Earlier this year, we posted We agree: It's time to move on from ethanol and Another IA newspaper editorial board questions ethanol industry, carbon capture pipelines, part of a growing wave of skepticism about ethanol in Iowa's newspapers, which were once solidly pro-biofuels.
Is that scrutiny coming north?
It's not quite the anti-ethanol prairie fire that has burned across Iowa newspaper op-ed sections, but Saturday afternoon, the Star Tribune posted Ethanol's clean air benefits clouded by greenhouse gas emissions by Jennifer Bjorhus and Mary Jo Webster.
Some interesting passages:
White steam billows into the sky, a rolling cloud visible for miles from Guardian Energy's plant in southern Minnesota.
You can't see the greenhouse gases pumped out the stacks with the water vapor in the air, but they are there — more than 178,000 metric tons in 2019 alone. Eighteen of Minnesota's 19 corn ethanol plants are among the 100 facilities expelling the most greenhouse gases in the state, according to a Star Tribune analysis of data from the U.S. EPA's Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.
Combined, the state's corn distilleries produced more than 1.7 million metric tons of the climate poisoning gases in 2019. That is less than 5% of the total from Minnesota's top 100 greenhouse polluters. But the manufacture of what's intended as a green alternative to gasoline produces as much pollution as driving 350,000 cars for a year or burning 900,000 tons of coal. . . .
There are conflicting views on how corn ethanol's carbon footprint stacks up against gasoline.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that corn ethanol's life-cycle greenhouse gases — including what's vented from production facilities — are now about 40% lower than gasoline. California's regulator estimates it's from 25% to 40% lower, depending on the producer. Other research says it's less.
The latest report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,concludes ethanol's life-cycle greenhouse gases are likely 24% higher than gasoline. Ethanol production and the intensive cropping system that goes with it have taken a serious toll on the environment, from eroding soil and destroying pollinator habitat to polluting drinking water wells and the Mississippi River with nitrate and phosphorous from fertilizer runoff.
"Corn ethanol is not a climate friendly or environment friendly fuel," said the paper's author, University of Wisconsin researcher Tyler Lark.
Minnesota lawmakers are again considering a new low carbon fuel standard like those in California and Oregon. It would require all fuel suppliers in the state to reduce the life-cycle greenhouse gases from transportation fuel at least 20% by 2035.
Ethanol producers would clearly benefit, but the standard is agnostic on the type of fuel, said Brendan Jordan, vice president at the Great Plains Institute, a Minneapolis think tank promoting the approach. The standard would create a powerful incentive to accelerate the decline in ethanol's carbon intensity, Jordan said.
Fuel suppliers that meet the carbon reduction targets can sell carbon credits; those that don't would have to buy them. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Todd Lippert, DFL-Northfield, and Sen. Dave Senjem, R-Rochester, frames a carbon trading program run by the state Department of Commerce. Last year a proposal for a clean fuels standard passed Minnesota's Democrat-led House, but not the Republican-led Senate.
Such fuel standards, of course, rely on measuring ethanol's life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions for a carbon intensity score, which has proved challenging. One sticking point is accounting for the greenhouse gases associated with land use change — pushing food production to other land in order to grow large amounts of corn for ethanol.
Most of the science "grossly underestimates" the emissions associated with that, said Jason Hill, professor of bioproducts and biosystems engineering at the University of Minnesota.
"Everything associated with the carbon intensity of ethanol is smoke and mirrors," said Hill. "Anything that increases the amount of corn ethanol we use … will be taking us in the wrong direction. What ethanol is another market for corn."
None dare call it cornography. Read the entire article at the Star Tribune.
Related posts:
- We agree: It's time to move on from ethanol
- Another IA newspaper editorial board questions ethanol industry, carbon capture pipelines
- Ethanol CCS pipeline update: Reuters & Agweek
- Not a lot of easements for Midwest carbon pipeline, but plenty of political connections
- 2 ethanol CO2 headlines that make us go hmmm
- CO2 pipelines: who wins & who loses?
- Coming soon from a cornfield near you: mammoth carbon capture pipeline system
- Mother Jones: USDA Secretary Vilsack’s son works for a controversial ethanol pipeline project
- Iowa county boards scorn construction of CO2 pipelines, use of eminent domain to build them
- Digest of news about carbon dioxide pipelines
Photo: It's all about another market for corn.
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