My Response to a Simpleton's Argument against Ethanol

by Marc J. Rauch (The Auto Channel) I was recently directed to an article published on City-Journal.org titled, "A Simple Policy to Reduce Food Prices". The article was written by James B. Meigs, a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.

The stated purpose of the article was to suggest "Repealing the EPA's biofuel boondoggle and overcome the Liquid Pork regime" that the author and website apparently fantasize over.

The story written by James B. Meigs is absolute nonsense. It is filled with inaccuracies and myths.

(I)t (the Renewable Fuels Standard) mandated that something be used to mitigate the deadly effects of petroleum oil fuels and tetraethyl lead (TEL). It was actually the oil industry that selected ethanol as the ingredient. Several years earlier, when TEL was banned from most engine fuel uses in America, the oil industry by-passed ethanol to replace TEL in favor of MTBE (methyl tert-butyl ether), another poisonous concoction. MTBE is produced by the oil industry from its natural gas and petroleum oil assets. The oil industry chose this garbage because they figured they wouldn't lose money by outsourcing a needed oxygenate to outside interests.

However, within a fairly short period of time, MTBE was banned. The oil industry could have come up with some other garbage to poison the world with, but anything else would have cost them too much, so they - not the government - chose ethanol, which has been their mortal enemy for more than a century. Ethanol has been the oil industry's mortal enemy because it is a superior internal combustion engine fuel and there was no way that they could contain and own a fuel that can be made by anyone anywhere in the world, and it can't be patented.

But, the oil industry did do something they thought clever and to protect themselves from giving up too much to their mortal enemy. Big Oil got their friends in government and the EPA to limit ethanol's volume in every gallon of gasoline to just 10%. The oil industry then backed it's play to ensure the 10% cap by inventing myths such as the "Blend Wall," while also rolling back out the lies that they invented against ethanol decades earlier to frighten the public. If the oil industry did not "own" so many politicians and the EPA, the level of ethanol to be used to correct all the ills of gasoline and diesel fuels could have been - and should have been - much higher.

For example, Brazil has been mandating higher ethanol-gasoline blends for about 25 years before the enactment of the Renewable Fuel Standard. The automobiles driving on the roads in Brazil are the same as the automobiles on the roads in America. Similarly, Great Britain and other European countries regularly allowed (and in some cases, mandated) the use of alcohol-gasoline blends almost a century earlier).

Wrapped up into the Food vs. Fuel argument is the silliness about how much good farm land is used to grow corn and other ethanol crops. The great majority of the corn used to make ethanol serves multiple purposes, so it's not a matter of "one and done." The same corn kernels that are used to produce ethanol are then used to feed animals that humans eat. Consequently, corn use is not "food or fuel," it's "more food and more fuel." *

In any event, corn doesn't have to be used to make ethanol, there are a variety of other crops that can be used, and many of these other renewable crops provide greater annual ethanol yields than corn. Some of these other crops don't require much water or fertilizer, or any irrigable water and chemical fertilizer at all.

Moreover, nearly all major and minor wars around the world since 1914 were fought over access to petroleum oil. We have never fought a war over corn, and we have never lost any military personnel while protecting the corn or ethanol industries.

I already covered the use of the remnant high-protein corn (dried distillers grains - DDGS) that are used to feed cows, chickens, and pigs. It is no secret that beef, chicken, and pork are a central part of the global human diet. So, to imply that the growth of corn in some way reduces the availability of human necessities is outright stupidity.

To his subordinate point of increased "fertilizer and pesticide runoff," this only worsens the stupidity of his overall claim. The truth is that agricultural improvements since the enactment of the RFS two decades ago allow for the growth of far more corn per acre than ever been possible, while using less water and fertilizer than ever. And just as important, these agricultural improvements have benefitted the growth and availability of virtually all crops, not just "energy crops."

First, and foremost, the BTU ratings of gasoline and ethanol have absolutely nothing to do with internal combustion engine (ICE) performance. The BTU rating system was created to measure the capability of fuels (coal, wood, oil, natural gas) used to heat water to power steam engines. Internal combustion engines do not run on steam.

The use of BTU statistics to compare ICE performance was a concoction of the petroleum oil industry; it is meaningless. It is like trying to claim that gasoline is superior to ethanol because it has a prettier color. I completely and irrevocably destroyed the BTU argument several years ago when I wrote and published these three reports: