A common objection to the production of energy from biomass is that it could divert agricultural production from food crops in a hungry world, even causing a massive famine in poor countries.
Corn is a popular crop; It has many uses besides directly feeding people and being employed in the production of ethanol. One-third of the crop is transformed into food for livestock, and 13% of American production is exported. But if we take as a base the producer-consumer binomial, is it sustainable corn ethanol? Besides causing a net loss of energy, will it also increase the cost of one of the most important staple foods in the world? That debate has intensified due to increases in corn prices, which, critics say, are caused by the diversion of almost half of the crop to fuel production.
Corn ethanol is a resource that causes divisions. Despite the benefits of some emissions derived from its burning, it has been subject to strong campaigns against it by non-profit environmental organizations. "Corn ethanol is not just a disaster for the consumer, for most farmers and the taxpayer, it is also a disaster for the environment.
The depletion of fossil fuels (oil, coal and natural gas) that are key in the development of the life of our societies, makes imperative the investigation, promotion, and use of new fuels. A potential source of new energy is biomass (abbreviation of biological mass) that involves obtaining fuel from living sources, for example, plants, microorganism. One of these fuels is ethanol or ethyl alcohol produced from the fermentation of sugars found in plant products (cereals, sugar cane, beet, corn or wheat), which duly processed little by little begins to penetrate as fuel in the international market. Ethanol is produced by the fermentation of sugar plants (in Latin American countries) or corn, barley or wheat (in the USA). For commercial and industrial use, it is always denatured (that is, small amounts of harmful substances are added) to avoid misuse as an alcoholic beverage. When used as a transport fuel, ethanol is used mostly mixed with gasoline (gasohol or E85). In this case, I do not know if it is still considered a biomass fuel because it is mixed with a fossil fuel. Anyway, and according to the Clean Air Initiative in Latin American Cities, almost all existing vehicles in the market would tolerate without problems the mixture of gasoline or diesel with ethanol, and possibly with advantageous emissions benefits.
It is true that the use of ethanol as a fuel contributes to reduce environmental (atmospheric) pollution, especially in urban centers, because it generates less toxic gas emissions compared to non-oxygenated gasoline thus reducing greenhouse gases (CO2) , Encourages automotive technology since the use of ethanol as a biofuel has managed to incorporate the necessary adaptations to automobiles, which allows the use of Ethanol without significant collateral damage. The main advantage of the use of ethanol as a biofuel is the decrease in the use of fossil fuels, thus replacing gasoline and with and with it imported oil, improving the Commercial Balance. Another important advantage is that it favors the agricultural sector since it encourages the use of renewable natural resources (raw material) such as sugarcane, corn, sorghum, yucca, sweet potato, banana, pineapple. , the tubers, the molasses and in general any product (carbohydrate) fermentable.
Biofuels and the Environment
The alternative of biofuels are a potential trap for agriculture since the net production of ethanol from corn would barely reach 50 gallons per acre per year, to which we should subtract the necessary production costs that demand energy ( tractor, harvester, fertilizer, etc.). In Brazil, sugar cane produces three times more fuel than corn, since it does not need as many crops or fertilizers, leaving much of the stubble in the lot. Thus, the cultivation of sugarcane in Brazil yields 3.6 units of energy for each unit of energy invested in its production, while corn ethanol in the United States only reaches 1.25 units. Using these low-energy biofuels, the world supposes replacing 85% of the current energy, supplying it as comfort and consumption generate by 2052 a demand close to an additional 10 to 30 trillion kilowatt-hours. That would mean in Brazil, going from producing from the 1980s a billion to hundreds of billions of gallons of ethanol from sugarcane, replacing billions of acres of soybean, palm oil, wheat and any other crops type of production. Among all countries, only Brazil has the most land with skills to generate food for the growing world demand. While in Indonesia, palm oil exported to Europe as Biodiesel is costing the lives of thousands of orangutans that no longer have that food.
The Biofuels Trap
Biofuels are the result of a strange policy of environmental preservation, protection of forests and fauna, and are a potential trap for producers and the fertilizer industry. First of all, the outlook could not be worse for the United States, Europe, and other countries adhering to biofuels, since the agricultural frontier and the use of fertilizers will be extended. In the next twenty years, the loss of species and forests will be blamed on the producers. The enthusiasm of the "organic" will be observed as the trap that starved millions of people and made conventional production systems return. The second place, to continue with the demand for ethanol, the commodity market would crash. Due to the supply of products outside this lower cost market that generate ethanol and would not need to be transported long distances. Examples of these sources would be alternative crops in large marginal regions and wood chips from fast-growing species in temperate regions. While corn is an inefficient competitor of ethanol, it requires certain needs that are found in untreated and/or protected soils to prevent erosion. The costs of production are very different if it is grown in the USA or in Argentina, for example. And finally, the biofuels landscape is the best for the world and for humanity, but it could generate a productive collapse and go along with the fear of global warming.
