<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1656336897729,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"0000017a-8cb2-d416-ad7a-beb7278f0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1656336897729,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"0000017a-8cb2-d416-ad7a-beb7278f0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_55912119", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1038133"} }); ","_id":"00000181-a55f-da7c-a7c7-e57f4f6d0000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedEthanol makes global warming worse, according to a recent study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
This new study contradicts, though, what the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been claiming. This comes at a time when President Joe Biden’s administration is reevaluating biofuel policies in an effort to combat climate change.
The research found that “ethanol is likely at least 24% more carbon-intensive than gasoline.”
“Corn ethanol is not a climate-friendly fuel,” said Tyler Lark, an assistant scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment and lead author of the study.
This report runs contrary to the Renewable Fuel Standard, a 2005 federal program that mixed corn-based ethanol into gas pumps with the goal of reducing emissions and energy dependence outside of the United States.
The Renewable Fuels Association couldn’t disagree more with Lark and his new study.
“The authors of this new paper precariously string together a series of worst-case assumptions, cherry-picked data, and disparate results from previously debunked studies to create a completely fictional and erroneous account of the environmental impacts of the Renewable Fuel Standard,” the rebuttal report said.
This conversation is certainly not a new one. Corn-based ethanol has been questioned for over a decade. NPR wrote an article in 2008 containing the same conclusions Lark has found.
“Right now, there’s little doubt that ethanol is making global warming worse,” said Tim Searchinger, a scholar at Princeton University.
Others agree.
“If you care about greenhouse gases, then this expansion of the corn biofuel industry is going in the wrong direction,” the late Alex Farrell, then at the University of California, Berkeley, said at the time.
The facts remain the same today, despite the ethanol lobby’s influence. Corn-based ethanol produces higher amounts of carbon emissions compared to gasoline due to the amount of farmland and the tillage the corn requires. It doesn’t matter how educated someone is on energy policies — the more intense production is, the more intense carbon emissions will be.
Esther Wickham is a summer 2022 Washington Examiner fellow.
