Ethanol: Not the Energy Transition We’re Looking For

[rangerrebew]

Ethanol: Not the Energy Transition We’re Looking For
1 hour ago Guest Blogger 
By Ike Kiefer

With current events stirring up global energy prices, corn ethanol is again being dressed up as if it is a domestic energy source and agent of energy security. The truth is that corn ethanol is an energy sump, and that it takes more fossil fuel energy to make a gallon of corn ethanol than a gallon of gasoline. It is time to face this unpleasant truth and the other perverse outcomes achieved by twenty years of misguided policy.

In 2005 and 2007, Congress passed the Energy Policy and Energy Independence and Security Acts that together created the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program. RFS had three stated objectives: to improve U.S. energy security, to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and to support rural economies and agricultural development. Instead, RFS has increased motor fuel prices, increased food prices, put millions of carbon-sequestering acres of land into intensive cultivation, increased GHG emissions and air pollution, and increased water consumption and pollution. As to energy security, the gallons of U.S. gasoline displaced by federal ethanol blending mandates are being exported to Mexico and other nations. The great success of RFS has been the hand of government transferring wealth from motorists to big ag corporations. It’s past time to stop the economic and chemical absurdity of forcing food to be fuel.

The government wanted biofuels bad, and it got them bad. Under Corn Belt lobbying pressure, Congress cynically waived the need for RFS to achieve actual GHG reductions for all existing corn ethanol biorefineries, plus all that could be built by the end of 2010. The bulk of the corn ethanol produced over the past 20 years and still today comes from these waivered plants. The EPA’s specious 2010 prediction that corn ethanol would achieve a 21% GHG reduction by 2022 was immediately challenged by the National Research Council for not properly counting land-use change and not realistically treating food competition and water use. This panel of experts from the National Academy of Sciences even questioned the viability of the entire concept of reducing GHG with biofuels. The most rigorous and honest estimate by a third party in testimony before Congress used the EPA’s own methodology to show that adding corn ethanol to gasoline has increased GHG emissions by 28% over the pure gasoline baseline with no trajectory to ever recover.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/05/12/ethanol-not-the-energy-transition-were-looking-for/

[IsailedawayfromFR]

There needs to be a tv ad containing this exact information.

[DefiantMassRINO]

Ethanol is a negative value economic proposition.  It increases food prices without being an affordable alternative to gasoline.

[Free Vulcan]

Ethanol is a negative value economic proposition.  It increases food prices without being an affordable alternative to gasoline.

How does it increase food prices? Corn is and has been barely profitable for years.

[DefiantMassRINO]

Ethanol, animal feed, and food are chasing the same limited supply of a commodity or arable land with which to grow that commodity.

Corn hasn't been profitable because the costs of farm inputs have risen.

What does ethanol accomplish economically?  What's the macro return on investment?  What does it save?  What efficiencies or productivity increases does it provide?

[Free Vulcan]

Ethanol, animal feed, and food are chasing the same limited supply of a commodity or arable land with which to grow that commodity.

Corn hasn't been profitable because the costs of farm inputs have risen.

What does ethanol accomplish economically?  What's the macro return on investment?  What does it save?  What efficiencies or productivity increases does it provide?

Academic chalkboard scribbling.

No they aren't chasing the same 'limited' supply of corn, in fact it's quite the opposite. We have and continue to increase the supply of corn to the point where there is no demand to support it especially with livestock numbers down like they are. If it weren't for ethanol, it would be even lower.

The only food product of relevance that corn is used for is soda pop. Not exactly crucial to human survival. Arable land is not a factor due to the reserve acreage in CRP and edge strip programs.

The real issue is genetics, which keep pushing the bushels/acre up. That's why corn continues to trend toward breakeven instead of rising from a 'limited' supply as you say. The rising costs factor is squeezing margins even further but it is only half the equation and not directly related to supply factors.

What does ethanol provide right now? A price floor. It may not be optimal but if it were just taken away without something to replace it, we'd be at $3 corn and most farmers would be out of business.

[Bigun]

Academic chalkboard scribbling.

No they aren't chasing the same 'limited' supply of corn, in fact it's quite the opposite. We have and continue to increase the supply of corn to the point where there is no demand to support it especially with livestock numbers down like they are. If it weren't for ethanol, it would be even lower.

The only food product of relevance that corn is used for is soda pop. Not exactly crucial to human survival. Arable land is not a factor due to the reserve acreage in CRP and edge strip programs.

The real issue is genetics, which keep pushing the bushels/acre up. That's why corn continues to trend toward breakeven instead of rising from a 'limited' supply as you say. The rising costs factor is squeezing margins even further but it is only half the equation and not directly related to supply factors.

What does ethanol provide right now? A price floor. It may not be optimal but if it were just taken away without something to replace it, we'd be at $3 corn and most farmers would be out of business.

My problem with using corn-based ethanol for motor fuel is that it takes more energy input to produce than you get out. 1.4 units of input for every 1 unit of output. That's a fools errand.

[Free Vulcan]

My problem with using corn-based ethanol for motor fuel is that it takes more energy input to produce than you get out. 1.4 units of input for every 1 unit of output. That's a fools errand.

I don't have a great love for ethanol for all the reasons we all know. It's just the farmers have backed themselves in a corner that they can't easily get out of.

I can't say I'm in a raging lovefest with the American farmer anymore. Alot of pride, but alot of ignorance, stubbornness, and myopia. They lost alot of the entrepreneurial they used to have and have gotten hidebound.

Things need to change or a big hard crash is coming.

[Bigun]

I don't have a great love for ethanol for all the reasons we all know. It's just the farmers have backed themselves in a corner that they can't easily get out of.

I can't say I'm in a raging lovefest with the American farmer anymore. Alot of pride, but alot of ignorance, stubbornness, and myopia. They lost alot of the entrepreneurial they used to have and have gotten hidebound.

Things need to change or a big hard crash is coming.

 

[Wingnut]

Corn is for food, and maybe booze, not gas.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Academic chalkboard scribbling.

No they aren't chasing the same 'limited' supply of corn, in fact it's quite the opposite. We have and continue to increase the supply of corn to the point where there is no demand to support it especially with livestock numbers down like they are. If it weren't for ethanol, it would be even lower.

The only food product of relevance that corn is used for is soda pop. Not exactly crucial to human survival. Arable land is not a factor due to the reserve acreage in CRP and edge strip programs.

The real issue is genetics, which keep pushing the bushels/acre up. That's why corn continues to trend toward breakeven instead of rising from a 'limited' supply as you say. The rising costs factor is squeezing margins even further but it is only half the equation and not directly related to supply factors.

What does ethanol provide right now? A price floor. It may not be optimal but if it were just taken away without something to replace it, we'd be at $3 corn and most farmers would be out of business.

Then stop using the land to grow corn and grow something else.

Lots of fields now growing corn were once planted in wheat or other crops.  The reason switched was ethanol farm credits, a waste of taxpayer money.

I watch land prices in prime farmland and they have gotten out of control.  They need to rein back in.

An oil company would never produce oil in order to lose money and that's what these farmers must embrace as well.

[Smokin Joe]

I don't have a great love for ethanol for all the reasons we all know. It's just the farmers have backed themselves in a corner that they can't easily get out of.

I can't say I'm in a raging lovefest with the American farmer anymore. Alot of pride, but alot of ignorance, stubbornness, and myopia. They lost alot of the entrepreneurial they used to have and have gotten hidebound.

Things need to change or a big hard crash is coming.

Feed more cattle and hogs. We could use some relief at the consumer level in that sector, anyway.

[Hoodat]

My problem with using corn-based ethanol for motor fuel is that it takes more energy input to produce than you get out. 1.4 units of input for every 1 unit of output. That's a fools errand.

Correctamundo.  Ethanol use has resulted in an INCREASE in fossil fuel usage, not a decrease.

Gasoline can be transported anywhere through a pipeline.  Ethanol must be shipped by truck or rail car.  And boiling off water from ethanol production uses far more energy than boiling oil for a refinery column.

[Smokin Joe]

Correctamundo.  Ethanol use has resulted in an INCREASE in fossil fuel usage, not a decrease.

Gasoline can be transported anywhere through a pipeline.  Ethanol must be shipped by truck or rail car.  And boiling off water from ethanol production uses far more energy than boiling oil for a refinery column.

And that isn't even talking about the fuel systems damaged or wrecked by ethanol fuels and what it takes to replace those.

[Sighlass]

Ethanol kills engines... it dries out tubing and it runs hot.