Ethanol: Not perfect, but a step away from crude

Gov. Tim Pawlenty was smart a couple of years ago when he proposed that Minnesota move from a 10 percent ethanol blend to a 20 percent blend by 2013.

Pawlenty's proposal was bolstered by studies at Minnesota State University Mankato and elsewhere that showed mileage and engine performance in late-model vehicles is not affected by an ethanol-to-gasoline ratio of 30 percent or less.

This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cleared the way for distribution of a 15 percent mix nationally, but that is not a mandate. Minnesota law currently requires a 10 percent mix of ethanol.

Ethanol raises a ruckus because in some quarters it is viewed as an anti-environmental, food-depleting farm-lobby subsidy. Yet compared with oil, it's very economical. When tax breaks to oil producers and pollution and military costs to secure supply lines in the Middle East and elsewhere are considered, the real cost of a gallon of gas has been estimated at $5 to more than $10.

Granted, ethanol will never be a national replacement for gasoline. The ethanol industry, largely concentrated in the Midwest's Corn Belt, this year will produce a record 12 billion-plus gallons, which is less than 10 percent of motor fuels consumed by Americans annually.

But ethanol, which is subsidized by a wholesale blender's tax credit that makes it cheaper than gas at the pump, can help wean the nation off imported oil, particularly in the Midwest where it is most produced and most popular. Moreover, ethanol plants increasingly are being fueled by waste products and otherwise becoming more efficient as the industry matures and technology improves.

A 2009 University of Nebraska study said the latest crop of ethanol refineries, built within the last few years, has helped cut greenhouse gas emissions to half those of gasoline, and the ethanol industry now is producing up to 1.8 units of energy for every unit of energy used to produce it. That compares with a 1-to-1 ratio a decade ago.

"Ethanol is not a silver bullet," said Bruce Jones, director of the Minnesota Center for Automotive Research at Minnesota State University Mankato. "But I have no problem running my 19991 Toyota pickup or late-model cars on 20 percent or 30 percent ethanol."

In 2007, the center ran a 2007 Ford Fusion, a Toyota Camry, and a Chevrolet Impala with an engine modified for E85 as well as a standard engine for thousands of miles, each using various blends. The study showed little to no loss of gas mileage and less pollution in cars burning up to 30 percent ethanol.

Why? "We don't know whether it's the octane or something else, but for whatever reason [all the mixed fuel] burns more efficiently and offsets some of the BTU penalty," Jones said.

The Mankato work was part of a larger study by the University of North Dakota, funded by the American Coalition for Ethanol.

"Our study was received happily by the corn industry," Jones said. "But they wanted objective research and that's what we did. Flawed research doesn't help."

Minnesota gets most of its oil from Canada, including the controversial tar sands of Alberta. Exploitation of tar sands is immersed in controversy over environmental degradation thanks to the energy and water it takes to produce and refine the sandy sludge. Corn ethanol, made from feed corn commonly fed to fatten animals, leaves as waste a higher-protein distillers grain that is used as animal feed.

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture in July predicted that Minnesota would produce a record 1.1 billion gallons of ethanol that would generate an economic impact of $3 billion locally and support about 8,000 jobs. Ethanol also is the transitional fuel to "cellulostic fuels," such as prairie grasses and waste products being pursued by research universities and the growing ethanol industry.

"Corn ethanol is a regional alternative," Jones said. "Plug-in electric cars will have more impact in Arizona and California than cold-weather Minnesota. We cannot wait until we're out of petroleum to develop any of these. And everything is more expensive at the beginning of [technological evolution]."