Ethanol Is Not a Bridge— We Are a Main Road

by Dave VanderGriend (Ethanol Producer Magazine/Urban Air Initiative) ...In addition to power plants, singling out gasoline powered vehicles seems to be an easy target. The most recent example is California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order requiring all new passenger vehicles be zero emission by 2035. Obviously, this force-feeds electric vehicles (EVs) in the name of carbon reduction. But this executive order is also assuming that conventional vehicles and fuels cannot do the job.

The basic premise of this approach is wrong, not to mention impractical. With more than 250 million cars in the U.S. today, and 15 million or more being sold annually, the internal combustion engine (ICE) will remain the predominant form of transportation for decades to come. Two million cars are sold every year in California alone. During that time, liquid fuels, in the form of gasoline and ethanol, will be needed.

But with just 1 million EVs on the road today, they cannot reduce carbon emissions alone. Liquid fuels, powering those hundreds of millions of ICE vehicles on the road and being produced every year, can achieve significant efficiency gains and carbon reductions and need to work together to tell that story.

High-octane, low-carbon ethanol is an input to refiners to allow their product to meet the efficiency and emission requirements of future transportation programs. The auto industry confirms how higher octane coupled with compression increases can provide measurable benefits, quickly, economically and in vehicles that meet consumer needs and retain personal choices. When that octane is derived from low-carbon ethanol, drastic measures like we are seeing in states like California are unnecessary. And low carbon it is. Study after study proves that corn ethanol reduces carbon by as much as 50% compared to gasoline, which is on par with advanced biofuels. At UAI, we have also studied this issue and, working with other industry partners, have hounded the U.S. EPA to update its models to reflect the best available science that is recognized in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) model as well as U.S. Department of Agriculture studies on the true carbon footprint of corn ethanol. Lower energy and fertilizer inputs, higher corn yields, higher yield of ethanol per bushel and many other advances have not been incorporated into EPA’s life cycle analyses.