Is corn ethanol really a green fuel?
Ethanol has been subsidised to some extent by the US government for years, so the side effects of its expansion should have been easy to anticipate. Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey predicted as much in 1999, when he warned that ethanol subsidies would “have unintended consequences, which is to drive up the price of other commodities as fuel competes with food”. But surely the green pay-off from using ethanol is worth a bit of extra pain for the US consumer? Well, it might be – if there was a pay-off. But unfortunately, ethanol subsidies could cause more environmental harm than the average coal-burning power plant. In a 2006 study, David Pimentel of Cornel University and Tad W. Patzek of the University of Berkeley found that, in terms of energy output, corn-based ethanol actually needs 29% more fossil fuel to make than it produces in equivalent energy. This gives an Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROEI) ratio of about 0.7 to 1 – below break-even point. “I think it’s a scam,” say
