All Biofuels Are Not The Same
Last month the Wall Street Journal accused me of advocating subsidies for food-based ethanol. I ought to "take a vow of embarrassed silence," it said, for claiming that ethanol's contribution to the food crisis is "overblown." The Journal's claims would be laughable if the stakes were not so high.</br></br>Cellulosic biofuels offer a chance to have an environmentally meaningful impact on petroleum use while benefiting farmers, entrepreneurs and consumers. I have many investments in biofuels companies. Some say I believe in biofuels because I have invested in them. The truth is that I invest in biofuels because I believe they can help our environment, economy and national security.</br></br>Just as the word "drug" can refer to aspirin or cocaine, "biofuel" refers to a variety of products that vary dramatically in their environmental impact and effects on food prices. For instance, biodiesel from food oils such as soybean or palm oil has traditionally created environmental negatives. But corn ethanol has been a stepping stone to cellulosic ethanol, a preferred alternative that is likely to achieve unsubsidized market competitiveness with oil within a few years.</br></br>We face an energy crisis, an environmental crisis and a terrorism crisis all related to oil. High-cost options to reduce consumption, such as hybrid and electric cars, sound good but are unlikely to materially reduce carbon emissions. To have a meaningful impact, at least half of the next billion cars manufactured on this planet must be low-carbon. The only cost-effective option (measured in cost per ton of carbon emissions avoided or grams of carbon emissions per mile driven) likely to achieve broad market acceptance in the next 20 years is cellulosic-fuel cars.</br></br>Unfortunately, biofuels are the target of interested parties' paid campaigns. The Grocery Manufacturers Association, for example, is waging a multimillion-dollar campaign against ethanol; the American Petroleum Institute is more concerned about food prices than oil prices. Slogans about how much corn and water are required to produce a gallon of ethanol are repeated frequently. In fact, a 16-ounce steak takes about the same amount of corn and more water. Should we ban steaks, too? Similarly, hybrid cars are hyped, but we seldom hear that they reduce carbon emissions about as much as corn ethanol, and at a cost that is substantially higher than flex-fuel cars.