It's the liquid fuel, stupid

LAST YEAR, when Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa told me that ethanol was emerging as a cost-effective solution to our energy problems, I was dubious.

For decades, ethanol was considered one of those Farm Belt boondoggles that every presidential hopeful had to pledge allegiance to because of the importance of Iowa's corn-fed caucuses.

However, as both gas prices and global-warming concerns have skyrocketed, the bio fuel has steadily won converts. What's more, ethanol advocates have an eye-catching argument: a proven success story. Brazil has made itself energy independent in large part through a determined ethanol program.

Yes, there are differences. Sugarcane, which Brazil uses, lends itself to easier conversion to ethanol than does corn, the basis of US efforts. And our liquid fuel demand is much greater.

Still, the fact that an increasing number of Brazil's 17 million plus drivers have flex-fuel vehicles that can use either ethanol or gas -- and that they regularly fill up with ethanol -- is one big reason that country has largely weaned itself from foreign oil.

Although some critics contend that corn-based ethanol of the sort the US effort centers on requires more energy to make than the end product provides, that thinking is changing.

A report commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Climate Solutions, two environmental organizations, found that with the exception of one study, the major representative research since 1990 confirmed that ``corn ethanol has a solid renewable energy return on its fossil energy investment -- its use does indeed help reduce our fossil fuel consumption."

That said, it's still worth noting that the corn product that accounts for 95 percent of US-produced ethanol is not the favorite option of experts. Far better, they say, would be cellulosic ethanol, which can be made of any number of plants, such as switchgrass, or from woody growth like poplar or willows.

Although the technology is still developing, the advantages of cellulosic ethanol are several. Whereas corn ethanol is made from corn kernels, cellulosic ethanol would use almost an entire plant, with part of it as fuel to power the production process. And while corn-based ethanol offers a respectable return on fossil fuel investment, the energy-balance benefits of cellulosic ethanol are much higher.

That report and other studies made an ethanol enthusiast of the previously skeptical NRDC.

``From that came the conclusion that biofuels were particularly important because they were the only renewable form of liquid transportation fuels," says Nathanael Greene, senior policy analyst at NRDC.

Actually, the most useful criterion for evaluating ethanol is not energy balance , contends Bruce Dale, associate director of Michigan State University's Office of Bio-based Technologies. Rather, he says, an ethanol program's value is in using more readily available forms of domestic energy to produce an alternative to gasoline.

Or, as Dale puts it, ``It's the liquid fuel, stupid."

Because ethanol burns more cleanly than gasoline, it is also much better for the environment. The carbon released by ethanol use is merely that which the plant has previously removed from the atmosphere.

Further, specialists say that at current oil prices, ethanol makes economic sense.

``The cost of producing ethanol today is lower than the cost of producing gasoline," says Aaron Brady, associate director of oil research at Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

Indeed, even if oil were as cheap as $40 a barrel -- it is now around $71 a barrel -- ethanol would be cost effective, says Greene. He says that in the next five years, ethanol, if used as a separate fuel rather than mostly as a gasoline additive (as it is now), would cost somewhere around $2 for an amount that gives mileage comparable with that of a gallon of gas, and perhaps settle in at about $1.50 as production capacity grew.

But to speed ethanol use along, the federal government should require that a large percentage of new vehicles have the potential to run on either gas or ethanol. We need further incentives to encourage service stations to install ethanol pumps so that it is a readily available choice, and a significant federal investment in research and development to further the science of cellulosic ethanol. Finally, the government needs to ensure enough nationwide supply of ethanol to make it a viable consumer option.

If all that were done, Greene predicts, the United States would fairly quickly reach a ``tipping point" at which consumer choice would move the nation away from gasoline and toward the clean, renewable liquid fuel of the future.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.