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Danny Hopkins puts the case for ethanol caution
Ethanol is not a ‘green’ fuel, it is ‘potentially an environmental disaster.’ That isn’t a petrolhead talking, that’s America’s environmental agency (EPA). Ethanol production encourages a monoculture of industrialised non-food crops (usually corn or soya) with the overuse of pesticides that comes with it, plus it also uses a lot of energy to make and transport the fuel. There are various ways of making biofuels, but generally fermentation and heat break down the starches, sugars, and other molecules in plants. Ethanol producers burn coal and gas to heat the fermentation process to do this. The resulting product is then refined to produce a fuel that cars can use. It is almost as energy sapping as refining crude oil.
When the fuel itself is burnt, the EPA discovered that ethanol produces higher quantities of nitrous oxides, albeit with lower levels of particulates and other harmful emissions. It is also ‘renewable’ but the vast land use required for volume ethanol plant production pretty much cancels out the benefits. The challenge of growing enough crops to meet the demands of ethanol and biodiesel production is huge and, some say, insurmountable.
According to some, producing enough biofuels to enable their widespread adoption could mean ‘dewilding’ on a massive scale, converting most of the world’s temporate open spaces to farmland.
There is a case for making biofuels from waste, but deforestation to grow soya and corn to make fuel is a real issue… we need to a system of traceability to make sure the ethanol we are adding to fuel is as green as politicians and the ethanol lobby say it is. Finally, you still have to set fire to it to create power – that’s the real elephant in the room.
‘Dewilding for ethanol crops is a real issue’