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The National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) is disputing a study conducted by Cornell University's David Pimentel and University of California, Berkeley, professor Tad Patzek that states ethanol has a net energy balance loss of 29%. That study has gained attention in recent days in a variety of media outlets. NCGA cites a different study showing that ethanol has a substantial net energy gain of at least 67%. Patzek and Pimentel included the cost of inputs for creating ethanol - right down to the diesel fuel used to power the tractors, and the natural gas used to create fertilizer. Their calculations say ethanol offers about 76,000 BTUs per gallon, but producing it from corn uses about 98,000 BTUs. They say corn-based ethanol requires 29% more fossil energy than the fuel produced. "Pimentel has been routinely discredited by a growing body of government and academic research, including studies by the Departments of Agriculture and Energy, the Colorado School of Mines, Michigan State University, Agri-Food Canada and others," NCGA said in a release today. NCGA President Leon Corzine called the Pimentel study "a last-ditch effort to derail the Congress' positive momentum toward an 8-billion-gallon renewable fuels standard." "This is the goal line stand by the opposition," he said, using a football analogy. "It's the fourth quarter and we're pushing the RFS over the goal line. Their goal line stand is very predictable." The Senate has passed an energy bill with a renewable fuel standard of 8 billion gallons by 2012. The House has yet to vote on its version of the bill. "It's abundantly clear that both corn ethanol and cellulose ethanol displace crude oil and save liquid fuels," NCGA cited Bruce Dale, professor of chemical engineering at Michigan State University as saying. "Dr. Pimentel's net energy argument is bogus. What counts is whether we can displace imported oil, and ethanol certainly does so." Corzine says nine other energy balance studies conducted since 1995 all found net energy gains of at least 25%. NCGA called into question the credibility of Pimentel and Patzek. Pimentel is an insect ecologist in the department of entomology at Cornell University. He is one of the scientists who in 2000 famously found that milkweed leaves dusted with heavy concentrations of Bt corn pollen were toxic to Monarch butterfly larvae. Tad W. Patzek is a civil and environmental engineer at the University of California at Berkeley. Corzine says Patzek was a longtime employee of Shell Oil Company and founder of the UC Oil Consortium, which has counted BP, Chevron USA, Mobil USA, Shell and Unocal among its members. He also is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. "I invite Dr. Pimentel to submit and publish his work in the International Journal of Life Cycle Analysis journal as we have done with our study on ethanol net energy," Corzine said. In June 2004, USDA updated its 2002 analysis of the issue and determined that the net energy balance of ethanol production is 1.67 to 1. For every 100 BTUs of energy used to make ethanol, 167 BTUs of ethanol is produced. In 2002, USDA had concluded that the ratio was 1.35 to 1. The USDA findings have been confirmed by additional studies conducted by the University of Nebraska and Argonne National Laboratory. Dale argues that researchers ought to be focusing on energy quality, rather than continuing to debate over BTUs lost or gained. "Every single energy conversion system we have - whether it is coal to make electricity, crude oil to make gasoline, solar cells to make electricity - they all have negative energy overall if you take everything into account. That's the laws of thermodynamics," Dale said. "But what we do is trade off a loss of energy quantity for increased energy quality. We can't light our homes with coal, so we lose some energy in coal to make the remaining energy more useful as electricity. Likewise we convert corn, using natural gas and coal, to make a valuable liquid fuel, ethanol, which clearly reduces our need for imported oil." In a release earlier this month from Cornell University, Pimentel stated, "Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation's energy security, its agriculture, economy or the environment. Ethanol production requires large fossil energy input, and therefore, it is contributing to oil and natural gas imports and US deficits." He further argued he thinks the country should instead focus its efforts on producing electrical energy from photovoltaic cells, wind power and burning biomass and producing fuel from hydrogen conversion.
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