Pros and Cons of Ethanol Fuel and Wind Energy
Remember in high school when you would brush up on the Sparknotes of whatever chapter you were supposed to have read before class? Me neither! I always read the book. But if you did use Sparknotes, Cliff’s Notes, or some other variant, today’s article may look familiar. That’s because I’m introducing Neature Features - digestible versions of complicated science journal articles. I wanted to kick off this series with a topic I’m already comfortable with. So comfortable, in fact, that the journal article I’m dissecting is actually my own. Full disclosure: my article has not been published yet, but it’s working its way through the peer-review process that we talked about in the Good Science article. While I’m not an expert on this topic, I did get an A on a version of this article as a senior climatology term paper, so take that for what it’s worth.
A quick note about science journal articles: there are a couple types! Articles can either be written about a new discovery or experiment, or they can be a summary of all the research around a certain topic. The latter is called a review article, and that’s the type we’re jumping into today. So let’s get to it!
From Impacts of Ethanol Fuel and Wind Energy on Climate and Economy in the U.S. by Alessandra Papa
Basically, this article starts off talking about how the topic of energy has recently entered mainstream discussion, but that it’s often oversimplified.
“These broad ideas are simplified and discussed colloquially, leaving the complexities of the issues overlooked.”
It then says that even though some of the new energy sources being invented have a lot of positive aspects, they also have some negative ones that are equally as important. General intro stuff, kind of boring honestly.
Then we get into topic #1: Ethanol Fuel. Because it’s not realistic for everyone to stop driving cars, we should focus on ways to make cars more environmentally friendly. One method that’s been fairly popular is replacing some of the gas that we put into cars with ethanol, which is made from corn. This new mixture is called “gasohol” and even though it produces a few pollutants, studies show that it definitely reduces carbon emissions! Yay! Reducing carbon is awesome, and if everyone replaced gasoline with biofuels made from renewable sources, we could eventually get to the point where we in effect produce net-zero carbon emissions from our cars. Some scientists even say that if everyone used biofuels instead of fossil fuels we could actually lower the total overall level of carbon in the atmosphere because all the plants grown for fuel would eat up carbon during photosynthesis. Ethanol is sounding like it’s here to save the day. There is one qualifier: ethanol is actually less efficient than gasoline (and another name for efficiency is energy density). That means that it would take more gallons of ethanol than gasoline to move a car the same distance. Still, the photosynthesis of the corn grown to make ethanol eats up carbon and ethanol is a better option than gasoline, carbon-wise. So far, corn-based ethanol looks like an obvious solution.
But wait, there could be negative consequences of something that sounded good at first?? It turns out, yes. This is where the article dives further into energy density. Again, energy density basically means efficiency; if one fuel has a high energy density, it only takes a little bit of fuel to do a standard job. One the flip side, fuels or energy sources with low energy density need to use up more in order to do the same job. We start to run into problems because the low energy density of corn ethanol means that we’re going to need a lot more corn. The reason we’re not already replacing more gasoline with corn ethanol is that it takes a ton of land to grow a ton of corn. As much as Big Corn wishes they could just buy more land, it’s not that simple. Corn has special requirements in order to grow, and there are only certain parts of the country that meet those requirements. The corn belt in the Midwest is pretty much the only good place to grow corn. You can technically grown it in other places, but it would take way more work and money to grow the same amount. Imagine your dad trying to grow a palm tree in Colorado. It can be done, but it’s way more complicated and his palm trees usually die in the winter, whereas growing a palm tree in sunny California would be so much easier. That’s why a commercial amount of corn just has to come from the corn belt. So if corn farming is concentrated in one are, all the problems that come along with corn farming are also concentrated there. Can you guess it? There are some major problems with farming corn.
A huge problem is fertilizer. Corn fertilizer has a lot of nitrogen, which is pretty normal for fertilizer. However, all of the fertilizer doesn’t stay in the corn field. A lot of it gets carried into streams and rivers after it rains. The rivers in the corn belt are mostly part of the Mississippi Basin, which means they feed into the Mississippi River and then into the Gulf of Mexico. There’s no way to keep all the nitrogen in the fertilizer out of waterways. When all of the extra nitrogen inevitably hits the Gulf, it’s like an aphrodisiac to the algae who reproduce like crazy and form an “algal bloom.” The algae overshoot the water’s carrying capacity and then have a big dieoff, and their decomposition uses up all the oxygen in the water. (Check out this article on feedback loops if you need a refresher on overshoot and carrying capacity). Now there isn’t enough oxygen in the water for the fish, and thousands of fish, shellfish, and aquatic animals die. It’s a fairly common feedback loop that gets grossly exacerbated by human activities like commercial farming. Loads of dead fish are a problem for the seafood industry and tourist industry, not to mention the fish themselves.
The more corn we try to grow, the worse this problem gets in the Gulf.* By trying to do something good for the environment and cut down on carbon emissions, we actually create another big environmental problem. Essentially, shit’s complicated yo. Before we put all our eggs in the ethanol basket, we need to work out some major kinks.
Now we get to topic #2: Wind Energy. Right now, most of the electricity in America is produced using fossil fuels like coal and natural gas. Only about 6% of all electricity production in the country comes from wind power. Wind power produces waaay less carbon dioxide that fossil fuels, which is why environmentalists are so interested in it. Some cities have even vowed to buy 100% of their electricity from wind power. Even though producing energy from wind power is much more expensive than traditional fossil fuels, the difference in CO2 emissions is so vast that wind seems like a no-brainer.
What’s that, Scouts? You’re suspicious of something that seems too good to be true? You’re right on cue, because this is where the article gets into the nuts and bolts of wind energy production. We’ve talked about the lifecycle of products in this article about greener bathroom swaps, and the same principle applies when we produce energy. The lifecycle of a wind turbine is more complicated than just standing in a field and spinning in the breeze. When you add up the production of all the steel, maintenance, and decommissioning of the turbines, up to 200 metric TONS of CO2 are produced, PER TURBINE. And it’s not just CO2 - some other industrial pollutants get added to air and water in the production stage too. This long-term view is called a lifestyle assessment, and it’s a really great way to compare energy sources, but it can be pretty complicated to calculate. For example, one steel factory may be producing both wind turbines and steel beams for skyscrapers. When you measure the emissions of the factory, how do you know what’s coming from the turbine production and what’s from the beams?
And remember how some parts of the country are just better suited to growing corn? Similarly, there are parts of the country that can produce way more wind energy than others. There are 3 main electricity grids in the country, and wind production is not spread out evenly across them. There are also federal mandates that require every grid to use a certain amount of electricity that comes from renewable sources. That sounds great, but we quickly run into problems. Grid operators choose where to source their electricity from based on cost, and renewable energy costs more. The have to use a set amount of renewable energy, and then they get the rest of the electricity they need from the cheapest source. In some grids, it’s really easy to meet their renewable requirements in a cost-effective way because they have lots of wind power available. In other grids, it’s really hard to meet the requirements because they simply don’t have as much wind power. Since they are required to use a certain amount of wind energy even when it’s financially inadvisable, they’re even more excited to save money where they can. As you might have guessed, the best way to save money is to get energy from burning fossil fuels. So in some scenarios, requiring the use of renewable energy actually encourages the burning of more fossil fuels. This all means that no one blanket requirement is going to help the environment. We have to tailor policies differently to different locations if we really want to meet environmental goals.
Another problem with wind power: it’s fickle. It’s really difficult to predict exactly how hard wind is going to blow in a certain place and for how long. We don’t currently have any good ways of storing electricity, so grid operators have to find electricity to add to the grid in real-time. Electricity demand certainly has patterns but is always a little unpredictable, just like wind. Having 2 unknown variables makes things difficult for grid operators. What if the wind dies down at the same time that electricity demand is highest? Operators have to find another source of electricity ASAP. Coal plants can’t just be fired up at a moment’s notice; they take days to get running. One promising way to solve this problem is with natural gas: new natural gas generators can be turned on and running in just 5 minutes. The speed at which natural gas power plants can be turned on and off makes then very flexible and a great option to pair with wind energy. Of course, natural gas is still a fossil fuel, but it’s much better than coal.
The last problem this article discusses is the low energy density of wind. In the context of wind power, this means that a lot of physical space is needed to make wind power. One study expects that energy production in the U.S. is going to rise 27% by the year 2040, and federal standards will continue to require a certain percentage to come from renewable sources. That means that even more land is going to have to be devoted to wind farms. Even though the bases of wind turbines are pretty narrow, you can’t just pack a bunch of them side by side by side. They have to be spread out over dedicated land, and you can’t put just anything underneath them. All of this means that by the year 2040, this study predicts that a land area bigger than Texas will be newly affected by wind energy development. Wind energy production requires more land than any other form of energy production, and more wind energy will always equal more land needed.
The goal of this manuscript was to be realistic and encourage more research and innovation, not to make you bummed out and then aloof by pointing out problems left and right. The truth is that our current green technology is not perfect, or even close. But it’s an improvement! We can be proud of the improvements we’ve made while also have to look at them critically to get even better. When we’re armed with facts and have hope for the future, more people can get involved in finding solutions.
Takeaways:
Just because something is called “green” doesn’t make it perfect, or even good.
Meeting one goal (like lowered carbon emissions) may result in an unforeseen environmental consequence (like bagloads of dead fish).
Regulations that seem good at first are often more complicated than you think.
Instead of being discouraged by all of these negative aspects, we should be motivated to find better solutions. The more minds we have working together, the sooner we can come up with great alternatives for a sustainable future!
If you’re looking for a sassier op-ed on wind energy, check out I Never Understood Wind.
Lastly, I want to remind you that you have permission to participate in a system and work to change it at the same time. The people who invented lightbulbs worked by candlelight, and the people who invented cars rode carriages to work. We don’t have to feel guilty for consuming fossil fuels and imperfect renewables while we work toward the next generation of green. Continue to bring discussions like this into the real world and let’s keep working to leave the planet better than we found it. That’s it for today’s Neature Feature. I hope you found this article as fascinating as I did when writing it!
*my personal Big Corn conspiracy, which is definitely not part of my academic manuscript. This bit is for fun, and is obviously NOT part of the science or educational aspect of Troop7b. That all being said, join me with your wall of photos and red string:
The “Dead Zone” in the Gulf of Mexico is a well known and studied phenomenon. Wouldn’t you think that killing literally countless animals and harming major industries like fishing and tourism would get some major push back from the states around the Gulf? Why haven’t there been loud calls to end fertilizer runoff in the Mississippi Basin? Why is the government encouraging more corn to be grown through ethanol requirements when they know how bad the impacts can be? Don’t they know more ethanol isn’t a feasible solution? Consider this: the corn belt just so happens to cover a state that’s instrumental in national elections, Iowa. Any presidential hopeful has to perform well in the Iowa Caucus. You can bet Big Corn is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Iowa and candidates who publicly favor corn products like ethanol tend to do well there. Further, the second-largest privately owned company in America, Koch Industries, has recently invested hundreds of millions of dollars in ethanol production plants and other corn-related industries in the past few years (https://www.omaha.com/money/koch-industries-energy-arm-to-invest-million-in-nebraska-ethanol/article_93aa97b4-ddbe-11e6-b66b-574a0a15c14a.html, https://www.omaha.com/money/koch-industries-unit-s-million-investment-in-fixer-upper-beatrice/article_0630c9ee-11d1-5d13-8683-2a29e3bd4b02.html ). David Koch once ran for vice president and his platform included quotes like “we support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency” (https://www.sanders.senate.gov/koch-brothers ). And guess who the 8th biggest lobbying spender this year is in American politics? Oh, it’s Koch Industries (https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/koch-brothers-no-fans-trump-boost-lobbying-spending ). And despite the fact the proponents of ethanol have admitted that the industry has matured and no longer needs federal subsidies, corn ethanol producers receive a $6 BILLION tax credit every year and the government continues to mandate the use of corn ethanol (https://www.taxpayer.net/agriculture/updated-political-footprint-of-the-corn-ethanol-lobby/ ). What’s more: the government-appointed officials who are writing new federal policies on nutrition and health at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are former lobbyists paid directly by the Corn Refiners Association and the National Grocers Association. These government officials still take private meetings with their former lobby group employers to discuss federal nutrition guidelines (https://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-food-industry-shapes-dietary-guidelines-20190507-story.html , https://www.pogo.org/investigation/2018/08/the-snack-food-and-corn-syrup-lobbyist-shaping-trumps-dietary-guidelines-for-americans/ ). Anyway, what I’m saying is that Big Corn has all of America in its pocket and IT GOES ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
