Time to spur advances in ethanol
Critics have long sniffed at ethanol as a dead end in the struggle for the United States to become less dependent on foreign oil.
Their argument went that ethanol was primarily a vehicle for funneling tax subsidies into the pockets of corn farmers and big companies such as Archer Daniels Midland Co., rather than a viable energy alternative.
Despite the burgeoning success of the ethanol industry, the debate has never really ended.
But as former President Clinton noted in his only visit to Nebraska as president, the real promise of ethanol will be realized beyond all doubt when the entire corn plant — stalk and all — is used to make ethanol.
The time has come to focus more intensely on the next generation of ethanol production. If the government intends to continue ethanol subsidies, the money should be concentrated on broadening the production of ethanol to use more than merely the corn kernel.
If new processes can be found to use cornstalks, then other plant material — grasses, weeds and other plants — presumably could also be used to make ethanol.
Considerable progress already has been made in making ethanol more viable,
Because distilleries have become more efficient, and farmers now use less energy to fertilize, ethanol now contains 25 percent more energy than it takes to grow the corn, haul it to the ethanol plant and distill it, according to the Argonne National Laboratory.
And there's still a leftover called dried distillers grain to feed to cattle.
The current setup has been economically beneficial to Nebraska, which is home to 11 ethanol plants that produce about 550 million gallons of ethanol a year.
In the long run, however, the ethanol industry needs to wean itself from subsidies that range from the tax breaks that Nebraska gives for construction of ethanol plants to federal tax breaks on each gallon of ethanol, plus the separate subsides that go to corn farmers.
The most logical way to produce ethanol more cheaply is to use less costly raw products. An experimental plant for producing so-called cellulosic ethanol made from cornstalks and other plant material was opened last year by a Canadian firm called Iogen. More resources should be devoted to this sort of research and testing.
As beneficial as ethanol research and production have been to Nebraska, it's now clear that corn ethanol by itself cannot satisfy U.S. needs. As some agricultural economists have observed, using all the farmland in the country for grain-based ethanol wouldn't be enough to meet the U.S. demand for fuel. It's time to spur progress toward the next generation of ethanol.
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