The high price of fossil
fuels, environmental concerns, and geopolitical
instability in some major oil-producing nations have
spurred intense interest in the United States in
alternative fuels, especially from renewable energy
sources.
While popular with environmental activists, wind and
solar power, because of their costs and unreliability,
are not expected to grow significantly, even with
massive subsidies.
Nuclear power is still viewed with suspicion, even
though other countries, including France, supply a
majority of their energy needs from nuclear plants.
Crop-based fuel production, especially corn ethanol, has
been the main focus of interest, with government
subsidies and mandates stimulating demand. Cellulosic
ethanol produced from crop wastes has been heralded as
the alternative fuel of the future, but it is yet to be
produced in other than experimental production
facilities. More recently, Brazil’s example of producing
ethanol from sugar cane has been presented as a model
for the United States to follow.
There are significant trade-offs, however, involved in
the massive expansion of the production of corn and
other crops for fuel. Chief among these would be a shift
of major amounts of the world’s food supply to fuel use
when significant elements of the human population
remains ill-fed.
Even without ethanol, the world is facing a clash
between food and forests. Food and feed demands on
farmlands will more than double by 2050. Unfortunately,
the American public does not yet understand the massive
land requirements of U.S. corn ethanol nor the unique
conditions that have allowed sugar cane ethanol to make
a modest energy contribution in Brazil.
The United States might well have to clear an additional
50 million acres of forest—or more—to produce
economically significant amounts of liquid transport
fuels. Despite the legend of past U.S farm surpluses,
the only large reservoir of underused cropland in
America is about 30 million acres of land—too dry for
corn—enrolled in the Conservation Reserve. Ethanol
mandates may force the local loss of many wildlife
species, and perhaps trigger some species extinctions.
Soil erosion will increase radically as large quantities
of low-quality land are put into fuel crops on steep
slopes and in drought-prone regions.
The market is already responding to the high price of
oil, as investors flock to alternative fuels, including
investments in cellulosic ethanol research and
development. Those developments are healthy, if markets
are allowed to discover the winners and losers in future
alternative energy sources without government
intervention through subsidies and fuel mandates, and
with a clear assessment of the trade-offs that may be
involved.
Biofuels, Food, or
Wildlife? The Massive Land Costs of U.S.
Ethanol
by Dennis
Avery September 21, 2006
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Email
llc@cottonharbor.com