this, many environmental thinkers have come to the conclusion that the future of automotive transportation lies not just in switching fuel sources thinking they are the “silver bullet” that Nuttall suggests is an illusion.

(Rosenthal, 2008) Atkisson (2008) makes the optimistic claim that by exposing some of the shortcomings that comes with the uncritical and thoughtless establishment of biofuel and ethanol industries and production practices, it will encourage us to rethink our patterns of consumption that are efficient and rethinking the ways in which we exercise our options for mobility.Referenceshttp://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/06/yale_survey_imp.htmlhttp://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/fuels/ethanol.html