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New Hope For CRP? Native Grasses Produce More Birds And More Ethanol
Can the nation’s rush to biofeuls production be turned into a blessing for fish and wildlife?
A few months ago that idea would have been dismissed as something worse than wishful thinking. After all, the Bush Administration’s push to increase ethanol production had already sent corn futures skyrocketing, prompting the farm lobby to demand early release from CRP contracts to meet the demand from the wave of ethanol plants being built. That news could mean the loss of 5 to 7 million acres of upland cover for wildlife.
And any thoughts those fears were misplaced were dispelled last week when the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported the biofeul craze had prompted the largest corn plantings in the U.S. since World War II.
So where’s the good news?
It’s here: Research shows native prairie grasses are much more efficient in producing ethanol than corn.
It takes 1 gallon of fossil fuels (in the form of fertilizer, tractor fuel, ethanol plant operation, etc.) to produce 1.2 gallons of ethanol from corn. Yet research has shown that 1 gallon of fossil fuel can produce over 5 gallons of ethanol from prairie grasses, according to Terry Riley, President of Policy at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.
So, if the whole reason for ethanol production is to relieve our dependence on oil and reduce the production of greenhouse gasses, then native prairie grasses are the way to go. And even President Bush can tell you native grasses have infinitely more value for wildlife than rows of corn and soybeans. Read it here.
You can read all about it in a fascinating op-ed piece “Corn Can’t Solve Our Problem,” by University of Minnesota researchers David Tilman and Jason Hill that appeared in the March 25 edition of The Washington Post.
Their 10-year experiment, the results of which were published in Science magazine, showed the huge advantages of using native grasses over corn for alternative energy production. The same grasses that sportsmen have been trying to put back onto the landscape through CRP are more efficient at producing ethanol and - just as important - hugely effective at reducing greenhouse gasses.
Even better, native prairie grasses will grow on soils that cannot support corn or soy beans, meaning the total acres available for fuel production - and greenhouse gas reduction - would be dramatically increased.
Imagine the explosion in the population of upland game birds if miles of row crops were replaced by native grasses.
Imagine that market incentives could make this possible without government subsidies.
So far it’s only an idea. But with gas prices inching over $3 per gallon, its time may be coming.
The whole ethanol shtick strikes me as a big scam. Until they develop a good, widely available cellulosic ethanol distillation program there will be NO "green" aspect to ethanol at all. Just farm subsidies with a different goal and concomitant increases in food prices.
It's amazing how the admin, with Congreff Affembled aiding and abetting, stumbles and lurches from one stupid idea to the next.
Posted by: Mike Diehl | April 03, 2007 at 02:49 PM
You are so full of dung, it runs out your ears. If you were truly interested in reducing oil prices and reducing our dependence on foreign oil, we wouldn't have to import it. We would be drilling off-shore in the Gulf or in Alaska as a means to get the price down. It is just typical of you tree-huggers. You would rather bitch about the problem that actually do something.
If you did a little research, you would know there isn't enough corn or native grasses to make a difference. You want to make a change - hydrogen is the only feesable alternative at this point.
It would be better if you left your left-wing bs out of your articles. You would get a more harmonious outcome.
Posted by: Mark | April 03, 2007 at 02:53 PM
Mark and Ethanol Fans,
Fact: If the big oil companies see ethanol producers as competition,they only need to drop oil prices to $40 dollars a barrel and ethanol is out of the picture as a viable fuel alternative,Finito' Simple as that. Crop row ethanol cost more than that to produce and is a bad business model. Not to mention the ill effects that taking farmland out of CRP and then replacing it with row crops will have on our wildlife!
Now if your talking cellulosic ethanol,that may be a different story?!
Instead of running your mouth about tree huggers and left-wing ideology, maybe you should try to comprehend what point was trying to be made.
Posted by: Paul | April 03, 2007 at 09:14 PM
I work in the fuels management industry and have some knowledge of the issue. The only cost effecient model is for prairie grass ethanol as grain alchohol is cost prohibitive. The caloric output of alchohol is 70% of gasoline and thus a normal passenger car fuel tank will have to increase capacity by 32% to maintain range using E85. Therefore, a mandated E-10 is sustainable and cost effective however the E-85 craze is simply a marketing tool that automakers hope to leverage as CAFE credits. If you truly want to decrease use of foreign oil and decrease the carbon footprint, you refine switchgrass and drill in Alaska. However, do not expect a decrease in oil prices due to the exponential growth of China and India oil consumption in an attempt to produce enough cheap junk to send to consumers in US. The only way to reduce oil prices is to do so on a global scale which means employing a less expensive alternate fuel. Hydrogen is far off, electric just relocates the useage point of fuel to electric plants and ethanol is limited by crop production. Switchgrass is easy to grow, once established and provides an enormous ecological benefit. Support mandated E10 legislation and drive smaller trucks.
Posted by: chuck | April 05, 2007 at 09:37 AM
Mostly I agree but electical does not necessarily merely relocate the combustion. Some parts of the country really *could* do a good job with thermal solar e-generation, and I've always been a fan of nukes.
The third path is to drive cars that make a little more fraking sense. Given the choice between high fuel cost pushing consumers to drive more fuel efficient cars vs. drill Alaska I prefer to see market pressure put some hurt in the bank accounts of people who must drive an SUV.
Posted by: Mike Diehl | April 05, 2007 at 05:19 PM
Do I detect a BSG fan in the audience?
Posted by: | April 05, 2007 at 09:51 PM
A couple of points, first, before you experts go on bad mouthing corn based ethanol, it is a better alternative than fossil fuels alone and until it came along, fossil fuels had no competition. It is the first step towards reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and if it wasn't for the first step taken by corn based ethanol we wouldn't even be talking about how much better cellulose based ethanol is. The problem today is the technology to efficiently produce ethanol from native grasses is still years away, not to mention infrastucture for harvesting, storing and transporting the huge volume of very bulky grasses needed. We need to find answers to make it work because even if we planted every available acre to corn (not feasible for a whole lot of reasons) we couldn't produce enough ethanol from corn to make much of a dent in our fuel needs.
My second, and more important point is we all need to get a lot more concerned about energy conservation. Farm machinery produced today uses half the fuel per acre required just 20 years ago, the big semis that fill our interstates get dramatically improved mileage, yet the cars and trucks we drive haven't improved nearly that much, if at all. If we can reduce or at least hold the line on our fuel usage, some of these alternative fuels might have a chance to help, but if we keep increasing our demand for fuels at our current pace none of these alternatives will help enough to matter.
Posted by: ricefarm | April 09, 2007 at 09:35 PM
"A couple of points, first, before you experts go on bad mouthing corn based ethanol, it is a better alternative than fossil fuels alone and until it came along, fossil fuels had no competition."
I disagree. Corn (grain based, non-cellulosic) ethanol uses about as much petroleum (in fertilizers, pesticides, and equipment) as it generates in ethanol on a gallon per gallon basis. Factor in the fact that ethanol has 30% fewer calories than petroleum (a car that gets 30 mpg pure gasoline would get 21 mpg on pure ethanol) and you wind up with a net energy loss.
Repeat: grain ethanol is less efficient than garden variety gasoline and will cause more pollution. We would literally be better off doing nothing at all than switching to grain ethanol fuels.
Cellulosic ethanol is the way to go but of course relatively more expensive and the tech for this is still somewhat down the line. That is why the best immediate solutions are (1) Nuclear power (2) wind power (3) solar power and (4) feed the corn to cattle and pigs rather than use it to make ethanol.
Posted by: Mike Diehl | April 10, 2007 at 04:19 PM
Here is a link to a Cornell/U.Cal.Berkeley study that indicates that biomass fuel production as ethanol actually uses more fossil fuels than burning the fossil fuels directly.
See: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July05/ethanol.toocostly.ssl.html
The consideration that I left out of the previous post is in some ways the worst of them all. To get ethanol of sufficient quality you need to distill the fermented biomass and the distillation process uses huge quantities of fossil fuel.
Note that the Profs involved are not card-carrying members of a petrochem institute, American Enterprise, Cato, or some other rightwingnut agitprop source. They both favor biomass used for low intensity heating (produced by the fermentation process itself). They just reject the policy of creating ethanol for liquid fuel.
Posted by: Mike Diehl | April 10, 2007 at 04:26 PM
Your Cornell study has been discredited many, many times and was not done as part of any research but rather assumptions made from data from over 25 years old. As a matter of fact, the two guys involved are an entomologist (that's a bug specialist, not an economist or chemist) and the guy from Berkeley actually DID work for the petroleum industry at one time, he is just trying to sell himself as some impartial researcher. Of all the studies done theirs is the only one that claims that producing ethanol creates a net energy loss. Part of how they arrive at the total energy needed to produce corn ethanol is by including the solar energy used by corn to grow. Last I checked, energy from the sun was free and quite plentiful. All of this is old news to anyone who really wants to know and has been documented in numerous news outlets for over a decade.
Posted by: ricefarm | April 11, 2007 at 07:39 AM
The study has not been "discredited many times." It was published in 2005 so it is possible that a peer-reviewed rebuttal has been since then published. If you have a source for the rebuttal, I'd be interested in knowing about it.
I am sure there other ways to get the necessary heat for the distillation process. I'd still like to see the "till-to-tank" production breakdown on that grain ethanol. Even without the distillation cost (I presume solar fields in the midwest...), considering the petrochems used in planting, fertilizer, insecticide, and harvest, and the 30% lower energy yield from ethanol, it does not seem like *grain ethanol* provides a "break even" solution. Cellulosic ethanol would be a different story.
But if you have a link to a peer reviewed study that demonstrates that shows that from ground to tank ethanol production and consumption uses less energy than gasoline I'd love to see it. I am completely willing to have my mind changed by the facts and a sound analysis.
Posted by: Mike Diehl | April 11, 2007 at 12:08 PM
I can find one study in Science (2006) that, in order to find a net positive energy return (relative to direct consumption of gasoline), had to give essentially a CO2 emissions credit to ethanol for "coproducts" (for ex grain byproducts that could be fed to chickens). When people start finessing models in this way I lose confidence in the model.
There is another study by the National Corn Growers Association that, considering the source, strikes me as about as credible as your average toothpaste commercial. It's about as worthy as an anti-ethanol "study" would be from Exxon-Mobile.
Then there is the US DOE web site that claims a 25% positive energy return from ethanol in contrast to gasoline but does not appear to account for the fact that ethanol produces 30% less energy than gasoline. If they haven't accounted for that the net gain is approximately zero, or maybe even a net loss.
Again, if you've got more peer reviewed studies I'd be interested. So far however I have found ONE (Science 2006).
Posted by: Mike Diehl | April 11, 2007 at 12:20 PM
Mike, I wish I had a way to send you the link but I'll have to do this the old fashion way. This is a study done by Argonne Laboratory and it actually gets into the difference in how Pimental arrives at his figures compared to other studies on page 5. I said Pimental had been discredited for a number of years because he has essentially re-published the same study every few years as being "new" and certain news outlets eat it up because it appears to be an environmentalist standing up to big business. The best link I found is www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/TA/347.pdf. I hope I got all that right but what I really like about this study is it goes on to point out that while corn ethanol creates a small net energy increase, cellulosic ethanol promises to provide a much greater, much more energy efficient product, as well as being friendlier to the envvironment which is really the main point of Bob's story. You do have to consider the feed value of the by-products from corn ethanol because over half of the feed value the corn had originally is retained. A lot of it (DDG)is even shipped to Europe, it works very well for cattle. This has been fun but we need to find a new topic. I think we've beat this one to death. One thing about Bob's blog, whether you agree or disagree he gets you thinking.
Posted by: ricefarm | April 11, 2007 at 08:16 PM
Thanks for that link it's a good read. It does seem to justify the "coproduct" factor in the Science Mag study so I'll agree that they/you have convinced me that grain ethanol gives a marginal positive return.
We seem to have agreed on cellulosic ethanol from the get go. Thanks for the discussion.
Posted by: Mike Diehl | April 12, 2007 at 04:56 PM
Interesting, Very Interesting.
Thanks, Guys
Posted by: Paul | April 13, 2007 at 01:04 AM