Super Eco

Photo credit: sarah gilbert

The California Air Resources Board (CARB), a governmental agency and part of the California EPA, is about to announce that the corn ethanol math just doesn't make sense. Months (and years in some cases) after mainstream media outlets have declared that it might actually take more than one gallon of petroleum to produce one gallon of supposedly environmentally-friendly ethanol fuel; and in the best-case scenario, roughly 1.34 BTUs of energy are produced using 1.00 BTUs of input (and all of the corn America grows, if converted to ethanol, would only replace 12% of gasoline usage); California regulators are ready to state that the biofuel cannot help California reduce global warming.

A California law requires a severe decrease in carbon emissions from transportation fuels, and the CARB must assess the climate change impact of various fuels in order to make a determination about which alternatives to encourage. But according to a board spokesperson, the conversion of rainforests and other important ecosystems to cornfields; the only way to produce sufficient quantities of ethanol; has to be counted toward the fuel's emissions. And the math doesn't compute.

Biofuel researchers and other ethanol supporters are (of course) shocked, claiming that California's "science is extremely uncertain" even though they support the low carbon fuel standard—which ethanol industry types had hoped would further increase demand for their product. Cellulosic ethanol didn't get such bad reviews, though, and could be a viable alternative; but it's currently not cost-effective, and ethanol proponents say we need corn as a "bridge" to the cellulosic end of the rainbow. California doesn't seem sympathetic.

Big Corn, say critics of the industry, could be about to get its much-deserved comeuppance.