Ethanol's Water Problems

Last Wednesday's Wall Street Journal's main editorial was entitled "Ethanol's Water Shortage." That title says it all.

It turns out that a Cornell ecology professor has determined that each gallon of ethanol requires 1,700 gallons of water.

As a result, Kansas and Nebraska are near a lawsuit over water rights. A North Dakota ethanol plant application was withdrawn when, according to the Journal,

"it became clear that the plant's million-gallon-a-day appetite would drain too much from a local aquifer."

Another method of measuring various energy sources, power density, finds oil to be more efficient than, say, solar, because it merely requires a hole in the ground, rather than acres of panels.

Solar power, which is 1,000 less dense than oil, is still 10x denser than ethanol. Peter Huber, of the Manhattan Institute,

"predicts a world-wide leveling of forestland as farmers turn vegetation into fuel,"

according to the Journal article. Even worse, the article cite two scientists, Renton Righelato and Dominick Spracklen, who wrote in Science magazine,

"in order to replace just 10% of gasoline and diesel consumption, the US would need to convert a full 43% of its cropland to ethanol production. The alternative approach- clearing wilderness- would mean more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than simply sticking with gasoline, because the CO2-munching trees cut down to make way for King Ethanol absorb more emissions than ethanol saves."

But, wait! Wasn't greenhouse gases and carbon footprints why we are going from oil to ethanol in the first place?

Let's hope, as the Journal editorial notes, that Congress figures this out before the last, big ethanol legislation pushes through. It's just too awful to contemplate- water shortages, more CO2, runoff, water pollution, higher food prices, etc. All in the name of replacing a very efficient fuel source- oil.