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“Ethanol is the fuel of a clean-air future”
by Dr. J. Winston Porter
(As published in the Rockford Register Star, 8/26/01)

President Bush's recent refusal to exempt California from a federal air quality rule requiring clean-burning gasoline additives will impact many other states, including Illinois. The California exemption request came from Governor Gray Davis, who has banned the use of MTBE, a petroleum-based “oxygenate” which turned out to pollute water supplies.

Last week, Governor George Ryan also signed a bill that will ban MTBE from Illinois starting in 2004.

MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether, is required by the Clean Air Act in areas with bad smog problems. Ethanol, a clean-burning additive largely derived from corn, is the heir apparent to meet federal air-quality requirements in Illinois and elsewhere.

This new role for ethanol is great news for Illinois and other Midwestern states. Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska are the nation’s top three corn-growing states and Illinois leads the country in producing ethanol.

It is also good news for the entire country since ethanol is a renewable energy source and, because it is homegrown by American farmers, it helps reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources. Thanks to advances in agricultural biotechnology, it will also conserve energy used in farming.

But some critics, particularly in California and the Northeast, have voiced concern that switching to ethanol will increase the price of gasoline about six cents per gallon. However, let's put this increase, which may or may not occur, in perspective. First, a few cents is small change compared to some of the gasoline increases induced by foreign oil producers, including anti-American adversaries such as Saddam Hussein. In addition, federal and state taxes on gasoline add about 47 cents to each gallon of gas in, for example, California and New York. Politicians should take a look at such taxes before complaining about a possible six-cent increase for cleaner-burning gasoline.

Actually, ethanol production costs have decreased steadily over the past decade and are now less than a dollar a gallon, thanks largely to increasing farmer productivity and biotechnology improvements in the corn fermentation process. In addition, higher corn yields through biotechnology are helping reduce ethanol costs while increasing supplies.

Others have questioned the availability of ethanol as well as its transportation from the Midwest to the rest of the country. But ethanol production is booming, with numerous corn grower co-ops and private companies planning many new ethanol-from-corn plants in the Midwest. Production capacity is up from 800 million gallons in 1990 to 1.8 billion in 2001, and is expected to reach 2.5 billion gallons in 2003.

As for transportation, ethanol can be readily moved from the Midwest to the rest of the country via trucks and barges as well as large-unit trains that are already transporting it to Arizona, Portland, Ore., and Las Vegas.

Finally, President Bush has been criticized for not relying enough on energy conservation in his national energy planning. His support for ethanol is an important step in the conservation direction. Modern biotechnology has modified corn, as well as other potential sources of “biofuels” such as soybeans, so that they require much less chemical pesticide. This means less fuel for the crop-duster planes and tractors which apply these pesticides.

The future looks bright also. Seed companies will soon be able to modify corn plants to yield more high quality ethanol per bushel of corn and advances in biotechnology will allow the extraction of ethanol from waste products, including sawdust, corn stalks, rice hulls, and yard clippings.

With ethanol and other biofuels, the nation will be able to rely on a growing supply (literally) of domestic energy that is good for the environment and creates more American jobs in the process. Not a bad deal.

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Dr. Porter is president of the Waste Policy Center in Leesburg, VA, and was formerly an assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.