Door Number Three-Part Two

The worst natural resource decision in American history

For those of you too young to get the title from yesterday’s post:

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In yesterday’s post I tried to help you untangle the rat’s nest of information surrounding fuel ethanol made from corn, how the ag industry rationalizes the activity, and its role in climate change mitigation. Today we’re going to look at some numbers, some very big numbers indeed, and I’m trying to summon my A1A game to make this accessible to everyone. I urge you to read part 1 first, if you haven’t.

I ended yesterday with this question: Does ethanol make any sense at all from an environmental perspective? Here goes.

First, I’m going to avoid the metric system where I can and often I will display numbers in billions. For example, 88.1 may mean 88.1 billion. 2177 means 2177 billion, which is 2.177 trillion. Miles per gallon is just miles per gallon. I’m getting the bulk of my information from the Federal Highway Administration at this link.

Two main classes of vehicles use gasoline blended with ethanol. The first is Light Duty Vehicles Short Wheel Base (LD SWB). These are passenger cars, light trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles with a wheelbase less than or equal to 121 inches. The second is Light Duty Vehicles Long Wheel Base (LD LWB). Included here are cars, vans, pickup trucks, and sport utility vehicles with wheelbases greater than 121 inches.

In 2023, these vehicle classes used this much straight and adulterated gasoline:

Just shy of 10.4% of the totals above were ethanol (link). This pencils out to the volumes shown below.

Here are the average fuel efficiencies (mpg) and total miles traveled:

Ethanol blended in at 10% reduces gas mileage around 3%, because its energy content is less than unadulterated gasoline. So here’s the gas mileage that would’ve resulted with 100% straight gas, and the amount of liquid fuel that would’ve been needed sans ethanol:

So from the above table we can see that about 3.7 billion gallons less liquid fuel would’ve been needed if nobody was burning ethanol in their tanks (Line 1 minus Line 6). Subtracting 3.7 billion from line (2) then tells us that the 13.25 billion gallons of blended ethanol really only displaced 9.55 billion gallons of gasoline. This little nugget is something Monte Shaw and the outfit he reps, the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, rarely, if ever, mentions.

It’s well known that American vehicles get better gas mileage when government puts the screws to the car manufacturers. These standards are known as CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. Historically this has meant fines for automakers if they produced too many low-mileage vehicles, which inspired the bosses in the engineering shop to lean on the pointy-heads to get more power from smaller engines. This has worked.

The Big Bullshit Bill removes all fines for the automakers. So CAFE standards are now unenforceable.

But let’s say we required automakers to up their game by an average of 2 mpg (about 9%). Assuming no ethanol is blended in, this would reduce liquid fuel use by 9.8 billion gallons. Remember that in 2023, ethanol displaced 9.55 billion gallons of gasoline!! Increasing average gas mileage by 2 mpg effectively cancels all ethanol (lines 8 and 9 below).

But let’s not stop there. Let’s say we required American automakers to meet European Union mileage standards. Here’s where I have to use the metric system. In 2019, average fuel economy in the E.U. was 5.95 L/100 km. In the U.S., it was 8.7 L/100 km. Lowering the U.S. value to the E.U. value would reduce liquid fuel consumption in the U.S. by 39 billion gallons, four times the benefit provided by corn ethanol (lines 10 and 11 below). And, importantly, it would do this without all the externalities (bad consequences) of fuel ethanol: water pollution, habitat loss, rural decay because of mono-cropping, pesticide use and so forth. The taxpayer and the public at large shoulders the burden for all this stuff, not the ethanol industry.

I forgive you if you think the high price of gas in the E.U. is part of the equation here, i.e. this might link to more rigorous fuel standards in some way. The case of Canada, however, is instructive. Gasoline is much more expensive in Canada than it is in the U.S., and fuel efficiency is less than here. The same goes for Australia. People in these two countries like big vehicles and travel vast distances in them, similar to people in many U.S. states.

Hopefully you see now why the petroleum industry and the ethanol industry have become bosom buddies. Their interests intersect in a myriad of ways. Add in these CO₂ pipelines and that relationship becomes carnal. Why? Because the CO₂ can be used to scour recalcitrant oil from wells with declining production. This explains why big oilman Harold Hamm is a big investor in Summit Carbon Solution’s anticipated pipeline from Iowa ethanol plants to North Dakota shale.

So, why do the titans insist on continuing with ethanol when it makes literally no sense? Because they don’t give a shit about you. Every step in the corn ethanol process, i.e., selling seed, equipment, fuel (ironically, fossil fuel), fertilizer, chemicals, crop consulting, crop insurance, grain drying, grain transport, ethanol production, ethanol transport, and so on and so on involves the exchange of money with literally no responsibility or accountability for the negative environmental and societal consequences.

I would make the case that corn ethanol has vulgarized Iowa and corn belt agriculture, turned agribusiness people into avaricious liars and politicians into despicable industry mouthpieces. The 2005 Energy Policy Act, which included the renewable fuel standard, created a guaranteed market for corn which has wildly inflated the price of Iowa farmland. This has squeezed out young farmers that might farm more sustainably and made multi millionaires out of both insiders and the lucky heirs of Grandpa Harold. It has hastened consolidation in agriculture, degraded our small towns, poisoned our drinking water and quite likely led to the early demise of an unknown number of Iowans.

For the love of god, somebody kill this thing, or at least suggest a path away from this monstrosity.