Ethanol Goes to Court in Cali

  • California regulators want car fuels to come from sources that create fewer greenhouse gas emissions. That means corn-based ethanol will soon get a kind of penalty in California's fuel market. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

The US government is steadily
increasing the amount of ethanol
used in our gasoline supply.
But Shawn Allee reports
that effort’s hit a roadblock
in the country’s largest gasoline
market:

Transcript

The US government is steadily
increasing the amount of ethanol
used in our gasoline supply.
But Shawn Allee reports
that effort’s hit a roadblock
in the country’s largest gasoline
market:

California regulators want car fuels to come from sources that create fewer greenhouse gas emissions. That means corn-based ethanol will soon get a kind of penalty in California’s fuel market.

Environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council say ethanol should be at a disadvantage. The NRDC’s Roland Hwang says when we grow corn for fuel, farmers overseas plant more corn.

“Someone’s going to cut down a rain forest or convert pasture land or grass land to grow more food. Unfortunately, converting that land will lead to very dramatic increases in global warming pollution.”

Hwang wants the ethanol industry to stop using food crops for fuel.

Ethanol makers are not taking California’s rules sitting down, though; they’ve gone to court. They argue more lenient federal rules on ethanol should trump California’s.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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The Future of Corn

  • Scientists say this research could allow us to breed new corn varieties faster than ever before. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress)

You might think you know corn –
as in corn tortillas, corn-flakes,
corn-bread and so on. But do you
really know corn? Like, did you
know that our last harvest could
be one of our biggest, or that most
American corn is genetically modified?
Shawn Allee reports experts
want us to get re-acquainted with
our biggest crop because we need
to make huge decisions about its
future:

Transcript

You might think you know corn –
as in corn tortillas, corn-flakes,
corn-bread and so on. But do you
really know corn? Like, did you
know that our last harvest could
be one of our biggest, or that most
American corn is genetically modified?
Shawn Allee reports experts
want us to get re-acquainted with
our biggest crop because we need
to make huge decisions about its
future:

Virginia Walbot researches corn genetics at Stanford University, and recently she got news that didn’t just make her day – it kinda made her decade. Walbot says scientists just finished sequencing genes of an important corn genome.

“The genes are like the words in different languages and what you need is a dictionary that lists all those words, and that dictionary for us, is the genome sequence.“

Walbot says this research could allow us to breed new corn varieties faster than ever before. That’s a big deal because even though we benefit from corn we have now, we could make it better. For example, corn creates environmental problems – take corn fertilizer.

“Of course, adding fertilizer really boosts a lot of yield, but the downstream effects aren’t really great. So, there’s runoff from farms that contaminates the water supply. Making corn as efficient as possible and just giving enough fertilizer to sustain yields, those would be fantastic goals.“

Now, most corn researchers want to meet environmental goals, but there’s a question science alone can’t answer – what kinds of corn should we grow or improve?

Kinds of corn? Maybe you’re thinkin’ “corn chips” versus “popcorn” but there’re bigger differences. We eat sweet corn – most corn’s starchy industrial stuff.

“I think that’s one thing consumers get confused about. Today, only one percent of corn production goes into sweet corn.“

That’s Pam Johnson. She’s with the National Corn Growers Association. Johnson says about half our corn goes to animal feed, then we eat the meat or dairy products from that.

But a lot goes to industrial products, too. Ethanol uses more than a third of the corn in the American corn market.

Johnson says corn farmers want scientists to create specialty industrial corn that can fetch premium prices – like corn just for ethanol or corn just for renewable, corn-based plastic.

“You know, we’ve always said for a long time that anything that’s made from petroleum might be able to be made from a renewable and I think that’s an exciting thing to ponder as a corn grower.“

Johnson predicts new genetic science will also improve corn we eat directly, but is that likely to happen?

“I have my doubts.“

That’s Rainer Bussman. He’s with The Missouri Botanical Garden, and he studies how people use plants.

“Feeding people is less economic incentive than producing large amounts of corn for animal feed or biofuels, so I do have my doubts there.“

Bussman says it’s a shame food varieties of corn will get less attention from genetic research. He says he worries about food security. He figures if we grow more types of food corn we’ll be better protected from crop diseases.

It’s also a matter of taste, though. Bussman’s traveled the world and tasted corn we don’t grow here – like a blue kind in South America.

“They would call that maize murada which means purple corn and that is mostly used to produce a very refreshing, sweet beverage, so you get this get this deeply purple, sugary drink. It’s all natural, no sugar added.“

Bussman says Native Americans and the earliest settlers produced hundreds of varieties of corn for all kinds of food dishes – corn for just pudding, just bread, just porridge, and so on. They created this food diversity without modern genetic science, but we do have it.

Bussman asks why should our science just improve animal feed, ethanol, and bio-plastic? Why not make food our priority, too?

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Small Supply of Green Fuel

  • The smaller supply of cellulosic ethanol might mean the country uses less efficient ethanol from corn, or keeps using more gasoline. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Cellulosic ethanol is supposed to
be a green fuel for cars – greener
than conventional ethanol made from
corn. The government wanted industry
to create loads of cellulosic ethanol
next year. Shawn Allee reports
industry might provide just a trickle:

Transcript

Cellulosic ethanol is supposed to
be a green fuel for cars – greener
than conventional ethanol made from
corn. The government wanted industry
to create loads of cellulosic ethanol
next year. Shawn Allee reports
industry might provide just a trickle:

The fuel industry’s supposed to create 100 million gallons of cellulosic-ethanol next
year. But industry leaders say they might create just 12 million gallons.

Wes Bolsen is with Coskata. His company can create ethanol from wood chips and even
household trash. Bolsen says companies like his found some investment money – but the
financial crisis created delays.

“We’re building refineries – 300, 400 million dollar assets and that’s a lot of money
to come together. We’re two years delayed, the whole industry. We can’t open them
in 2010. Facilities will start opening in 2012.”

The federal government might have to shift mandates for cellulosic ethanol into the
future.

That could mean the country uses less efficient ethanol from corn, or keeps using more
gasoline.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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The Attractiveness of Ethanol

  • The government will soon decide whether to allow increasing the mix from the current 10% blend to as high as a 15% blend. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Cheap oil makes switching to alternative
fuels such as ethanol less attractive.
Lester Graham reports that could affect
an upcoming decision about using more
ethanol:

Transcript

Cheap oil makes switching to alternative
fuels such as ethanol less attractive.
Lester Graham reports that could affect
an upcoming decision about using more
ethanol:

Crude oil prices spiked a little because of Iran’s long-range missile testing and revelations of a secret nuclear facility.

But analysts think for the next several months we’ll actually see oil prices go down – maybe to around $30 a barrel, less than half of what it is now.

And that could hurt demand for fuels such as ethanol.

But the government has mandated the nation produce more ethanol.

Dan Flynn is an analyst with the trading firm, Alaron.

“Obviously the government definitely wants to push this through. However, the price of crude oil and gasoline, if that goes down, generally people look not to look for alternative sources of energy.”

One way to use more ethanol is to mix higher amounts with gasoline.

The government will soon decide whether to allow increasing the mix from the current 10% blend to as high as a 15% blend.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Sampling a New Crop: Sugar Corn

  • Todd Krone researches corn for Targeted Growth, a bio-energy company. Targeted Growth is tweaking corn genetics to produce 'Sugarcorn,' a variety with high amounts of sugar and biomass. The hope is the plants can be converted into ethanol cheaply. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

The federal government wants more
and more ethanol in our fuel supplies,
but it worries about how its made.
Most American ethanol is made from
corn kernels. That’s inefficient
and it makes the ethanol and food
industries compete for corn. The
government’s mandating we start making
ethanol out of things other than corn
kernels. Shawn Allee looks
at one effort to meet that mandate:

Transcript

The federal government wants more
and more ethanol in our fuel supplies,
but it worries about how its made.
Most American ethanol is made from
corn kernels. That’s inefficient
and it makes the ethanol and food
industries compete for corn. The
government’s mandating we start making
ethanol out of things other than corn
kernels. Shawn Allee looks
at one effort to meet that mandate:

I’m just outside an ethanol plant in central Indiana and its pretty much like most ethanol
plants. There’re a lot of semi-trucks going by and they’re loaded with yellow corn kernels.


Most ethanol plants grind corn kernels for starch, they let that starch turn into sugar, then
they brew the sugary juice into ethanol. Now, this whole process would be easier and
cheaper if we could make ethanol directly from sugary plants instead of starchy grain
kernels like corn.


Pretty quick here, I’m gonna meet a guy who’s trying to make corn a plant that’s easy to
grow in the Midwest but produces sweet juice – not starchy corn kernels.

“If you walk over here, these are our sugar corn hybrids.”

I’m with Todd Krone. He’s a researcher with a company called Targeted Growth. He walks me
through a test plot of a plant nicknamed ‘Sugarcorn.’ He pulls off a ear of corn and pulls back the
leaves.

(sound of leaves being pulled back)

The ear is almost bare.

Allee: “There’re just a few stray kernels developing, very few.”

Krone: “Yep. A few got through.”

Krone says this plant avoids making corn kernels. Instead, it puts energy and sugar into the
stalk. He can prove it with a taste test – right here in field.

He snips a piece of stalk.

(sound of snipping)

And pulls out a little press.

Krone: “You squeeze some of the juice to see how much sugar’s there. It’s up to you, if
you like, you could put on on your finger and taste. Is there sweetness?”

Allee: “Yeah, it’s definitely sweet. It’s definitely got a sweet tinge to it.”

Krone: “It might be a bit sweeter than pop might be.”

Krone says tests show Sugarcorn juice is as sweet as juice from sugar cane. He says this means
America could have a new plant that boosts ethanol production – but doesn’t compete with food,
and uses equipment farmers already have.

Krone: “For the farmer, not much changes until harvest when some logistics still need to
be worked out.”

Allee: “Obviously if you’re selling a lot of this corn, you’d be making a good deal of profit,
hopefully, what’s in it for the rest of us in terms of the success or failure of this, for drivers
and everybody else?”

Krone: “I would say, hopefully, it results in cheaper ethanol that can compete with cheap
oil. And then meeting that mandate to get more and more ethanol produced.”

Well, that’s the idea, but Targeted Growth would have to change more than just corn plants to
succeed. They’de have to change how at least some ethanol companies do business. And some
ethanol companies have some tough questions about it.

“How could you handle sugarcorn? How would you store it?”

This is Jeff Harts. He works at Central Indiana Ethanol. Harts says he likes the idea of using
sweet corn juice to make ethanol – it could be efficient. But he worries about getting enough to
run an expensive operation like his. He has no problem finding corn kernels.

“It’s a consistent flow of corn and we need that consistent flow to keep going. That’s why
we have storage, the farmers have storage. That’s why we have a local grain elevator
network to ship corn to us to keep that flow steady 12 months out of the year.”

Harts’ company might be a bit reluctant to change right away, but ethanol producers will have
find alternatives to the corn kernel. The government is capping how much ethanol can come
from corn starch.

As those requirements phase in, alternatives like Sugarcorn might look sweeter than they do
now.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Chairman Criticizes Climate Change Bill

  • Chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, Collin C. Peterson from Minnesota (Photo courtesy of the House Committee on Agriculture)

A dispute about bio-fuels could put passage of a climate change bill at risk. Lester Graham reports corn ethanol is at the center of a dispute among some Democrats:

Transcript

A dispute about bio-fuels could put passage of a climate change bill at risk. Lester Graham reports corn ethanol is at the center of a dispute among some Democrats:

Conventional wisdom in Washington these days is: it’s not a good idea to use food for fuel, so corn ethanol should be replaced by cellulosic ethanol – made from crops such as switchgrass.

The chairman of the Ag Committee, Democrat Collin Peterson, believes the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress are putting rules and legislation in place to put corn ethanol at a disadvantage to cellulosic ethanol.

He says they’re forcing changes on corn ethanol makers and farmers that could ruin the future of the bio-fuels industry.

“They are setting this up to guarantee there will never be second-generation ethanol or bio-diesel.”

Congressman Peterson says the Climate Change bill is just more of the same. He says he won’t vote for it and he doesn’t think any of the 46 members of the House Agriculture committee will either.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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