Facts About the Ethanol Energy Balance
By Dave Litzen

Litzen is a 1981 chemical engineering graduate of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, a former employee of Shell Oil Company, and for the past 8 years a co-owner of KL Process Design Group, LLC located in Rapid City providing consultation in the oil, chemical, and biofuels industries.

In this age of information overload given to us by 24 hour cable news and easily accessible Internet, making sense of all the information we receive becomes increasingly difficult for us as individuals. If we chose to do the research, we would find contradictions in that aspirin is both good and bad for us, same thing with wine or beer, and most recently, that sun is bad for us because it causes skin cancer – no, wait. It’s now good for us because it’s our only significant source of vitamin D. Therefore I have the responsibility as an individual to continue sifting through all the data provided to make my informed decision. As the contradictions pertain to the ethanol production through fermentation of sugars from natural, domestic sources like starch from corn, cellulose from forest residue or agricultural waste to supplement our motor fuel needs, critics do surface and contradictions are mysteriously plentiful. Dr. Perry Rahn informs us in his Rapid City Journal article (Forum, June 4, 2005) that ethanol is not the answer to U.S. energy needs because 1) “ethanol may or may not be a net energy producer” 2) of “producer incentives” handed out to ethanol companies big and small, and 3) our nation’s voracious appetite for energy couldn’t be significantly supplemented with corn-based ethanol. Don Kopp (Letters to the Editor, June 16, 2005) jumps right in to support, but twists Dr. Rahn’s uncertainty of ethanol’s energy efficiency by emphatically stating that “it takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than we get in return!”

This article addresses Dr. Rahn’s first point regarding ethanol’s energy balance (points two and three will be addressed later). Dr. Rahn refers to a study done by Pimentel of Cornell University. Pimentel’s controversial research is where every critic of ethanol seems to end up referencing because his study is the only one of many others showing that “it takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than we get in return”, or in other words, a negative net energy balance. Why is Pimentel’s study the only one with negative results? Here is something every critic should know about Pimentel’s study - his study uses corn yield data from 1992 and ethanol plant energy efficiencies from 1979! If one chooses to criticize ethanol as a viable motor fuel, at least use data generated in this century. Over the past 30 years, ethanol plant energy consumptions have been reduced by more than 60%. Corn yields over the same period have increased over 50% due to improved farming practices like no-till farming and advances in hybrid seed development. A report by the Environment and Energy Study Institute (Washington, D.C.; Biofuels) provides a comprehensive overview that combines Pimentel’s research with five other groups, including the Argonne National Laboratory that Dr. Rahn referred to his article, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and other universities and independent institutes. The overview also includes a very detailed study provided by Shapouri, et al of the USDA (http://www.ethanol-gec.or/corn_eth.htm [1995]; http://www.usda.gov/oce/oepnu/aer-814.pdf [2001 update]). Result: ethanol “yields 34% more energy than it takes to produce it, including growing the corn, harvesting it, transporting it and distilling it into ethanol”. And if I were not to trust in data that someone else generated, I can refer to my own experience inside the ethanol production process. In an ethanol plant in located Sutherland, Nebraska (Midwest Renewable Energy) I was responsible for the plant process design, and I have intimate knowledge of and privileged access to plant data. This plant, one of the most energy efficient in the industry, consumes 20,200 BTU/gallon of ethanol in natural gas consumption (the plant does not dry its byproduct distiller’s grain), and another 12,400 BTU/gallon in electrical consumption based on converting coal to electricity (by the way, it takes 3 to 4 times more energy to produce electricity from fossil fuels than the energy the electricity provides to the end user.). The Midwest Renewable Energy plant, at a total of 32,600 BTU/gallon of ethanol, produces ethanol at a net positive energy gain of 44%, even without taking energy credit for valuable cattle feed byproducts produced by the plant. The distiller’s grain byproduct displaces one third of the corn used to feed cattle. This plant, like all other ethanol plants, consumes domestically produced natural gas or coal, not oil as Mr. Kopp suggests. At the Midwest Renewable Energy plant, natural gas from Douglas, Wyoming is used to run the process; coal also from Wyoming fires the electrical power plant located a few miles away. If we focus on our national energy security, the distinction of consuming domestic fuels is very important. Oil, of which over 60% is imported by our “friends” and enemies, is used mostly to produce gasoline, whereas domestic energy sources are used to produce ethanol and electricity.

In essence, an ethanol plant converts domestic gas and coal into a liquid fuel that can displace gasoline derived from foreign oil, extracting solar energy along the way. I’m sorry, I just don’t see the argument here. Ethanol can and should be the answer that helps provide the bridge to generating alternate energies that do not involve ‘burning things’. So in this sea of information and data that we swim in, we all have judgments and choices to make. With all the data available, I choose to use my education, vigor, and imagination to support the development of a domestic motor fuel that is truly renewable, potentially abundant, environmentally friendly, and economically produced while creating jobs. I am proud to fight terrorism in my own small way – one gallon at a time, for as long as it takes.