On groundhogs and other climate experts; and why it takes 24.5 billion gallons of fossil fuel inputs to produce 35 billion gallons of ethanol to replace 23 billion gallons of gas.

by Janet A. Ginsburg

According to the new, long-awaited U.N. report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), temperatures will “very likely” increase between 3.2 and 7.2 degrees Farenheit by the end of the century. The temperature on the thermometer outside my kitchen window reads all of 3.2 F this morning, so I can’t wait.

It is Groundhog Day, but  here in the Windy City no groundhogs are voluntarily peeking out of their dens to see how much winter is left: Winter is here, now, finally. It is time to snuggle in for a snooze – a point confirmed by some none-too-pleased groundhogs that were pulled from their burrows this morning. Despite a sunny day, no shadows were seen, which means spring is just around the corner. If you plan to hibernate this year, there’s no time to lose. The IPCC report’s 600 authors from 40 countries, 640 expert reviewers, and additional reviewers “representing 113 governments” have nothing on Cloudy and Woodstock Willie. All agree -- the occasional cold snap notwithstanding -- it’s getting warmer out there.

At least Chicago’s groundhogs can curl up for a few more weeks. Their hedgehog cousins in England, faced with longer hotter summers and milder winters, have turned into such stressed out seasonal insomniacs, they’re losing their prickles, suffering from what some have dubbed “global balding” (see interview video clips). It’s Nature by Munch, with photographs of scruffy psychotic rodents and anorexic polar bears as the new icons of a climate gone bad and a world in trouble.

The IPCC’s findings are remarkably clear and damning, especially for a report built on consensus:  The climate is changing, things are going to get worse, and it’s mostly, if not entirely, our fault. The question mark has been removed from the question, according to Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) have been steadily rising since the start of the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago, and the rate of increase over the last 50 years has soared well past anything the planet has seen before. Hang on to your hats -- it’s getting ugly.

So now what? There are enough GHG’s swirling overhead to keep the climate warming for decades no matter what we do. Just to begin to make a dent at slowing down disaster will require drastic cuts in emissions, somewhere in the range of 50% to 80%.

President Bush is right: The Kyoto Protocol won’t work, but not because its mandated GHG reductions, which range between 5% and 15% below 1990 levels depending on the country, will wreck the U.S. economy. The global economy is in far more danger from the collateral damage of climate change: droughts, floods, wrecked coastlines and the political instability that follows. Kyoto won’t work because the reductions aren’t nearly enough.

RUNNING ON EMPTY

Last year, 20% of the corn crop was used to produce 5 billion gallons of ethanol, which covered about 3% of U.S. fuel needs. Corn prices, now at record levels at nearly $4 per bushel, have sparked a “tortilla war” in Mexico as the poor struggle with skyrocketing food prices. Meanwhile, as farmers put more acreage into corn for ethanol, the costs of other food commodities are rising, as well.

Yet even if the President’s ambitious target can be met using non-food crops for cellulose-based ethanol, biofuels are still a non-starter in terms of global warming.

To figure out annual gasoline consumption, the totals, which are in millions of barrels of oil per day, must be converted. First, multiply by 42, which is the number of gallons of gas in a barrel of oil. Then multiply the answer by 365 for the yearly tally. For 2007 (column “E”), the projected daily consumption is 9.28 million barrels, which adds up to 142.3 billion gallons per year. For 2017, (column “O”), daily consumption rises to 10.48 million barrels per day, which translates to 160.6 billion gallons per year. That’s an increase of 12.8%.

According to the White House, 35 billion gallons of ethanol will displace 15% of the projected gasoline usage under the “Twenty in Ten” plan. But 35 billion gallons is almost 22% of 160.6 billion gallons. My EIA expert explained that because ethanol, gallon per gallon, packs only two-third’s the energy punch of gasoline, you have to multiply the 35 billion figure by .66, which brings it down to 23 billion. In other words, it takes 35 billion gallons of ethanol to replace the energy contained in 23 billion gallons of gasoline. But 23 billion gallons is just 14.3% of 160.6 billion gallons, not the 15% savings the White House reports. As far as the EIA is concerned, the missing .7%, or one billion gallons, is a mystery.

By most estimates, it takes the equivalent of 7 gallons of fossil fuel inputs, including fertilizer, to produce 10 gallons of corn ethanol. That means it would take 24.5 billion gallons of fossil fuel inputs to produce 35 billion gallons of ethanol under current production methods, which mean it would take 24.5 billion gallons of fossil fuel inputs to displace 23 billion gallons of fossil fuel. Like the “dot.bombs” of the late 1990s, the more ethanol you make, the more you lose.

Of  course, to make 35 billion gallons of ethanol from corn using  present production methods would require 140% of the crop, which has a certain energy-policy-by-Max-Bialystock chutzpah to it. The big bet, though, is on cellulose-based ethanol produced from plant waste, which would provide a more efficient use of fertilizer and help take the sting out of the food versus fuel debate: Theoretically, you could get both from the same plant. But the cost of distributing such vast amounts of ethanol would probably still make it a greenhouse gas (GHG) net loser. Ethanol has to be hauled by truck because it erodes pipelines. This is also why cars using E85 fuel, which is 85% ethanol, require special, tougher “flex-fuel” tanks.

LESS THAN IT SEEMS

Even if ethanol required absolutely no fossil fuel inputs to produce or distribute, it still couldn’t deliver on climate change. As a “carbon-neutral” fuel (the carbon sequestered in the plant material used to make the fuel zeroes out carbon emissions) the best it can do is do no further harm. But according to the new IPCC report, that’s not nearly enough. Emissions need to be slashed by 50% to 80% just to slow climate change, nevermind stop it.

According to Argonne National Lab calculations, burning one gallon of gas generates 19.6 pounds of CO2, and one gallon of ethanol generates 12.6 pounds. Since it takes a gallon and a half of ethanol to produce the same amount of energy as a gallon of gas (gallon for gallon, ethanol produces only 2/3’s as much energy as gas), the emission totals are much closer: Per “energy equivalent of one gallon of gas,” gasoline generates 19.6 pounds of CO2, while ethanol generates 18.9 pounds, a difference of about 4%.

In terms of storing carbon, coal and oil have it all over biofuel crops and forests planted in popular offset schemes like the one used by the NFL to make the Superbowl carbon neutral. Coal and oil store carbon for millennia  -- plants, after all, put the “fossil” in fossil fuels. Trees store carbon for at most a few hundred years. And biofuel crops – even a perennial such as switchgrass --  store carbon for matter of months before it’s released once more in combustion. 

To use a down home Wisconsin-inspired analogy, if coal and oil are fine aged cheddars, biofuels are yesterday’s cheese curds. The only real difference is how long they’ve been on the shelf.

According to Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway, we’re solving the wrong problem.  “What we’re doing is finding more efficient ways to do stupid things. If you find better ways to grow corn, but then you’ve got to move it here, distill in there, boil it here, move it there, finally, in the end, put it into a 3,000 pound box that’s 20 feet long so that you can creep along in front of some guy doing the same thing, you’re not going to solve the problem.” 

Replacing one carbon-based fuel source with another doesn’t solve gridlock. And it certainly doesn’t solve global warming. Higher fuel efficiency standards and non carbon-based fuels such as hydrogen clearly are important, but we also need to start thinking outside the tank and analyzing how to be more energy-smart with existing infrastructure.

Almost all of us – 98% of Americans – live in cities and suburbs that were designed for cars. Collectively, we have invested trillions of dollars (much of it still owed) in homes, cars, mini-vans and SUVs. Even if fuel economy standards were raised to 40 mpg tomorrow, it would still take well over a decade for our 250 million-car fleet to turn over.

To quote Donald Rumsfeld, you go to war with the army you’ve got, and the army we’ve got in the fight for energy security and climate stability isn’t that great. Still, there are ways we can leverage what we’ve got to do better.

Solutions could be as simple as strategically-placed parking lots. Whether a car gets more miles per gallon, or needs to be driven less, the results are identical: less fuel burned, which means less CO2 in the atmosphere. Larger parking lots near commuter train hubs, for example, would make it easier for more people to split their daily journeys between private and public transportation. Typically, a car is really needed only for the last mile or two into the garage -- and any errands along the way. Parking lot fees could be skewed to favor commuters, adding just a dollar or two per day for those with a Metro pass, while costing non-commuters substantially more.

Whether it’s smarter parking, cyber-commuting, new ideas for public transportation, or scooting around on Segways, we need to follow Dean Kamen’s lead and start thinking about different transportation options for different transportation needs.

The hedgehogs and the polar bears are counting on us.