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USDA REPORT: ETHANOL HAS LARGE, GROWING POSITIVE ENERGY BALANCE

Ethanol Provides More Than 6 Btus of Energy for 1 Btu of Liquid Fuels Used

Washington, DC - The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today released its new study of the energy efficiency of ethanol production. The report, "The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol: An Update," concludes that ethanol production yields 34% more energy than is used in growing and harvesting grain and distilling it into ethanol. The report can be accessed on USDA's web site at: www.usda.gov/oce/oepnu/aer-813.pdf.

The study cites increased corn yields, lower energy use in the fertilizer industry, and advances in fuel conversion technologies that have enhanced the economic and technical feasibility of producing ethanol. The study is an update of a previous USDA study completed in 1995, which demonstrated a 24% net energy gain.

In addition to providing a 34% positive energy gain, ethanol production utilizes mainly domestically available energy, such as coal and natural gas. Therefore for every 1 Btu of liquid fuel used to produce ethanol, there is a 6.34 Btu output.

RFA president Bob Dinneen made the following statement concerning the report:

The new USDA energy balance study concludes that ethanol has a positive energy balance, that its growing, and that it will continue to improve in the future. But thats hardly surprising. Literally every organization conducting an energy balance study of ethanol over the past decade has concluded the very same thing -with one exception.

With a positive energy balance, ethanol is clearly the premier environmental liquid transportation fuel - harnessing the power of the sun and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And by displacing over 6 Btus of liquid fuels for every Btu used during its production, ethanol clearly helps reduce our dependence on foreign oil. As a domestic fuel using U.S. grain as a feedstock, ethanol boosts the U.S. economy - especially in rural America.

Only Dr. Pimentel disagrees with this analysis. But his outdated work has been refuted by experts from entities as diverse as the USDA, DOE, Argonne National Laboratory, Michigan State University, and the Colorado School of Mines. While the opponents of ethanol will no doubt continue to peddle Pimentels baseless charges, they are absolutely without credibility.

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Institute for Local-Self Reliance (ILSR),
August, 1995

One of the most controversial issues relating to ethanol is the question of what environmentalists call the "net energy" of ethanol production. Simply put, is more energy used to grow and process the raw material into ethanol than is contained in the ethanol itself?

In 1992, ILSR addressed this question. Our report, based on actual energy consumption data from farmers and ethanol plant operators, was widely disseminated and its methodology has been imitated by a number of other researchers. This paper updates the data in that original report and addresses some of the concerns that some reviewers of the original report expressed.

Our analysis again concludes that the production of ethanol from corn is a positive net energy generator. Indeed, the numbers look even more attractive now than they did in 1992. More energy is contained in the ethanol and the other by-products of corn processing than is used to grow the corn and convert it into ethanol and by-products. If corn farmers use state-of-the-art, energy efficient farming techniques and ethanol plants integrate state-of-the-art production processes, then the amount of energy contained in a gallon of ethanol and the other by-products is more than twice the energy used to grow the corn and convert it into ethanol.

As the ethanol industry expands, it may increasingly rely on more abundant and potentially lower-cost cellulosic crops (i.e. fast growing trees, grasses, etc.). When that occurs, the net energy of producing ethanol will become even more attractive.

Three subordinate questions must be addressed to estimate the energy inputs and outputs involved in making ethanol.
1. How much energy is used to grow the raw material?
2. How much energy is used to manufacture the ethanol?
3. How do we allocate the energy used in steps one and two between ethanol and the other co-products produced from the raw material?

Energy inputs and outputs in this report are on a high heat value basis.
Energy Used to Make Ethanol From Corn and Cellulose (Btus per Gallon of Ethanol)
Corn Ethanol (Industry Average)
Cellulosic Crop-Based Ethanol

Net Energy Gain 123,407
Percent Gain 162%

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This sentence is a link to a fairly comprehensive report on the net energy gain in commercial alcohol production, as well as detailed information on emmisions and reduction of greenhouse gases. CLICK HERE!

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The modern motor fuel grade ethanol industry is only 18 years old. Early plants were very inefficient. Indeed, in 1980 a typical ethanol plant all by itself consumed more energy than was contained in a gallon of ethanol. Some plants used as much as 120,000 BTUs to produce a gallon of ethanol that contained only 84,100 BTUs of energy.

In the last decade many ethanol plants have become much more energy efficient. In 1980, for example, ethanol plants used 2.5 to 4.0 kWh of electricity per gallon of ethanol produced. Today they use as little as 0.6 kWh. The majority of ethanol producers still purchase electricity from outside sources, but newer facilities generate electricity from process steam within the plant.

In the late 1970s, ethanol plants did not recover waste heat. Today they do. Old energy intensive rectification and solvent extraction systems required 12,000 BTUs per gallon of ethanol produced. Newer molecular sieves need only 500 BTUs.11
Larger producers have been using molecular sieves for several years. Now smaller plants (20 million gallons per year and less) are starting to incorporate them.

Best-existing and state-of-the-art ethanol plants can achieve energy reductions through a combination of these technological innovations. Molecular sieves reduce distillation energy significantly; low cost cogeneration facilities produce process steam and electricity; and semi-permeable membranes efficiently remove co-products from the process water to reduce the energy requirements of drying.

Wet mills, which account for 63 percent of all ethanol currently produced, extract higher value co-products than dry mills. Co-products from wet mills include corn oil, 21 percent protein feed, 60 percent gluten meal, germ, and several grades of refined starches and corn sweeteners. In dry milling, co-products can include corn oil and distillers dry grain with solubles (DDGS), which is used as animal feed. Carbon dioxide is a fermentation by-product of both milling processes.

Dry mills derive the DDGS co-product from the process water after fermentation occurs. It then requires a significant amount of energy to dry this co-product into a saleable form. Wet mills derive the majority of the co-products before fermentation through mechanical separators, centrifuges, and screens. All told, wet mills require 60 percent more electrical energy than dry mills on average, while requiring 10 percent less thermal energy. These differences are related specifically to the processing of the co-products, and are illustrated in the "Average" column in Table 3.

An integrated, relatively small-scale dry mill could avoid drying energy requirements for co-products. Reeve Agri-Energy in Garden City, Kansas, operates a 10 million gallon per year plant that feeds wet DDGS to its cattle. This operation uses only about 33,000 BTUs to produce a gallon of ethanol. However, a limited number of locations exist with a sufficient number of nearby livestock to justify such an operation, and it would probably not be economical for larger dry milling operations to adopt such practices.

A wider number of wet mills, on the other hand, may be able to achieve the energy use levels noted in the best existing wet mill category in Table 3.

We conclude that the ethanol industry, on average, uses 53,956 BTUs per gallon to manufacture ethanol. The best existing plants use 37,883 BTUs per gallon. Next generation plants will require only 33,183 BTUs per gallon of ethanol produced.

3. How do we divide the energy used among the products produced?


If we add the amount of energy currently used in growing corn on the average farm to the amount of energy used to make ethanol in the average processing plant today, the total is 81,090 BTUs per gallon (Table 1, Column 1). Under the best-existing practices, the amount of energy used to grow the corn and convert it into ethanol is 57,504 BTUs per gallon. Ethanol itself contains 84,100 BTUs per gallon. Thus even without taking into account the energy used to make co-products, ethanol is a net energy generator.

But an analysis that excludes co-product energy credits is inappropriate. The same energy used to grow the corn and much of the energy used to process the corn into ethanol is used to make other products as well. Consequently, we need to allocate the energy used in the cultivation and production process over a variety of products. This can be done in several ways.

One is by taking the actual energy content of the co-products to estimate the energy credit. For example, 21 percent protein feed has a calorie content of 16,388 BTUs per pound. The problem with this method is that it puts a fuel value on what is a food and thus undermines the true value of the product.

Another way to assign an energy value to co-products is based on their market value. This is done by adding up the market value, in dollars, of all the products from corn processing, including ethanol, and then allocating energy credits based on each product's proportion of the total market value. For example, Table 4 shows the material balance and energy allocation based on market value for a typical wet milling process. Here the various co-products account for 43 percent of the total value derived from a bushel of corn, and thus are given an energy credit of 36,261 BTUs per gallon of ethanol.
Assuming an average efficiency corn farm and an average efficiency ethanol plant, the total energy used in growing the corn and processing it into ethanol and other products is 81,090 BTUs. Ethanol contains 84,100 BTUs per gallon and the replacement energy value for the other co-products is 27,579 BTUs. Thus, the total energy output is 111,679 BTUs and the net energy gain is 30,589 BTUs for an energy output-input ratio of 1.38:1.

In best-existing operations, assuming the corn is grown on the most energy efficient farms and the ethanol is produced in the most energy efficient plants, the net energy gain would be almost 58,000 BTUs for a net energy ratio of 2.09:1. Assuming state-of-the-art practices, the net energy ratio could be as much as 2.51:1. Cellulosic crops, based on current data, would have a net energy ratio of 2.62:1.

There are circumstances where ethanol production would not generate a positive energy balance. For example, one could assume corn raised by the least energy efficient farmers, those who use continuous corn planting and irrigation, being processed by ethanol plants that do not use cogeneration and other energy efficient processes. In this case ethanol production could have a negative energy balance of about 0.7:1. However, a relatively small amount of ethanol is produced in this manner, possibly less than 5 percent. We think it reasonable to look at least to columns one and two for the answer to our initial question. Based on industry averages, far less energy is used to grow corn and make ethanol than is contained in the ethanol. Moreover, we think it is a safe assumption that as the ethanol market expands, new facilities will tend to incorporate state-of-the-art processing technologies and techniques so that each new plant is more energy efficient than the one before. It is less certain that farmers will continue to become more energy efficient in their operations because of the many variables involved. Nevertheless, it does appear that growing numbers of farmers are reducing their farm inputs and that this trend will continue.

A final word about cellulose. If annual ethanol sales expand beyond 2 billion gallons, cellulosic crops, not starch, will probably become the feedstock of choice. The data in the last column suggest a very large energy gain from converting cellulosic crops into ethanol. Cellulosic crops, like fast growing tree plantations, use relatively little fertilizer and use less energy in harvesting than annual row crops. The crop itself is burned to provide energy for the manufacture of ethanol and other co-products. A major co-product of cellulosic crops is lignin, which currently is used only for fuel but which potentially has a high chemical value. Were it to be processed for chemical markets, the net energy gain would be even greater.

NOTES
1 The difference between high and low heat values represents the heat contribution of the condensation of water during combustion. When ethanol is burned, for example, it produces heat and water vapor. As the water vapor condenses it gives off additional heat. Ethanol has a low heat value(LHV) of 76,000 BTUs/gallon, an estimate which more accurately represents the heat content of the fuel in conventional combustion engines. Ethanol has a high heat value of 84,000 BTUs/gallon. In the United States the energy content of fuels conventionally is expressed on a high heat value(HHV) basis. Interestingly, in Europe LHVs are used. The use of either basis does not affect the conclusions of our analysis such as long as the same heat values are used for all inputs and outputs.

2 The estimate of the net energy gain from cellulosic crop-based ethanol is considered conservative. We believe that as this industry develops, the same learning curve that occurred in the starch based ethanol industry will occur in the cellulosic based ethanol industry, fostering a much more positive net energy gain for ethanol production from cellulose.

3 Agriculture Chemical Usage: Field Crops Summary. U.S. Department of Agriculture. Economic Research Service. Washington, D.C. 1992-1994.

4 Bosch, D. J., K. O. Fuglie, and R. W. Keim, Economic and Environmental Effects of Nitrogen Testing for Fertilizer Management, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, 1994.

5 Alternative Agriculture. Committee on the Role of Alternative Farming Methods in Modern Production Agriculture. Board on Agriculture. National Research Council. National Academy Press. Washington, D.C. 1989.

6 Research conducted by the Department of Agricultural Economics. University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, Missouri.

7 Testing indicates that one acre of corn absorbs approximately 90 lbs of nitrogen fertilizer in one growing season. All of the estimates for fertilizer usage in this report assume synthetic fertilizer inputs. The difference between corn's nitrogen requirements and the fertilizer requirements indicated represent the reductions possible via the alternative growing strategies mentioned specifically in the text. These include rotations with leguminous crops, and the use of naturally occurring forms of nitrogen, such as animal waste.

8 Previous studies have included other components in the on-farm analysis. One included the amount of solar energy used in photosynthesis. Another included the embodied energy of farm machinery, that is, the energy used to make the machinery. We have decided not to include energy inputs which are acquired at no cost, like sunlight. Also we have not included embodied energy because the estimates are subject to a very high degree of uncertainty.

9 Personal conversation with Richard Thompson, November, 1992.

10 About 95 percent of the motor fuel grade ethanol in the United States is produced from 10 million gallon per year facilities or larger. Although there are a number of facilities of smaller scale, the vast majority of those will quickly expand production, if commercially successful.

Our conclusion is that under the vast majority of conditions, the amount of energy contained in ethanol is significantly greater than the amount of energy used to make ethanol, even if the raw material used is corn.

The full report, "How Much Energy Does It Take to Make a Gallon of Ethanol?" can be ordered from Institute for Local Self-Reliance, National Office, Washington, DC office. Cost of the hard copy is $8.75 including shipping and handling.

Questions can be directed to bailey@ilsr.org <bailey@ilsr.org>.

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