Green Car Advisor

It's starting to look as if corn-based ethanol's future is dimming, although corn futures – the kind traded in the commodities market  -- are still soaring.

Critics of using one of the world's basic food crops as a feedstock for fuel for cars and trucks have been scoring points in the debate over the past few months as prices of most grain-based and grain-fed foods climb. 

Many insist that using corn for ethanol – and diverting land once used for other crops in order to increase corn supplies – is a big factor in those food price increases.  the federal Department of Argiculture has estimated that corn ethanol and other biofuels are responsible for 20 percent of the food price surge.

On Monday, a group of 24 Republican senators – including GOP presidential candidate John McCain -- sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency asking that it alter rules that require a 400 percent increase in U.S. ethanol production  by 2022, to 36 billion gallons a year from just over 7 billion gallons last year.

The senators' letter says that the ramp-up should be reduced, or suspended, to put more corn back into the food chain, where it is used for animal feed, and to free up land now used for corn for increased production of cereal grains such as wheat.

Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama also have said that government promotion of corn-based ethanol ought to be reexamined in light of soaring food price and sport shortages of critical grains.

McCain, in a statement issued from his Senate office after the letter to the EPA was sent, said the federal ethanol subsidy program, "paid for by taxpayer dollars – has contributed to pain at the cash register, at the dining room table, and [to] a devastating food crisis throughout the world."

While many analysts believe it unlikely that corn ethanol subsidies will be curtailed this year – the corn-producing farm states have too powerful a lobby to anger in an election year – there is growing consensus that, with all three leading presidential candidates voicing concern, the tide could begin turning after January.

Meantime, a spokesman for the EPA said that the Bush Administration is still committed to the idea of using ethanol as an alternative to gasoline because it can help reduce our dependence on imported oil.

Present federal plans call for ethanol, usually blended with gasoline, to account for as much as 22 percent of the nation's vehicular fuel supply by 2022, up from 5 percent today.
 
Congress last year mandated a ramp-up to 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol by 2015 and 36 billion gallons by 2022.
 
There is increasing development, however, of processes to make ethanol from non-edible cellulose in plant material – prairie grasses, tree bark and the stems and leaves of corn and other plants. So-called cellulosic ethanol is till years from widespread commercial production, however.

Not surprisingly, the ethanol and farm industries are opposing any curbs on corn ethanol production or on ethanol subsidies, claiming that the gain-based fuel is at best a minor ingredient in the overall cost of food and that gasoline and diesel fuel prices will rise if ethanol supplies are cut.

We're not sure that last is such a bad thing.  If gas prices rise as corn ethanol is cut, the result might be an increased national commitment to other, saner alternative fuels including cellulosic ethanol, electricity and even hydrogen.

John O'Dell, Senior Editor