A Corny Strategy

The House just passed a $14.5 billion energy bill, the main goal of which is apparently to send billions of dollars in tax breaks to energy companies but not really do anything to solve our nation's growing energy problems.

The insanely poor thinking in this bill would take too long to go over in detail. It doesn't reduce our oil dependence and it doesn't look for ways to reduce demand. Here's an overview from the Globe story:

Of the bill's $14.5 billion in tax breaks and incentives over 10 years, nearly $9 billion is earmarked for oil and gas, electricity and coal companies. Less than $5 billion will be spent on energy efficiency and renewable energy programs.

Well, you might say, at least some money is going to "energy efficiency and renewable energy programs." But one of the provisions that's been touted with extreme irrationality by some environmentalists is the bill's requirement to nearly double U.S. ethanol use by 2012. The Globe says that ethanol is mixed with gasoline to make it burn more cleanly, but environmental groups and the corn lobby say that increased ethanol use will actually decrease our dependence on oil, effectively replacing some of it with the corn product.

A couple problems here. First, 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol a year (as the bill requires by 2012) would hardly put a dent in our oil imports (we used 134 billion gallons last year). Also, when ethanol is mixed with gasoline, the mixture evaporates more quickly, which will force refiners to alter their product. This, according to a GAO report, will increase the cost of refining. Ethanol also contains only two-thirds the energy as gasoline. So blending it with gas reduces the heat content of the fuel, forcing you to buy more to do the same amount of work.

But here's the really troubling feature of ethanol. According to a recent report (PDF) by David Pimental of Cornell University and Tad Patzek of the University of California - Berkeley, it actually takes more energy to produce ethanol than the amount of energy you get back. Basically, they determined that it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to make ethanol from corn than it actually contains. So, increasing ethanol production will actually take more fossil fuel use than just using fossil fuels to make gasoline. Committing to more ethanol production will have the likely effect of increasing our need and use of fossil fuels. This makes no sense. (Note: The study was done with no money from the oil companies, and Pimental has no ties to oil companies. Patzek, however, runs the UC Oil Consortium, which is funded by oil companies. His ethanol research isn't funded by oil companies. The UC Oil Consortium seems to be mostly concerned with the geology behind oil drilling.)

At any rate, this so-called "energy bill" is mainly a handout to energy companies (though it does contain some subsidies and tax breaks for wind, geothermal and solar industries). It does little to put us on track to address our long-term energy needs. It's mostly just a tremendous gift to Bush's and DeLay's oil-industry friends.

I should also note that it does try to encourage more nuclear plants, which could help meet the country's energy needs. A lot of people are worried about nuclear power, of course, but we are a lot more knowledgeable about nuclear power than the Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl days. But regardless, there is also an argument to be made that we're a nation (and, increasingly, world) addicted to energy. It might be better to try to become more efficient rather than struggle to find more and more sources of energy.