Eager to help decrease our greenhouse gas emissions, spur job growth and foster the development of cellulosic ethanol, the ethanol industry wants the Environmental Protection Agency to increase the amount of ethanol blended with gasoline from 10 to 15 percent.
The feds appear willing to play along, and the EPA says it expects to make a decision by the middle of next year. In a letter to Growth Energy, the ethanol advocacy group that requested the increase last March, the agency said the results of early tests suggest vehicles built since 2001 can easily handle (.pdf) the increase. That said, it is conducting further "component durability" tests on 19 vehicles to determine the long-term emissions impact of a 15-percent blend.
Those tests will conclude in August, but if all goes well we could see more ethanol in our gasoline by June.
According to the pro-ethanol Renewable Fuels Association, most vehicles should have no problem with the change. It is so confident of its position that it has asked the EPA for a temporary increase in ethanol blending to 12 percent to get the ball rolling.
"In order to avoid paralysis by analysis, EPA should immediately approve intermediate ethanol blends, such as E12," the association argues. "Allowing for a 20 percent increase in ethanol’s potential share of the market would provide some breathing room for the industry while EPA finishes its testing on E15."
We’ve all heard the arguments against ethanol derived from corn and other food crops, and we'll put those side for now. The ethanol industry is painfully aware of the so-called food-for-fuel debate and argues boosting ethanol's viability will hasten the arrival of cellulosic ethanol produced from wood chips, switchgrass and other biomass.
Not everyone is convinced the increase will do any of the things the ethanol lobby claims. Earlier this year, Ed Wallace wrote a scathing column in BusinessWeek calling the push for a 15 percent blend a ploy "to restore profitability to a failed industry." He made the usual arguments against ethanol and said he interviewed several mechanics who are seeing more cars damaged by ethanol. Growth America issued a point-by-point rebuttal to the column, essentially calling his entire argument bogus.
The Environmental Working Group, a health and environmental research and policy organization, also challenges the industry's claims. In a letter sent in May to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, the organization makes many of the same claims Wallace does and says Growth Energy makes "numerous fundamental errors of fact and interpretation, both in its arguments advocating for ethanol increases and in its supporting data."
Be that as it may, it appears the EPA is going to play along with the request, writing in its letter to Growth Energy:
To get there, though, we're clearly going to need so-called "second generation," or cellulosic, ethanol derived from non-food crops. A lot of time and money is being spent developing such fuels. In its 90 Billion Gallon Biofuel Deployment Study, Sandia National Laboratory said plant and forestry waste and "dedicated energy crops" could replace some 60 billion of the estimated 180 billion gallons of gasoline we're expected to consume annually by 2030.
Hitting that goal would require producing 90 billion gallons of ethanol, which Sandia says is feasible "within real-world economic and environmental parameters." It bases that finding on the assumption that 75 billion gallons will be cellulosic ethanol and 15 billion gallons will come from corn. It argues 21 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol could be produced annually by 2022 without displacing current crops.
Many at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen are sounding alarm bells over global warming. Clearly we must reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and sharply curtail C02 emissions. Biofuels are not the answer to our problems. But they are one answer.
Photo: Flickr / Todd Ehler
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