Summer’s coming, and if it’s anything like last year (all indicators are flashing a bright red "yes"), costs at the pump will at least breach $3.50 per gallon.
If that’s not upsetting, mix in the fact that there’s a solution to offset these rising energy costs that hasn’t been implemented.
University of Minnesota professor G. David Tilman specializes in biofuels. At a recent Minnesota conference, he talked about the role biofuels must play in our society.
When ethanol was considered as a fuel source in the 1970s, its production costs arguably outweighed its environmental benefits.
But technology has evolved. Energy demands (and costs) have skyrocketed. Tilman says that ethanol’s potential is the elephant in the room.
Ethanol’s commonly made from corn or sugar. Tilman says that in order to make ethanol a viable energy source, biologically diverse prairie plants should be used instead. Native prairie plants produce are a self-sustaining, self-renewing energy source (remember the hope cold fusion gave Russians in the movie "The Saint"?).
And Wisconsin is just the state to create a landmark in energy production. After all, it has about 8,000 acres of prairie by the Department of Natural Resource’s estimate.
A new study by Ethanol Producer Magazine lists Wisconsin as the seventh largest producer of ethanol.
The problem, Tilman says, is that the fossil fuel energy required to produce one gallon of corn ethanol only yields 20 percent new energy. For soy bean biodiesel, the new energy yield is only slightly better at 48 percent. And the energy expelled to create those marginal numbers contaminates the air.
Using prairie plants, however, furnishes a 190 percent new energy gain, he says.
By my math, prairie produced ethanol garners nearly 10 times more fuel than corn ethanol.
And as an added incentive, it’s substantially better for the environment.
Currently, 17 percent of the U.S. corn yield is converted into ethanol. There are 77 biodiesel plants currently under construction and eight more being upgraded to increase their capacity by Tilman’s count.
And it doesn’t stop there. He predicts there will be a big burst in the production of biodiesel – and that could mean huge economic opportunities for Wisconsin.
Let’s postulate: say we used all 70 million acres of the U.S. corn crop, the volume of ethanol would only displace 12 percent of the energy we currently burn as gasoline, Tilman says. Multiply that 12 percent by the 20 percent gain in energy from using ethanol, and you’re only left with 2.5 percent new energy for society.
Using soybean biodiesel in the same way would only meet 3 percent of our energy demands.
Even if we wanted to grow enough corn to make enough ethanol to entirely offset our gasoline usage, we’d need 570 million fertile acres – fertile acres we don’t have.
The reality is that 80 percent of that would-be energy would stem from dangerously limited fossil fuels anyway, which contribute to a massive amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (which is why Wisconsin has random 80 degree days in March).
Now here’s where Tilman’s solution comes in. Consider that all of the earth’s plants have twice as much carbon in them as in the atmosphere. In fact, 40 percent of the dry weight in a plant is carbon. That carbon is taken from the air and converted into the sugars and proteins a plant needs to survive. In turn, the soils are made richer in carbon as well.
And this process is cyclical. These prairie plants first remove the carbon dioxide they contribute to the air when burned for fuel and actually also remove additional carbon dioxide that has carbon stored in soil, Tilman says.
The big picture numbers are scary.
In the last 35 years, global food production and consumption doubled. If the indicators are correct, by 2050, earth will harbor 9 billion people. Keep in mind that it takes three to eight pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat and that to feed 9 billion mouths we’ll again be doubling food production in the next 40 years.
The dilemma we face is trying to use land to produce the food we want to eat and wanting to convert corn into biofuel.
To have enough land to produce the food we’ll need, we’ll need 2.5 billion more acres of land globally, which doesn’t leave any room for biofuels.
So Tilman’s almost obvious answer is in the nutrient-depleted land and degraded land which biologically diverse prairie plants thrive on. Using these plants as biomass fuel would help solve our problem.
Remember the rush for pellet stoves in order to be greener? These stoves burn off of a pellet of biomass the size of aspirin.
Another way to use prairie biomass, Tilman says, is to heat it, which breaks it down into hydrogen and carbon monoxide, two gasses that when run through a jet engine turbine create electricity.
And the prairie can be renewably harvested year after year. Each acre stores 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide per year in areas of biodiversity, Tilman says. The net effect is if you grow prairie plants on degraded soil, burn them as an energy source, and you have less carbon dioxide in air then when you started. Fertile lands for cash crops are still around. And we’ve made significant strides toward solving our energy crisis.
Bradley Wooten is the editorial intern at Small Business Times.
