Ethanol and Water
If I could offer our soon-to-be Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack one piece of advice, it would be this: "We're already running low on water. Don't make matters worse."
I would offer my advice with hope, but out of fear. My fear is that in Des Monies and in his short-lived presidential campaign, Mr. Vilsack was an ardent supporter of ethanol, so has been President-elect Obama. Once he becomes agriculture's advocate in the new administration, it will mean more and more ethanol plants for America.
Mr. Vilsack is in for an unpleasant surprise.
That's because while many of ethanol's problems (energy inputs, land use, food prices and more) have been thoroughly discussed, we have oddly (or maybe purposely) overlooked its true Achilles heel: water. And if we stick to our current plans to massively boost ethanol, an ethanol-fueled water crisis will come fast and furious.
Producing ethanol requires enormous amounts of water. Water America does not now have. That's true for corn ethanol and its supposedly more efficient and environmental cousin, cellulosic ethanol made from husks, wood chips, and other waste. The most efficient ethanol plants need 4 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol fuel. That doesn't account for the feedstock, and in the case of corn, it takes 2,500 gallons of water to grow enough corn to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. That's right, 2,500 gallons.
Look at what happened in Minnesota: In June 2006, Governor Tim Pawlenty heralded the grand opening of a 40 million gallon-per-year ethanol refinery by Granite Falls Energy. Lost in the excitement was the fact that the plant consumes almost 400 gallons of water per minute. It didn't take long before wells 3 miles away started to run dry leaving families without water.
To "solve" the problem, engineers started diverting water from the Minnesota River, a "solution" which might work until the next drought. To say the least, it portends trouble when one modest-sized plant in, of all places, the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes, is straining water supplies.
Nationwide, there were only 54 ethanol plants in 2000. By 2008 that number had grown to 139, with an additional 62 refineries under construction. Mr. Vilsack and others will oversee an ethanol boom created by large production mandates in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The existing and proposed plants will have the capacity to produce 12 billion gallons of ethanol. Refining that much ethanol will consume 48 billion gallons of water. And that's just for the production process. First farmers must have water to grow the corn or whatever else will feed the plants.
The state of California has a goal of producing a billion gallons of ethanol a year. To grow enough corn to refine that much ethanol would take as much as 2.5 trillion gallons -- more than all the water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta that now goes to Southern California cities and to Central Valley farmers. The Delta supplies water to two-thirds of the state's residents and irrigates more than 7 million acres of some of the nation's most productive farmland.
In the words of Donald Rumsfeld, this looming water crisis is a "known unknown" that Washington seems determined to ignore even as it creates it.
Across America cities and towns are already struggling to provide residents with clean water. Georgia's Governor Sonny Perdue organized a prayer group on the steps of the state capital in the name of rain. Planners are floating schemes to channel water from the Mississippi across thousands of miles of continent to Las Vegas. Along the South Carolina coast, fresh groundwater is flowing backwards it is being drained so rapidly.
Just wait until we start turning what water we have left into fuel for cars and trucks by the trillions of gallons. It won't work, Mr. Secretary.
Robert Glennon is the Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of Arizona. His new book, Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What To Do About It, will be published by Island Press in March 2009.
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Why must people push CORN ethanol? It is the most costly feedstock for fuel production. Sweet sorghum, sugar beets and most any other sweet fruit or vegetable is suitable for ethanol production and may require less pesticides, water and overall care than corn. Ethanol is a viable alternative fuel if used in concert with hybrid vehicles.
If American put EVERY SINGLE SQUARE INCH of existing agricultural land in production for ethanol it would only fill a small fraction of America's liquid fuel budget.
Not only that, it's EROI is barely better than 1, by some estimates not even that good.
CBE is a FRAUD as are biofuels generally.
As the jazz singers say ONE MORE TIME....!
ETHANOL = STARVING THE POOR!!!!!!!!!
GASOLINE = TOXIC WASTE LEFT OVER AFTER PLASTICS, FERTILIZERS, PHARMA DRUGS, ETC HAVE BEEN REFINED OUT OF OIL. DIRTY, CANCER CAUSING (ie BENZENE), AND NON-RENEWABLE.
ETHANOL = RENEWABLE, CLEAN, CO2 REDUCING AND DOMESTICALLY PRODUCED.
If corn, sugar cane, sugar beets, fodder beets, cattails, etc were put to use smartly...we could produce (grow) all of our fuel needs and reduce the amount of CO2 & other pollutants in the air and do it all within 10 years!
I agree with you one hundred percent: ethanol is really a bad idea. Ethanol is not a solution at all because it creates more problems than it could possibly ever solve. I hope Mr. Vilsack will listen to your wise advice.
Chalk one more good reason up for investing in the air car.
Legalize industrial hemp to make ethanol.
yes...that or Kudzu.....there is no faster growing plant. and Kudzu will "clean" the water if growing by a spring....
Plants like Hemp and Kudzu have so many uses. It is a shame people are so afraid of change. They just might find that change improves their lives....
Hmmm perhaps we should realize that water is a scarce resource and we'll start to have to address the 600 lb elephant in the room-limiting human numbers. There's always been the SAME amount of water on the planet since humans inhabited it and now, you'd think we'd get a clue.
The author fails back up his claim that the corn producing states irrigate their fields. The truth is that 80% of all corn fields are only irrigated by rain. Stop bashing clean burning ethanol without comparing it to dirty burning and water intensive processes that make up gasoline!
In order to meet the rising demand for corn to produce ethanol, farmers are growing corn rather than other foods. Consequently that led to worldwide food shortages along with, for many, unaffordable food prices. The aforementioned coupled with the amount of water needed to produce ethanol necessitates eliminating ethanol as an energy source.
Some argue water is replenished by rain, but given the fact that droughts are increasingly more common renders that argument moot.
For decades corporations have been scrambling to buy local communities' water utility companies. While they have been accumulating vast amounts of wealth, at the expense of entire populations, extreme poverty and violence rose exponentially as a result thereof.
As climate changes -- storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, droughts, etc. -- grow more severe and demands exceed supply wars will be fought over food and water accessibility and affordability. While ethanol production is accelerating what lies ahead corporate globalization is compounding the problems. Thus alternative methods and balanced interests are necessary in order to achieve global sustainability.
It's this kind of dangerous misinformation that could lead our country to make bad energy choices. Please read this article from Andy Aden at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory: http://www.swhydro.arizona.edu/archive/V6_N5/feature4.pdf. According to his research, 96 percent of the corn used in ethanol production is not irrigated and it takes approximately three gallons of water to make one gallon of ethanol. But that water isn't lost, it's primarily used to cool equipment in the plant and then is cleaned up and discharged back into the environment.
BTW, it also takes about 2-2.5 gallons of water to make a gallon of gasoline, which is a pretty similar amount.
See Robert Glennon's Profile
The paradox of water is that it is both renewable and exhaustible. Whenever someone in Boston flushes a toilet, as much as six gallons of water end up at the Deer Island treatment plant where, after treatment, it's dumped into the Atlantic. That water may not be available for reuse for generations or centuries.
In many parts of the US, we're pumping in mere decades groundwater that took millenia to accumulate. For more on this, see my book, Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America's Fresh Waters.
On the corn grown with rain issue, farmers in major ethanol-producing states -- Iowa, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Texas, and California -- irrigate their fields, either diverting water from rivers or pumping it from aquifers. Ethanol producers are competing for corn that would otherwise be used for food, for water that would be used for other crops, and for water that, if left in rivers, would nurture plants and fish.
Robert,
As one of the commenters here mentioned, 87 percent of the corn acres in this country are rain fed and not irrigated. And the vast majority of those acres are located outside the Corn Belt where there aren't very many ethanol plants. You're giving the worst case scenario and treating it like its commonplace.
Quite a few posters on your article challenged your figure of 2,500 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. It would be nice of you to provide more details on those numbers. Thanks in advance!
My problem with your piece is its misleading inference. The vast majority of corn produced for all purposes is rain-fed, therefore it is unfair to characterize all ethanol production as if it were made by irrigated corn. Water use for agriculture is a serious and challenging issue, whether it is for corn-fed beef or for fuel. In cases where water is diverted from rivers or drawn from aquifers for agriculture, you are dealing with local water resource management issues that are better handled on a local or state level rather than through broadsides or hit-job articles.
Louisiana Enacts the Most Comprehensive Advanced Biofuel Legislation in the Nation
Governor Bobby Jindal has signed into law the Advanced Biofuel Industry Development Initiative, the most comprehensive and far-reaching state legislation in the nation enacted to develop a statewide advanced biofuel industry. Louisiana is the first state to enact alternative transportation fuel legislation that includes a variable blending pump pilot program and a hydrous ethanol pilot program.
The legislature found that the proper development of an advanced biofuel industry in Louisiana requires implementation of the comprehensive “field-to-pump” strategy developed by Renergie, Inc.
Please feel free to visit Renergie’s weblog (www.renergie.wordpress.com) for more information.
What? The earth is running out of water? Oh no!
The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
Psst...hey buddy, water is renewable...
True Mnemanth,... but "Fresh" water is a relatively small amount of the available water. And that fresh (as in not seawater) is what is needed to irrigate crops, water livestock, run human cities sewage & drinking water, and of course - the 'wild' animals and ecosystems.
Seawater could be used for cooling and some operations. However, conversion of seawater into relatively fresh water is energy and resource costly.
Psst...hey buddy,... There is a difference between 'renewable' and 'always free and abundant'.
Hey that's right! I shouldn't have to pay higher water fees to build that new seawater desalination plant that is going in down the road, water is renewable! Thanks Mnemanth! I'm going straight to the City Council right now and enlighten them.
Yes it takes 2,500 gallons of water to grow the corn, but where does that water come from? Maybe you've heard of it: it's called RAIN. That rain will fall whether or not we make ethanol. The production of one gallon of ethanol takes about three gallons of water, which is roughly equivalent to gasoline. The oil refinery they're looking to build in South Dakota will use 10-12 million gallons of water per day. All energy production takes water and ethanol is not that different from the others.
The author fails to mention that 87% of all corn grown in the US is rain fed, not pulled from wells or rivers. Water is a serious resource managment issue and needs to be seriously examined. Printing distortions that imply ethanol requires 2,500 gallons of ground water debases a serious subject. This piece would have us considering a ban on corn-on-the-cob? How many gallons of water is required to produce a loaf of bread or the tomatoes in your garden? Further, the resource and impact issues need to be examined in the context of the oil that is being displaced. Look at the food vs. fuel issue today -- ethanol volumes have continued to grow while corn and grain prices have dropped in half with the price of oil. Where is the objectivity and serious analysis? Let's stop slogging our agendas and find solutions.
Here in New Hampster we have grass fed Scottish Highlanders. They eat no corn ever. They feed them brewers yeast for a month, from the microbreweries to fatten them up!
Good column.
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