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Focus on corn/ethanol fuels critic
Use of crop not answer to foreign oil, expert says
Thursday, March 22, 2007
John Funk
Plain Dealer Reporter
The rush to turn corn into ethanol has driven up grain prices and will soon drive up grocery bills here. But it won't solve the nation's dependence on foreign oil, said a respected, longtime environmentalist in a new report Wednesday.
Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, argues that better solutions are a 20 percent increase in U.S. fuel-efficiency requirements, development of plug-in hybrid vehicles and growth of wind energy.
His proposal comes as Congress takes its first steps toward mandating reductions in greenhouse gases, increasing automotive fuel-economy standards and promoting wind and other renewable sources of energy.


In a teleconference with reporters, Brown said he finds it "fascinating" that federal policy makers cannot see the food problems that corn-based ethanol will create.
Corn contracts on the Chicago Board of Trade closed Wednesday at about $4.10 per bushel, up from about $2.60 a year ago.
Brown argues that the increase is caused by the increasing use of corn to make ethanol. Rising prices already have led to protests in Mexico, where the government imposed price controls on tortillas after consumer costs of that staple increased 60 percent.
Because corn is also a feedstock, the increase has a ripple effect.
Brown said wholesale prices of chicken across the nation are predicted to be 10 percent higher on average this year than last, eggs 21 percent higher and milk 14 percent more.
At the present rate of construction of new ethanol refineries, one-third of the U.S. corn crop will go to ethanol in 2008 -- up from about 16 percent last year, he said.
And President Bush's goal to push ethanol production to 35 billion gallons per year by 2017 would take the entire U.S. corn crop, Brown said.

There are plans to make ethanol from sources such as wood chips and grasses, but that technology will not be ready in time, he argued.
"What was the world's breadbasket is becoming the U.S. fuel tank," Brown said. "How the world will react [if charities can no longer afford to feed poor nations] is not clear. . . . Economists say the market will sort it out. The question is what will be the social and political costs? How will rising food prices affect political stability and add to the list of failed and failing states?"
Against that, Brown endorses Plug-in Partners, a national grassroots group of engineers, organizations and businesses that endorses so-called plug-in hybrid vehicles as a strategy to move away from oil dependence. The group's members already have pledged to buy 8,000 plug-ins - electric vehicles that can be recharged from ordinary outlets - if one of the carmakers would just start producing them.
Chrysler is testing a fleet of 50 vans, while General Motors and Toyota have built
prototypes. Making the cars affordable is the challenge because of the high cost of batteries, say analysts.
After charging overnight in a consumer's garage, the cost to drive such a car to work and back would be the equivalent of less than $1 per gallon of gas, Brown said - even in states with the highest electric rates. Today's fleet of more than 200 million cars in the United States could be replaced in about a decade, he said.
Paralleling that development is the staggering growth in wind-driven power generation - already about 30 percent a year. For example, the state of Texas, two utilities and eight wind-generating companies are proposing a set of wind farms producing 7,000 megawatts, he said. That's as much power as seven big nuclear reactors.
That should be a national model, Brown said. "If we [as a nation] at some time invest in wind farms, then we would be running our cars on wind."
Plain Dealer reporter Robert Schoenberger contributed to this story.
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