More ethanol to be added to gasoline
Sunday, August 5, 2007
California regulators have decided to greatly expand the amount of ethanol blended into our gasoline as a way to fight global warming.
Unfortunately, we don't make much of it. And the type of ethanol California uses - most of it made from corn and imported from the Midwest - has serious drawbacks as a weapon against climate change.
The great boom in ethanol plant construction that swept the nation's farm belt in recent years has barely touched the Golden State. Biorefineries here make only 8.6 percent of all the ethanol California uses. Other states supply the rest, shipped by rail over the Sierra or through the Southern California desert.
The California Air Resources Board this summer decided to raise the amount of ethanol that oil companies can blend into the gasoline they sell here. By 2013 - after the new rules kick in - California's ethanol use is expected to jump more than 78 percent, to 1.7 billion gallons per year.
Ethanol companies will likely build more biorefineries in California to feed that fast-growing market. California has four already, with three more under construction. But the state will still have to import most of its ethanol from elsewhere, much like it already imports oil, gasoline and natural gas.
That doesn't worry many energy experts. So many ethanol plants have been built across the Midwest that California should have ample supplies at reasonable prices, they say.
But here's the rub - importing ethanol into California makes it less useful as a tool to cut greenhouse gas emissions, because the diesel-powered trains and trucks that bring it here belch carbon dioxide. All the same, many experts consider it preferable to relying solely on oil.
"Its problems pale in significance to the problem of dependence on petroleum from the other side of the globe, and dangerous places on the other side of the globe," said James Boyd, vice chairman of the California Energy Commission. "I don't think of the Midwest as dangerous."
The United States had 110 biorefineries in 2006, producing 4.9 billion gallons of ethanol, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol industry trade group. Some 73 more plants were under construction by year's end, capable of adding another 6 billion gallons to the country's supply.
Although many Californians don't realize it, they're already driving on ethanol. Gasoline sold in the state contains about 6 percent ethanol, used to help the fuel burn more completely.
Starting in 2010, that portion will increase to about 10 percent, under rules the Air Resources Board adopted in June.
For the companies that make ethanol, the new rules look like an opportunity.
Pacific Ethanol Inc. runs the state's largest ethanol biorefinery, a plant in Madera, near Fresno, that can churn out 40 million gallons per year. The Sacramento company, co-founded by former California Secretary of State Bill Jones, also markets ethanol made by the state's second-largest biorefinery, which produces 31.5 million gallons per year in Goshen (Tulare County).
New Pacific Ethanol plants are under construction in Stockton and Calipatria (Imperial County), which is near the Mexican border. Both will make 50 million gallons of fuel per year.
"It is critically important to have other sources of new fuel, and that's what ethanol represents," said Neil Koehler, the company's chief executive officer. He says that increased use of ethanol could help stabilize California's volatile gasoline prices, because a higher percentage of the gasoline in drivers' tanks will come from a different raw material than petroleum.
"Diversity is a good thing, in terms of price," he said.
That's still a matter of dispute. Past changes to the state's gasoline blend have been responsible for giving California some of the highest pump prices in the country. In addition, a spike in ethanol prices last summer helped push up gasoline prices across the country. The biofuel, in other words, has its own price swings.
There's also disagreement about the kind of ethanol California uses.
Most of it is made from corn, the most common raw material for ethanol made in the United States. Many experts argue that corn-based ethanol has significant drawbacks. Some studies show that corn ethanol takes almost as much energy to produce as it provides as a fuel.
Shipped from the Midwest, it also may not be the most effective weapon against climate change. A recent study for the California Energy Commission looked at the greenhouse gas emissions that come from growing corn in the Midwest, turning it into ethanol and shipping the finished product to California.
With all those factors considered, corn ethanol still produced fewer greenhouse gases than gasoline, but not by much. And if the biorefinery that made the ethanol drew its electricity from a coal-fired power plant, it actually produced more greenhouse gas emissions than regular gasoline.
As a result, many environmentalists and state officials view corn ethanol as a transitional fuel.
They hope it will soon be replaced by cellulosic ethanol. Distilled from a wide variety of plants - including crop waste or switch grass - cellulosic ethanol produces fewer greenhouse gases than corn ethanol. No one has perfected a way to make mass quantities at commercially viable prices, although many researchers and entrepreneurs are trying.
"Cellulosic (ethanol) is going to be happening faster than people think," said Carl Zichella, regional director for the Sierra Club in California. "A lot of the technology exists, but it hasn't been scaled up to commercial size. That's an investment problem, not a technology problem."
Pacific Ethanol is working with several partners to develop cellulosic ethanol. But for now, it relies on corn. The company imports grain, but Koehler expects more California farmers to start growing corn as ethanol production climbs. It's already happening, he said.
"We've seen a huge increase in the amount of corn acreage in the country, and in California, very much so," he said.
That raises its own problems, since land devoted to growing fuel isn't growing food.
"It's a really tough issue, because you're going to have to plant those food crops somewhere," said Patricia Monahan, deputy director of the Clean Vehicles Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/05/BUDKRBMBJ1.DTL
This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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