Ethanol’s Potential as an Oil Replacement According to http://www.ethanol.org/FAQs.htm, ethanol production used 14% of the corn crop in 2005. If the entire 2005 corn crop was converted into ethanol, this would have produced 27.9 billion gallons of ethanol. But this is only the BTU equivalent of 16 billion gallons of crude oil (about 390 million barrels). This equals less than 10% of our current oil imports, but these are only the gross barrels displaced. This is the upper limit for how much oil could currently be displaced by corn ethanol, if the energy inputs into the process were all free, or were supplied by fuel sources (like coal) that can’t be used as transportation fuel, AND we used the entire corn crop. However, the energy inputs aren’t free. Fossil fuels that can themselves be used as transportation fuels are consumed in significant quantities. So, the only energy “created” is the slight excess that is made during the production process. According to a 2002 USDA report on corn ethanol, “The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol: An Update”, it takes 77,228 BTUs of fossil fuel inputs (natural gas, gasoline, and diesel) to produce 83,961 BTUs of ethanol. This gives a ratio of ethanol output/fossil fuel inputs of only 1.09. The energy balance is improved by including the BTU value of the byproducts – 14,372 BTUs of animal feed byproducts per gallon of ethanol according to the USDA report. If byproducts are included, the net energy production is 27%. That reduces the net ethanol production potential of the entire 2005 corn crop to 27% of the gross, down to about 105 million barrels. This is equal to about 2% of our total oil imports, or a little over 3% of annual U.S. gasoline consumption if we turned 100% of the corn crop into ethanol. That scenario also assumes that there is a market for all of those byproducts. What does this mean? There is certainly no point in putting E85 pumps across the country, because the U.S. can’t make enough ethanol to justify them. Even as grain ethanol production scales up, it will displace less than 2% of U.S. oil imports. The reduction in fossil fuel usage is also next to nothing, because ethanol production is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Likewise, this means greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by a very modest amount. The Department of Energy recently concluded that E85, the 85% ethanol blend, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a mere 4%. That’s because ethanol is primarily a recycled fossil fuel, with a very small portion of renewable energy thrown in. The Brazilian Example There are some fundamental differences between the U.S. and Brazil that explain Brazil’s energy independence. The first is that Brazil has a far lower per capita demand of energy than does the U.S. According to BP’s recently released “Statistical Review of World Energy 2006”, Brazil consumed 664 million barrels of oil in 2005. With a population of 186 million, annual per capita oil consumption was 3.6 barrels per person. The U.S., on the other hand, consumed 7.5 billion barrels of oil in 2005. With a population of 296 million, annual per capita oil consumption in the U.S. was 25.3 barrels per person – seven times that of Brazil. On the production side, in 2005 Brazil produced 627 million barrels of oil, for an annual per capita oil production of 3.4 barrels per person. The U.S. produced 2.5 billion barrels of oil in 2005, for an annual per capita oil production of 8.4 barrels per person. The annual shortfall between oil consumption and oil production in Brazil was 0.2 barrels per person in 2005. In the U.S., the shortfall between consumption and production was much larger at 16.9 barrels per person. The question then arises: “Just how much did widespread use of ethanol in Brazil contribute toward their energy independence?” The answer is: “Not much”. In 2005, Brazil produced 4.8 billion gallons of ethanol, or 114 million barrels. However, a barrel of ethanol contains approximately 3.5 million BTUs, and a barrel of oil contains approximately 6 million BTUs. Therefore, 114 million barrels of ethanol only displaced 67 million barrels of oil, around 10% of Brazil’s oil consumption. In other words, Brazil’s energy independence miracle was 10% ethanol and 90% domestic crude oil production. Brazil did not farm their way to energy independence. The reason the U.S. should not expect to emulate Brazil’s success becomes clear based on the production/consumption imbalance. If the ethanol produced by Brazil is added to the production side of the equation (0.4 annual barrels of oil equivalents per person), then Brazil’s oil equivalent production number increases to 3.8 barrels per person per year, which is 0.2 barrels greater than their consumption. Therefore, they are independent of imported oil, and even have a slight excess of ethanol to export to countries like the U.S. However, the situation in the U.S. is quite different. Ethanol production in the U.S. was approximately 4 billion gallons in 2005. This is about 0.2 annual barrels of oil equivalent per person, or about 0.8% of U.S. oil consumption. Brazil had a very small 2005 petroleum production/consumption gap – 0.2 barrels per person per year – that ethanol was able to fill. The U.S., on the other hand, had a 2005 petroleum production/consumption gap of 16.9 barrels per person. This gap is currently filled by oil imports. Again, due to the lower BTU value of ethanol, the U.S. would require 29.0 barrels of ethanol per person per year, or 8.6 billion barrels of ethanol each year to replace all oil imports. This is approximately 90 times the amount of ethanol that is currently produced in the U.S. What does this tell us? Brazil’s ethanol experience can’t be extrapolated to the U.S. because of the vastly different consumption numbers in the respective countries. It is simply fiction to suggest that Brazil’s path to energy independence can be followed in the U.S. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Sign up to receive Sierra Club Insider, the flagship e-newsletter. Sent out twice a month, it features the Club's latest news and activities. Subscribe and view recent editions at http://www.sierraclub.org/insider/