Ethanol Could Be a ‘Bridge’ toward Transport Electrification, US Farmers Say

by Sarantis Michalopoulos (EURACTIV.com) This article is part of our special report COP25: Is transport decarbonisation pragmatic enough?. Until electrification of transport is fully in place, ethanol could be used as a “bridge” to make fuels cleaner, US farmers told EURACTIV.com on the sidelines of the COP25 in Madrid.

“In the US, there are only 250,000 electric cars manufactured, their resale is not doing well and there are lots of questions about the battery. They’ll keep getting better and better, but as a bridge to get to them, let’s use ethanol to make our fuels cleaner and better,” Fred Yoder, a farmer and chair of North America Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance said.

“We can improve right now our gasoline in our emissions with ethanol. But we need to get the message here at COP25,” Yoder added.

“If you think of corn or maize as a giant solar panel in the whole Midwest, we’re sequestering more carbon each year than the forests in Brazil,” he claimed.

Yoder, a corn producer from Ohio, noted that last year less corn was planted in the US due to the weather but the country is still swimming in corn. “The US can produce corn like no one else in the world.”

The farmer explained that when corn is processed for ethanol, one third of it goes to the ethanol plant as starch, but the rest goes for animal feed.

“So, it’s not food versus fuel, it’s food and fuel from the same unit of corn,” he said, adding that in fact it’s the best “food security program”.

For Ray Gaesser, a farmer from Iowa, ethanol is not only a solution to climate change but also a profitable agricultural business that keeps farmers in the countryside.

“On our farm in Iowa, our corn goes to our nearby ethanol plant to create fuel for everyone in our neighborhood, and our nation and the world around us. And the end, the protein that’s left over from the process, goes back to feed the animals in our area, and that protein in the animal waste, then comes back on our farm to grow the next crop of corn. So, it really is a great circle of life,” he said.

He said that through this model, resources are reserved, profitability is increased and therefore farmers are motivated to stay on the farm.

On the other hand, farmers said the EU proposal deprived them of a market that was helping them increase their income out of the Common Agricultural Policy concept. In addition, they said the proposal risked increasing imports of animal feed from third countries and was contradictory of the EU Protein Strategy.

EU member states are currently drafting 10-year-long National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs). However, a study by industry group Farm Europe recently showed that no EU country has calculated the cost of transport decarbonisation so far, putting EU climate obligations to the test.

Excerpts from EURACTIV Study: Farm Europe, a think tank specialising in agricultural topics, has published a study suggesting that the current draft plans risk being ineffective due to the lack of a calculation method on the cost-effectiveness of the proposals.

The RED II offers a variety of measures to decarbonise transport, ranging from electrification to conventional, advanced biofuels and hydrogen.

According to the study, only three member states (Finland, Italy and Spain) have a robust transport decarbonisation plan while just seven (Czech Republic, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Slovenia) have considered all options “realistically”. In addition, a public consultation on NECPs took place in only nine countries.

However, the authors of the study warned that no draft NECP plan provides specific figures on how much the proposed measures will cost to society.

In general, the study pointed out that the vast majority of member states, such as Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Poland, “vaguely” rely on electrification. But the cost of transition to electric cars is not calculated in any member state and the slow progress when it comes to electrification infrastructure could be an obstacle for quick deployment.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed that Germany should install one million electric car charging points by 2030 in an effort to convince consumers to ditch petrol and diesel cars for their electric equivalents.

Tesla, which specialises in electric car manufacturing, recently announced that it will open a European Gigafactory in Germany. However, last July it reported large losses despite a relatively rise in electric cars demand.

The study criticised the lack of discussion in Brussels and national capitals on cost-effectiveness of transport decarbonisation policies, adding that EU taxpayers care about the cost of climate measures.

“The Commission regularly prepares impact assessments accompanying legislative proposals which provide information to member states on cost-effective measures to reduce emissions across various sectors,” the EU source said.

“In the context of the NECP process no such specific analysis has been undertaken, as the Governance Regulation doesn’t foresee it,” the source added.

However, the Governance Regulation explicitly states: “This Regulation sets out the necessary legislative foundation for reliable, inclusive, cost-efficient, transparent and predictable governance of the Energy Union and Climate Action.” READ MORE