Corn ethanol, also known as grain alcohol, has been burned in gasoline engines and human stomachs since before Henry Ford was born. It’s hard on both, so until 35 years ago it never caught on much, at least not for engines.
But in 1990, Congress amended the Clean Air Act, requiring gasoline to be spiked with an oxygen-containing compound to reduce carbon monoxide. With the help of corn-belt farmers and public officials, the oxygenate of choice became corn-based ethanol. Now, most gasoline sold in the United States contains at least 10 percent ethanol, also called “gasohol.”
Fifty ethanol plants produced 900 million gallons of ethanol in 1990. In 2024, 191 ethanol plants produced a record 16.22 billion gallons. From the corn belt, ethanol production has spread West. Today, ethanol is produced in Oregon, Idaho, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Arizona and California.
Though it is hyped as an elixir for what ails the earth, ethanol has long been a disaster that we can’t seem to remedy. Calling it wasteful and inefficient doesn’t begin to list its drawbacks: It costs more to produce than gasoline, reduces mileage, corrodes gas tanks and car engines, pollutes air and water, and, by requiring more energy to produce than it yields, increases America’s dependence on foreign oil.
While gasohol releases less carbon monoxide than gasoline, it emits more smog-producing volatile organic compounds. And ethanol plants produce more pollutants than oil refineries, including high levels of carcinogens, thereby routinely violating already relaxed pollution permits. In 2007, under industry pressure, ethanol plants were exempted from the EPA’s most stringent pollution regulations.
Of all crops grown in the United States, corn demands the most massive fixes of herbicides, insecticides, and chemical fertilizers, while creating the most soil erosion. Producing each gallon of ethanol also results in 12 gallons of sewage-like effluent, part of the toxic, oxygen-swilling stew of nitrates, chemical poisons and dirt that gets excreted from corn monocultures.
From Kentucky to Wyoming, this runoff pollutes the Mississippi River system, harming aquatic animals all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, where it expands a bacteria-infested, algae-clogged, anaerobic “Dead Zone.” In 2024, this Dead Zone was about the size of New Jersey.
Thanks to billions of dollars in tax credits, rebates, grants and other subsidies pumped into corn ethanol production, farmers are motivated to convert marginal ag land to corn plantations. Some farmers even drain wetlands, the most productive of all wildlife habitats.
Cornell University professor David Pimentel, who died in 2019, was the first agricultural scientist to expose ethanol production as a boondoggle. While his data are old, they provide a snapshot of our current situation and a valuable model for groups like the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit “holding polluters and government agencies accountable under the law,” as it digs out the real costs of gasohol.
Without even factoring in the fuel required to ship ethanol to blending sites, Pimentel found that it takes about 70 percent more energy to produce ethanol than we get from it. Then, figuring in state and federal subsidies, he found that ethanol costs $2.24 a gallon to produce, compared with 63 cents for gasoline.
Pimentel determined that allocating corn to ethanol production also raises ethical questions: “Abusing our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient process that yields low-grade automobile fuel amounts to unsustainable, subsidized food burning.”
And Pimentel chided the U.S. Department of Agriculture for taking planting and yield data only from states with the best soils and productivity. The Department also didn’t fully take into account fossil-fuel expenditure for operation and repair of farm machinery or for production of fertilizers made from natural gas.
What stymies reform? Agricultural communities have built valuable support from the bottom up—from local agricultural communities and regional politicians to U.S. presidents such as Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The beneficiaries of America’s ethanol addiction have become behemoths that get bigger and hungrier with each feeding.
If President Trump really wants to cut wasteful and inefficient spending, decrease our dependence on foreign oil and prove that he wants America to have “among the very cleanest air and cleanest water on the planet,” he needs to end what now amounts to government-forced gasohol use.
Ted Williams is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a longtime environmental writer.
An ethanol production plant in South Dakota. Credit: photos by jim
This column was published in the following newspapers:
| 05/20/2025 | Durango Herald | Durango | CO |
| 05/20/2025 | Denver Post | Denver | CO |
| 05/20/2025 | Montrose Daily Press | Montrose | CO |
| 05/20/2025 | Big Pivots | Denver | CO |
| 05/20/2025 | Cortez Journal | Cortez | CO |
| 05/20/2025 | Pagosa Springs Sun | Pagosa Springs | CO |
| 05/29/2025 | Big Pivots | Denver | CO |
| 05/29/2025 | Methow Valley News | Twisp | WA |
| 05/28/2025 | Jackson Hole News & Guide | Jackson Hole | WY |
| 05/29/2025 | KVNF Radio | Paonia | CO |
And now Mr. Williams, something completely different.
A) “ethanol costs more to produce than gasoline” & “more VOCs”
The spot cash delivered price of ethanol on the NYMEX is $1.62/gal.
The price of unusable sub-grade gasoline (RBOB) is $2.15/gal.
It takes more energy to make and deliver unusable gasoline than ethanol.
To turn RBOB into usable E0 gasoline costs even more much like premium costs more. Unfortunately for humanity, it becomes even more toxic and dirtier.
Or simply splash in >10% ethanol to RBOB, and the resultant usable fuel becomes less toxic, far, far cleaner burning, and cheaper/cheaper per mile to drive with.
Denver in 1988 was the first government entity to require E10 when they were on the EPA list of ozone non-attainment zones. Soon with ethanol they were off that list.
Even with just 10% ethanol added to E0, the Swiss Federal Laboratory for Materials Science and Technology found that the especially health devastating ultra fine or nano particulate emissions were lowered by 97%, carbon monoxide lowered by 81%, carbon dioxide lowered by 13%, aromatic hydrocarbon emissions lowered by 67-96%, and genotoxic emissions lowered by 72%.
Ethanol does produce non-toxic VOC (volatile organic compounds) which any sommelier can attest to (even trees produce VOCs), but they less ozone forming than the toxic VOCs from gasoline and the highly toxic volatile aromatic compounds added to it.
Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP) is the measure of VOCs at 100 degrees F. only and an obsolete RVP law has existed for many years, made before ethanol came along with no considerations for it.
Refiners since have made winter gasolines with higher RVP for starting and lower RVP in summer to reduce pollution. Cars have pretty much eliminated the vapor issue with the advent of pressurized fuel caps and subsequent to that carbon filter boxes.
Ethanol itself has a super low RVP, but when mixed with gasoline at low blend levels synergizes with gasoline to produce slightly more RVP in a non-linear fashion from 2% to 35% with a 6 or 7% blend being the peak greatest increase.
Because E10 ethanol so drastically cleaned up exhaust ozone causing pollution which far more than offset the small increase in RVP levels, it was granted a waiver to the old RVP law (rather than updating or revising that obsolete law).
E85 has a super low RVP and as such never needed a waiver. In fact, the only reason we don’t have E100 is so the fuel is volatile enough with vapors to start the engine. In Brazil where E100 has been used since the late 1970s, their flex fuel vehicles use heated injectors for starting similar to diesel glow plugs.
RVP measures vapor pressure in psi only at 100 degrees F, but at around 70 degrees F and lower, ethanol blends have less VOC vapor pressure than E0 gasoline. Note the average temperature of the two hottest states (Hawaii & Florida) is around 70 degrees F. The Continental US average temperature is in the low 50s.
The waiver for E10 was written without thought that higher blends would come along so we have had E15 which has lower RVP than E10 still being illegal in summer.
I am not sure of your claims that ethanol plants were exempt from pollution laws, but plants use catalytic converters to turn the natural VOCs produced into carbon dioxide and water and that is what the rest of the plant emits as well. In other words, ethanol plants produce no pollution. Note that they recycle almost all their water so the only water that leaves is as vapor.
PART B in next post.
Part B) “Prof. David Pimentel” “subsidies”
The API has widely distributed a negative ethanol study from the entomologist David Pimentel Ph.D. which he claimed no conflicts of interest with.
Investigative reporter Jack Anderson did expose that Prof. Pimentel was on Mobil Oil’s payroll despite his claims otherwise. Mobil Oil took a full page add out defending the professor while admitting they paid him.
No study has ever duplicated his numbers and since corn ethanol production is no longer subsidized (VEETC ended in 2011), its spot cash price on the NYMEX of $1.62 proves itself economical.
What those negative on ethanol fail to know is corn ethanol is a value-added product of already existing feed production which preserves the feed in a healthier and more productive triple concentrated form called distillers grains.
No corn is grown just for ethanol, far too uneconomical to do that. But with the feed factor (distillers grains), few sources can compete with corn even if they can make more ethanol per acre.
The US used 11,160,933 tons total fertilizer on corn in 1980, before ethanol.
In 2018, with record ethanol production at 16.1 B gallons (which was just slightly surpassed in 2024 at 16.22), the US used 10,521,850 tons total fertilizer on corn.
100% of the fertilizer (& everything from the soil) still get fed to livestock in the distillers grains. Ethanol comes from only things of the air: solar energy, CO2, and water with the latter two recycled once burnt.
Ethanol C2H6O = no fertilizer
Distillers grains = all the fertilizer
What logic is it to then assign all the energy and CO2 of fertilizer to ethanol and none to distillers grains?
What logic is it to blame ethanol for fertilizer usage when we used more in 1980 before ethanol? We also used more chemicals in 1980 before ethanol than today.
Iowa State University measured all the energy it takes to produce an acre of corn into a “diesel fuel equivalent”
This included making the machinery, fertilizer, chemicals, plus the tillage, planting, spraying, harvesting, drying, trucking etc.
They found it takes 34 gal of diesel to
produce one acre of corn.
What do we get from those 34 gallons of diesel?
We get >500 gallons of ethanol.
But wait, that is not the kicker.
The kicker is we still get 100% of the protein and other things from that acre of corn still available for a healthier and better feed called distillers grains. A win-win.
Believe it or not, the corn belt grew more corn acres in 1980 before ethanol than they did in 2024, the year of most ethanol production ever and ethanol plants everywhere.
2024 Iowa 12,900,000 acres of corn with record ethanol production
1980 Iowa 14,000,000 acres of corn before ethanol
2024 Illinois 10,800,000 acres of corn with record ethanol production
1980 Illinois 11,600,000 acres of corn before ethanol
2024 Indiana 5,200,000 acres of corn with record ethanol production
1980 Indiana 6,450,000 acres of corn before ethanol
One thing that was not around in 1980 was the use of no-till farming, cover crops, and the awareness of soil health which has been growing every year quickly. Those things will fix our problems, ending ethanol would fix absolutely none of those things one iota.
On to Part C next…
Part C
Corn producing states according to Census data have more grassland, forest, and wildlife areas since ethanol came to be. Cropland acres have decreased since ethanol came to be.
My previous post shows the corn belt grows no more corn today than before ethanol, even less. Some northern states have increased corn acres which was a trend happening before ethanol because of cattle feeders losing favor with feed barley over corn/distillers grains helped along with higher yielding early maturing corn varieties.
Samual Morrey used ethanol for fuel in his engine as did Nicolas Otto. Henry Ford’s favorite fuel was ethanol and his Quadcycle used it and he designed the Model T for it. Production models were flex fuel.
Ethanol was the number one fuel for lighting in the 1800s but when a Civil War tax of >$2.00/gal was placed on it in 1862 with ethanol production at 100 million gallons (just after the first oil well in 1859) while kerosene’s tax was just $.10/gallon, kerosene literally overnight became the number one fuel for lighting.
It was some 44 years later when trust busting Teddy Roosevelt came along and ended that tax in 1906 with the “Free Alcohol” bill just in time to power Henry Ford’s Model T with his favorite fuel. Then John D, “competition is a sin” Rockefeller would massively fund getting Prohibition passed and the rest is history.
Note ethanol did catch on for autos in Germany and France at the turn of the century without that massive tax. In Germany near 1/3 of locomotives used ethanol for fuel even. Germany was banned from using ethanol as fuel for 50 years after war, it was hard to bomb many decentralized distilleries.
Ethanol on any manufacturing chemical compatibility chart you will find is easier on rubbers, plastics, and metals than what gasoline and BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene) are.
Brazil has used >E20 since the late 1970s on identical non-flex fuel vehicles to ours and E27 since 2015. It has worked out so well and for so long that Paraguay went to E27.
Brazil uses E100 went to E30 this year for non-flex fuel vehicles. India uses E100 for flex fuel vehicles and just achieved E20 for non-flex fuel vehicles with a goal of E30 by 2030.
In our current gasoline optimized engines, ethanol blends have slightly lower mpg but the cost per mile to drive with is less than with E0 and pollution is far less as well. Ethanol gives more horsepower, for example a Chevy 5.3L gets a clean 380 horsepower with E85 vs a dirty 355 hp with E0.
With ethanol optimized engines, we would have both greater mpg and power than gasoline, even better than diesel engines.
Ricardo built and drove such an engine for GM(EBDI) with more mpg and more power than their diesel engine at half the size. This is why GM wants the EPA to come with a 100-octane fuel standard.
Ford’s prototype EcoBoost engine was optimized for E85 and achieved 15 to 20% more mileage than E0 with load performance similar to a diesel. They didn’t come with it in flex in part because they thought they could skirt paying the patents to the MIT scientists who developed it. That is still in court.
This is not new technology or knowledge, it was known long ago. It is suppressed technology.
Rear Admiral C.M. Chester wrote Henry Ford a letter on Dec.15, 1916:
“…I also pointed out in the article that as governmental laboratories had developed from 40 to 55% efficiency in alcohol engines as against 20% in gasoline machines, the use of alcohol at double the cost of gasoline for power purposes, was cheaper for motor[s] than gasoline in common use today.”
Scientific journals from 1890 – 1920 contain hundreds of references to alcohol fuel at the dawn of the automotive era.
Studies of alcohol as an internal combustion engine fuel began in the U.S. with the EdisonElectric Testing Laboratory and Columbia University in 1906. Elihu Thomson reported that despite a smaller heat or B.T.U. value, “a gallon of alcohol will develop substantially the same power in an internal combustion engine as a gallon of gasoline. This is owing to the superior efficiency of operation…”
The USDA tests in 1906 also demonstrated the efficiency of alcohol in engines and described how gasoline engines could be modified for higher power with pure alcohol fuel or for equivalent fuel consumption, depending on the need.
The U.S.Geological Service and the U.S. Navy performed 2000 tests on alcohol and gasoline engines in 1907 – 1908 in Norfolk, Va. and St. Louis, Mo. They found that much higher engine compression ratios could be achieved with alcohol than with gasoline.
When the compression ratios were adjusted for each fuel, fuel economy was virtually equal despite the greater B.T.U. value of gasoline. “In regard to general cleanliness, such as absence of smoke and disagreeable odors, alcohol has many advantages over gasoline or kerosene as a fuel,” the report said. “The exhaust from an alcohol engine is never clouded with a black or grayish smoke.” USGS continued the comparative tests and later noted that alcohol was “a more ideal fuel than gasoline” with better efficiency despite the (*then*) high cost.
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