Study Finds Ethanol Worse For Air Quality Than Gasoline

- by Bill Hud­son, Decem­ber 17, 2014, CBS Min­neso­ta

For years, the state’s corn and ethanol indus­tries have tout­ed the envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits of burn­ing the alter­na­tive fuel in our vehicles.

But new­ly released research from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta Col­lege of Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing is rais­ing eyebrows.

The study com­pared pol­lu­tion lev­els from gaso­line fuel and 10 alter­na­tive ener­gy vehi­cles, includ­ing hybrid elec­tric, nat­ur­al gas and corn-based ethanol.

One of the most sur­pris­ing find­ings is that ethanol might actu­al­ly be worse for air qual­i­ty than con­ven­tion­al gaso­line fueled transportation.

Researchers looked not only at the end result at the tailpipes but also took into account the full cycle of ener­gy pro­duc­tion. For instance, the authors cal­cu­lat­ed the entire pol­lu­tant stream, mean­ing every­thing gen­er­at­ed from the grow­ing of the corn to the process used to turn it into ethanol.

In addi­tion, they extrap­o­lat­ed the pol­lu­tants of elec­tric vehi­cles when the elec­tric­i­ty used to recharge the bat­ter­ies is gen­er­at­ed by the burn­ing of coal.

“And we found that some options avail­able to us, like corn ethanol or elec­tric­i­ty from coal used in elec­tric vehi­cles, actu­al­ly make the air much worse,” assis­tant pro­fes­sor Jason Hill said.

Pro­fes­sor Hill is one of three authors of the study.

Their research actu­al­ly finds that the pol­lu­tants from both ethanol and gaso­line are near­ly equal at the tailpipe.

But it is when you take into account the ener­gy used to make the ethanol that the notion of a “clean­er burn­ing” fuel is called into question.

“That is not true. In fact, corn ethanol is about twice as dam­ag­ing to the air qual­i­ty as gaso­line,” Hill said.

One fac­tor is that there is less ener­gy pro­duced in burn­ing the equiv­a­lent amount of ethanol as com­pared to gaso­line. A vehi­cle has to burn more of it to get the same amount of horse­pow­erpow­er.

But the addi­tion­al pol­lu­tion gen­er­at­ed by the farm machin­ery used to plant, fer­til­ize, cul­ti­vate, com­bine, dry and trans­port corn to the ethanol plants will con­tribute to the fuel’s neg­a­tive air qual­i­ty impacts.

In addi­tion there are the pol­lu­tants gen­er­at­ed in the pro­cess­ing of the grain into ethanol.

But the Min­neso­ta Corn Grow­ers Asso­ci­a­tion dis­putes the find­ings and says it does lit­tle to hurt our over­all air quality.

“It doesn’t help, that’s for sure,” MCGA’s Adam Czech said.

In fact, says Czech, ethanol blend­ed fuels have improved air qual­i­ty in the state and are a big rea­son Min­neso­ta is no longer on the EPA’s air qual­i­ty non-attain­ment list.

“We just keep push­ing the actu­al sci­ence and the actu­al con­sen­sus with­in the aca­d­e­m­ic and sci­en­tif­ic research com­mu­ni­ty of ethanol’s ben­e­fits,” Czech said.

Besides the corn grow­ers, the Min­neso­ta Bio Fuels Asso­ci­a­tion is also crit­i­cal of the study.

Both groups cite oth­er sci­en­tif­ic research that they say sup­port corn ethanol’s benefits.

As far as elec­tric vehi­cles are con­cerned the U’s study finds that the ben­e­fi­cial impacts vary great­ly, depend­ing on the source of the electricity.

In fact, the study finds that dri­ving an elec­tric car is actu­al­ly worse than gaso­line if the pow­er used to recharge the bat­ter­ies is gen­er­at­ed from coal.

It’s only clean elec­tric­i­ty like solar and wind that give elec­tric vehi­cles their benefits.