Conscious Choice Seattle: Don’t Be Fueled

March 2005 | Back Woods

Don’t Be Fueled

Turn off your television. Ethanol is a viable, renewable alternative energy for cars — and a local sustainable economy

by David Morris

In a recent episode of TV’s “The West Wing,” dark horse Democratic presidential candidate Matt Santos (played by Jimmy Smits) condemned ethanol on the grounds that “Storage is a nightmare.”

“The West Wing” is a smart television program, written by smart people with access to an enormous amount of expertise. Part of the show’s appeal is its willingness to present both sides, even with highly controversial issues like the morality and efficacy of the death penalty or political assassinations. When it comes to ethanol, however, the show’s writers apparently believe there is only one side, and it is exceedingly negative.

An early 2005 episode, “King Corn,” raised ethanol trashing to an entirely new level. In this episode, all of the presidential candidates, liberals as well as conservatives and Democrats as well as Republicans, strongly object to ethanol, although in the end all but one ends up “pandering” to Iowa’s caucus voters by endorsing the fuel.

Ethanol is liquor. It begins with the fermentation of sugars into a weak alcohol, a process carried out by anyone who makes wine or beer. Distillation then eliminates the water. The result is 100 percent (200-proof) alcohol. Some call it White Lightning. You could drink it, although it’d knock you on your behind.

That is why Matt Santos’ comment about ethanol being a storage “nightmare” was so wacky. Gasoline is a chemical stew of over 150 highly toxic chemicals. Gasoline storage systems have to protect us from gasoline. We don’t need to be protected from vodka.

Ironically, the benign nature of ethanol has stunted its industrial and fuel use for almost 150 years. In 1860, ethanol was one of the nation’s best-selling chemicals, used as an illuminant and solvent. When the Civil War broke out, President Abraham Lincoln imposed a $2.08 per gallon Spirits Tax to finance the war effort. Ethanol was subject to the tax. Kerosene, the first commercial petroleum product and far inferior to ethanol as an illuminant, was poisonous and thus subject to a tax of only 10 cents a gallon.

Industrial and fuel ethanol disappeared for 45 years.

In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt, seeking a competitor to Big Oil, convinced Congress to lift the Spirits Tax. The ethanol industry was back in business. By the end of World War I it was producing some 50 million gallons a year. Then the ax of Prohibition fell. Prohibition didn’t actually ban industrial alcohol, but gaining a production permit was difficult because the feds feared the output would be diverted to the far more profitable illegal liquor market.

Although Prohibition ended in 1933, a legacy of that era remains. Today, just as in 1925, ethanol must be doctored with a small quantity of gasoline before leaving the biorefinery to prevent its being diverted to the liquor market. Which is why you shouldn’t drink the ethanol that goes into your car.

As you might have guessed, the level of incentives for ethanol, an infant industry with enormous growth opportunities, doesn’t come close to those paid to oil, a mature industry whose fuel source is running out. An analysis done for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance found that the oil industry receives as much as $11 billion a year just in tax incentives.

For its part, Washington has been a state leader in encouraging ethanol and biodiesel. On the state level, Rep. Brian Sullivan of Mukilteo was the prime sponsor of bills that provide incentives for in-state ethanol production, development of retail fuel stations and biodiesel use by state fleet vehicles.

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell has been front and center in opening up avenues to produce and sell ethanol made from wheat straw and other non-corn biowaste. An analysis by the federal Department of Energy’s Argonne National Lab shows a gallon of ethanol produced from cellulosic biomass will represent a greenhouse emissions reduction of around 85 percent to 130 percent, about seven times the air quality benefits of starch or corn-based ethanol.

What’s more, a study by researchers at the Washington State University Energy Extension concluded that Washington state could produce 200 million gallons per year in cellulosic-based ethanol, and as much as 1.2 billion gallons per year with technology improvements.

Is ethanol a perfect fuel? Of course not. There are no perfect fuels.

A more interesting question: Do farmers benefit from biofuels incentives? Only marginally. Of the 52-cents-per-gallon incentive for ethanol, the corn farmer receives about a nickel. But if farmers own the ethanol plants—that is, if they own a share of the manufacturing facility that converts their raw material into a finished product—they can receive dividends of 20 to 30 cents per gallon.

Biorefineries can be much smaller and far safer than oil refineries. They can rely on a wide variety of feedstocks available in virtually all parts of the nation, including wheat straw here in Washington. This allows us to envision a different future for agriculture, one in which farmers here and abroad do not compete with other farmers but with the fossil fuel industry. It’s a future in which farmers are no longer condemned to sell their raw material at an ever-decreasing price, but can earn their income from multiple sources.

West Wing or not, there is no place for ethanol bashing in Washington state.

David Morris is cofounder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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