Just say no to oil? If only it were that easy.

One of the fiercest environmental battles of the year has pitted activists against proponents of a fuel once thought to be a good alternative to oil—corn ethanol. Their argument came to focus, this morning, on one question: if an acre of corn in the United States is used to make fuel, what is the environmental cost of growing that acre of food somewhere else—perhaps by leveling an acre of rain forest and planting it with corn?
Environmentalists and some strange bedfellows—including oil interests and poultry farmers—have been urging the White House and Environmental Protection Agency to take “indirect land use” into account when measuring the lifecycle greenhouse gases emitted by corn ethanol. “Lifecycle” means considering not only the gases emitted when ethanol burns, but when the cornfield is planted and harvested, when the corn is delivered to the refinery and refined—every action involved in the production of the fuel. Congress required EPA to consider lifecycle emissions.
A corn-ethanol industry had already grown up around the idea that its product is environmentally friendly, and those refiners, aligned with powerful corn farmers who enjoy increased demand for their crop, have urged the government to measure emissions in a manner more friendly to corn ethanol.
This morning, EPA announced its decision, and it cut a fine line between the two camps. It decided to take land-use changes into account, but that some methods of producing corn ethanol are clean enough that the improvement over petroleum will make up for indirect land-use changes over time. Other methods, such as making ethanol in a coal-powered refinery, will not make the grade.
“We believe that our lifecycle analysis is based on the best available science, and recognize that in some aspects it represents a cutting edge approach to addressing lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions,” the EPA said in a statement. The EPA announced its decision in a conference call with reporters that featured three stars of the Obama Administration: EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
“As we work towards energy independence, using more homegrown biofuels reduces our vulnerability to oil price spikes that everyone feels at the pump,” Jackson said. “Energy independence also puts billions of dollars back into our economy, creates green jobs, and protects the planet from climate change in the bargain.”
The decision comes at the cusp of a big boost in demand for ethanol. The EPA is contemplating:
• a fourfold increase in the biofuel supply, from 9 billion to 36 billion gallons per year by 2022—about 20 percent of the nation’s fuel supply.
• a related increase in the amount of ethanol blended into gasoline, from the current level of 10 percent to 12, 15 or 20 percent.
Corn ethanol has been increasingly vilified and might be doomed in the long term. Earlier this year, scientists at the University of Minnesota concluded that corn ethanol is worse than ordinary gasoline for the environment and human health, and that advanced sources of ethanol—such as prairie grasses and agricultural wastes—are much better.
The EPA’s proposed rule, which now enters a 60-day comment period, leaves room for the corn ethanol industry to grow from nine billion gallons per year to 15, but in its current form the rule caps that growth in seven years. After 2016, all new ethanol must come from advanced sources “other than corn starch,” it states.
Frank O’Donnell of Clean Air Watch noted that today’s ruling leaves open the possibility of future changes. “It is clear that pressure from the corn lobby is making inroads, though EPA has left a final judgment about corn for a later day,” he said. “They are leaving open the option of ultimately declaring corn is ‘clean.'”