BioFuels Journal

By Susan Reidy, BioFuels Journal editor

Ethanol industry leaders say the latest study by David Pimentel claiming ethanol takes more energy to produce than it creates is outrageous and point to countless other studies that find just the opposite.

“This new study by Pimentel and Tad Patzek is just the latest regurgitation of Pimentel’s research from 1979,” said Ron Lamberty, vice president/market development, American Coalition for Ethanol.

“It is an amazing routine of mathematical gymnastics to prove a political point, one that is no longer true.”

Pimentel, a professor at Cornell University and Patzek, who is with the University of California, Berkeley, said it takes 29% more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel created.

For switch grass and wood, they said it takes 45% and 57% more energy.

ACE and the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) point out that Patzek’s opinion is far from unbiased.

He is the director of the university’s Oil Consortium, which receives funding from the oil industry including Chevron and Phillips Petroleum.

Patzek also worked for more than a decade for Shell Oil Company as a research, consultant, and expert witness.

“Tad Patzek is not a disinterested third party in this debate,” Lamberty said.

“It shouldn’t be shocking that someone with such a background in the oil industry would come out opposed to ethanol, a viable oil alternative.”

RFA points to several recent studies that have shown the positive energy balance of ethanol.

>A 2004 life-cycle analysis by the U.S. Department of Agriculture concluded that ethanol producers 167% of the fossil energy that is used to grow, harvest, and refine the grain and transport the ethanol to gasoline terminals for distribution.

>According to the U.S. Department of Energy, ethanol produced from biomass generates 13.2 Btu for every Btu of fossil energy consumed. The production of reformulated gasoline without ethanol generates only 0.79 Btu for every Btu of fossil energy consumed.

Studies using old data, the RFA said, overestimate energy use by not taking into account efficiency gains in agriculture, fertilizer production, ethanol production, and in the transportation sector.

“Any objective analysis of ethanol’s energy balance equation done in the last 20 years will verify that ethanol contains much more energy than what is used to produce it,” said ACE Executive Vice President Brian Jennings.

“The re-release of Pimentel’s antiquated study is a misleading effort by foreign oil apologists to derail important ethanol legislation working its way through Congress.”

See Related Websites/Articles:

• American Coalition for Ethanol
• Renewable Fuels Association

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