Jane Powers on the ethanol solution.
The idea of powering one's car with a clean, renewable fuel certainly is seductive: pack away one's eco-guilt and motor off into a pollution-free, carbon-neutral sunset. If only things were that simple.
Ethanol, an alternative to petrol, can be distilled from corn, wheat, sugar cane, sugar beet and other crops. Ireland's modest ethanol yield is manufactured in Co Cork from whey, a by-product of processing cheese and other dairy items. It's a neat solution to disposing of what might otherwise be waste.
Yet there is a limit to the number of cars that can run on ethanol made from leftovers (at present there are only around 350 such vehicles in the country). Sooner or later, we'll be planting food crops to feed our cars. Which is not necessarily a bad thing: on a small scale the growing and processing of biofuels can benefit the local economy, bringing employment to farmers and workers.
Across the Atlantic however, large-scale ethanol production is putting food and fuel into competition. The United States is the largest corn producer in the world, with much of the crop grown for export. But the appetite for ethanol has led to a doubling of corn prices over the past year. Already Mexico City has seen street demonstrations protesting against a 60 per cent rise in the cost of tortillas, a staple of the Mexican diet. Soaring corn prices could push up prices for other grains, with disastrous effects.
Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington DC warns: "The stage is now set for direct competition for grain between the 800 million people who own automobiles, and the world's 2 billion poorest people."
Ethanol is presented as a clean fuel. In fact, tail pipe emissions are not significantly different from those of petrol (and in Ireland, none of the flexible fuel vehicles on sale are small: all have engines of 1.8 litres or over). The fuel's eco-friendly credentials are owing to the theory that the next crop of the raw material (corn, wheat, sugar beet etc) absorbs the emitted carbon dioxide when it is growing.
However, cultivation and processing releases CO2, and industrial agriculture relies on hydrocarbon-based fertilisers and pesticides, so the crop's green rewards are reduced. In some countries, moreover, there is considerable habitat destruction as virgin land is encroached upon by fuel plantations. The main benefit that accrues from biofuels is that they lessen dependence on Middle East oil, and provide a solution to the ever- looming problem of peak oil - but at a cost.
Those who are wary of biofuel's impact advocate that only truly sustainably sourced products are allowed: those that do not adversely affect habitats, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, soils, water, food security or human rights.