New Report Questions Feasibility of Ethanol Use

According to a controversial new study from two professors at UC Berkeley and Cornell University, ethanol-once hailed as a potential source of fuel and a promising solution to energy and gasoline shortages-may not live up to expectations.

Meanwhile, some advocates of ethanol, an organic fuel made from fermented corn, see the findings as a threat to the multi-billion dollar ethanol industry.

According to the study by UC Berkeley chemical engineering professor Tad Patzek and Cornell professor David Pimentel, published in the Natural Resources Research Journal earlier this summer, the fantasy of driving on corn will have to remain a dream.

The labor-intensive process of creating ethanol consumes more gasoline in production than it replaces, resulting in a 29 percent net energy loss, the report said.

Not only does the cost of manufacturing ethanol outweigh any potential benefits, it also exacts an environmental toll, causing pollution and eroding resources, the researchers said.

Patzek said that after years of relying on irreplaceable fossil fuels, assuming that organic fuel like ethanol can serve as a replacement is wishful.

"We've been taking at such a rate that there is no way we can ever match that with anything that grows today," Patzek said.

But ethanol advocates like Brian Jennings, executive vice president of the American Coalition for Ethanol, argued that the clean-burning, home-grown gasoline additive does the job well, reducing auto emissions and raising octane levels.

"It's viable, it's available, it's produced in great amounts here in the United States and it can be used in every single car that runs in this country," Jennings said.

For ethanol producers, corn growers, and supporters like Jennings, the unflattering study threatens the recent growth of the ethanol industry in the United States.

Since ethanol was first suggested as an alternative energy source decades ago, U.S. production levels of the biodiesel have grown to 3.4 billion gallons in 2004.

There are more than 83 plants in the nation, with 16 more under construction.

Ethanol proponents refer to several recent studies which said that ethanol produces a net energy gain.

They claimed that Patzek and Pimentel's study uses old data, and that Patzek has ties to the petroleum industry.

"These two so-called researchers don't have any credibility," Jennings said. "If you follow the money, you know that Tad Patzek is the director of the UC Oil Consortium."

Patzek directs the consortium, which conducts research with other departments and provides lab and training services for some of the leading oil and gas companies. The consortium was was founded in 1994.

Patzek dismisses the criticism as spin control, a "very slick, extremely effective propaganda campaign by the ethanol lobby."

The study was professionally reviewed multiple times, while past ethanol studies supporting ethanol did not account for all production costs, Pimentel said.

Patzek-who says he has received hate mail and threatening calls as a result of his research-linked the resistance to his findings to hopes for a renewable alternative energy source.

"We were always trying to find a substance that would convert something impure to gold," he said. "There's a very psychological attachment."

Patzek says that the only solution to the energy crisis is conservation.

"It's so important for our society to understand that there are no easy solutions," he said. "We have to reform ourselves."

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