South Dakota Farmers Union president Doug Sombke is in the Sunday paper telling President Joe Biden he should come to South Dakota, not Saudi Arabia, to find the solution to America’s gasoline prices in our corn ethanol fields:
President Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia to beg for more oil seems unnecessary to us —he could have saved himself a long trip by coming to see what is being done right here in South Dakota.
Sky high gas prices are inflicting pain on our budgets and our psyche in part because we feel helpless. However, we can do something about it and it doesn’t require us to get on bended knee to Saudi oil sheiks. Fortunately, we have a home-grown product that has been proven to significantly improve gasoline quality and save billions at the pump. Not to mention, it would dramatically boost our farmers, the environment, public health and the nation’s energy security [Doug Sombke, letter to the editor, Sioux Falls Argus Leader, 2022.07.17].
Sombke backs his claim with some math based on the assumption that we could boost our at-the-pump ethanol from 10% blend with gasoline to 30%:
Today, ethanol displaces more than 400 million barrels of oil each year thanks to nationwide use of E10. Transitioning to a national E30 standard—which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the statutory authority to do (some say legal obligation)—would reduce U.S. oil imports by one billion barrels per year. That is more than $100 billion staying here at home to improve our economy [Sombke, 2022.07.17].
But corn doesn’t grow on trees. Could we really triple ethanol production? University of Iowa professor Silvia Secchi, whom I cited last week in questioning the usefulness of subsidizing CO2 pipelines for the ethanol companies, says boosting ethanol production to move from E10 to E30 would gobble up every acre of U.S. corn production:
Ethanol is a complement to gasoline, not a substitute for it. Half of Iowa corn acres and a third of US corn acres (over 30 million) go to produce 15 billion gallons of ethanol, about 10% of US consumption before COVID-19. This is the reason why we have the E10 mandate in the Renewable Fuel Standard.
The US has about 320 million acres of cropland overall. It is pretty obvious corn ethanol isn’t scalable as a gasoline substitute, so its fortunes are tied to it [Silvia Secchi, “Don’t Be Fooled by Exaggerated ‘Benefits’ of Carbon Pipelines,” Des Moines Register, 2022.07.09].
I’m all for giving Saudi Arabia and every other oil-producing despot the boot as a business partner. But if we’re already using a third of our corn crop to produce (and plowing up shelterbelts and ditches to get the acres we need) just to replace a tenth of our gasoline, supplying ethanol for universal E30 would leave nothing in the hopper for Fritos, grits, or popcorn.
Ethanol will only power the American highway fleet as long as we have larger quantities of petro-products to mix it with in our internal combustion engines. And as long as we keep burning ethanol and oil as go-juice, we’ll keep wrecking the ecosystem on which our biofuel (and food!) production depends.
The real solution to disentangling ourselves from Saudi Arabia is green technology: better fuel efficiency, smaller vehicles, and ultimately the abandonment of the internal combustion engine in favor of simpler, safer electric motors.
If Biden were to go to South Duhkota his life would be in more danger than any trip to a Muslim country. Oil released from strtegic reserves can be and some of it is, sold overseas to highest bidders.
I’m a bit concerned that Doug Sombke felt safer attacking Joe Biden than the current governor of this state who still ballyhoos for the (impossible) resurrection of the Keystone XL Pipeline as the solution to our fuel crisis. Oil wasn’t the chief issue on Biden’s mind in that trip. It took a backseat to Iran’s nuclear advancements (thanks to Trump wrecking the controls Obama installed before leaving office), Russian adventurism in the Middle East and the spillover from the Ukrainian invasion.
Does Noem have some dirt on Sombke that he avoided a perfect opportunity months ago to promote ethanol in the wake of Noem’s lies and gaffes about Keystone XL? Considering that eminent domain was a big deal in the XL debates, Sombke could have made it a two-for.
Too bad.
Every fuel is a bridge fuel.
The Ogallala Aquifer, also called the Great Plains Aquifer, is being depleted at a far faster rate than its recharge flows and nearly all the groundwater sampled from it is contaminated with uranium and nitrates from industrial agriculture. With
blessings from Senator Tom Daschle Koch Industries’ relationship with the late Republican Kansas Senator Bob Dole allowed that company to build an ecocidal empire.
Ethanol has only two thirds the energy density of gasoline or diesel and less than half of what natural gas contains but has an immensely larger carbon footprint. Nobody farms with gasoline powered equipment and ethanol is being grown with diesel fuel so how is that either conservative or sustainable?
96 is right about the trip. Oil was at the bottom of the list while containing Iran and keeping China and Russia at bay was the primary
reason for the trip. It is maybe permissible to use natural resources for food,quite another to add to gasoline.
Farmers could begin raising switchgrass. It produces more ethanol per acre than corn and doesn’t require the expensive inputs like herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizer
It has never appeared to me that corn ethanol is a good deal for anyone.
Rlm, if ethanol plants were buying switchgrass farmers would be growing it.
Rlm
Well switchgrass is a perennial unlike corn which is an annual. This may be an explanation on why ethanol plants process corn?
well…hybrid corn saps the soil of nutrients, requires huge amounts of nitrogen fertilizer and cancer causing pesticides and herbicides. Anywhere west of the James River in South Dakota is very marginal corn land requiring all of the above plus massive applications of water from center pivots. Growing corn in that manner is the last step before the prairie becomes a desert. That’s where we’re at with corn. We should stick with oats and barley, alfalfa and clover. Nothing wrong with the native grasses. As a bonus, we get to keep our Fritos and Doritos.
Francis, alcohol can be made out of any plant material but it’s easier to make alcohol out of corn than switchgrass and corn is the material plants are set up to use. There has been research on other materials but I am unaware of widespread use on other materials.
Nick
Thanks for the information. I am just thinking follow the money. Annual corn seed sales, fertilizer, herbicides, crop insurance subsidies, ethanol subsidies, etc. Many decisions have been made to get us here i am curious who was in the room when these decisions were made. So is it safe to say that ethanol production facilities are designed to use only 1 source of input material? My point is about special interests and long term benefits for all of us. Sorry for rambling.
Major parts of the corn belt are experiencing ongoing drought conditions, too.
https://www.radioiowa.com/2020/10/21/project-liberty-cellulosic-ethanol-plant-in-emmetsburg-closed/
Corn stover makes ethanol, but the plant couldn’t compete with low oil prices.
NOAA predicts the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico to be about average this year.
“A $40 million phosphorus recovery facility will be constructed by the Des Moines Metropolitan Wastewater Reclamation Authority (WRA) under a plan presented to the city’s Urban Design Review Board last week.“
https://www.axios.com/local/des-moines/2022/06/28/des-moines-unveils-plans-40-million-phosphorus-recovery-plant
Would switchgrass grow better with less irrigation in those marginal lands where we’re trying to force corn to grow?
How much new equipment would existing SD ethanol plants need to process switchgrass instead of (or alongside) corn?
This Des Moines project has been on hold for a number of years.
Sorry, Switchgrass takes so much heat to break it down, not competitive, also takes untold acres and facilities to store and haul to a plant; Sorghum can add also be used, here again not really competitive and not grown everywhere! Also, the corn used in Ethanol is field corn, not used for human consumption, for livestock feed, and btw, Ethanol just takes the starch, and no one mentions the distillers grain, a great feed for livestock is put back into the livestock feed system, nearly 2/3 of bushel returned to feed!
Also, e30 has 94 octane, better than gas and can eliminate or reduce Benzene, Toluene and Xylene and BTX In gasoline!
Maybe someone might want to check to see what Economic Impact has had on our rural economies!
Btw, No Subsidies for Ethanol but 50+ years of subsidies for Oil copmanies! Many comments are all API, Petroleum talking points, many less than truthful! Oil should be on Ethanol side, what happens when combustion engines are gone!!
A wise man once told me that cellulose based ethanol is the fuel of the future, and it always will be. Go ahead and think about that for a bit.
As a corn producer myself, I don’t see how we can produce any more ethanol than we already are. Also, there are some very promising advancements being made in running diesel engines on pure ethanol, which would be awesome for the ag community as a whole. Obviously Doug Sombke’s job is to toot our horn a bit, but his comments are very unrealistic. As is with most lobbying. I wouldn’t read too much into it.
Another example of why CO is in the top five innovation states.
– Caruso Energy of Golden has invented a method for capturing the flared natural gas that’s released from oil wells and converting it into enough energy to mine bitcoins. Thus, less released natural gas pollution and much less manufactured energy needed/wasted to mine BTC.
– The entire process fits into a trailer sized unit parked on site of each oil pumping station
– Caruso has raised over $350 million in venture capital just in 2022 alone.
– Because oil wells are most often in red-necked, Republican counties these small, rural governments are falling all over themselves to think of a way to tax their new county cash cows.
*Just mentioned this because I know you’re a huge fan of cryptocurrency, CAH. lol :0)