Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Researchers from the University of Minnesota have opened another front in the battle over ethanol with a new study that says the corn-based fuel has higher health costs than petroleum-based gasoline.
There has long been a debate over whether ethanol is an environmentally sound alternative to gasoline. Critics contend that due to the amount of fossil fuel used to harvest and create ethanol it actually releases more greenhouse emissions than fossil fuels. But this study adds health costs to the mix, especially when ethanol is made at coal-fired production facilities.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that for every billion gallons of fuel produced and combusted in the U.S., the combined climate-change and health costs are $469 million for gasoline and $472–$952 million for corn ethanol, with the higher totals coming from coal-fired production.
Health and environmental costs plunged dramatically for cellulosic ethanol, which is derived from prairie grass, corn stalks, switch grass and other sources besides corn, costing only $123–208 million. Cellulosic ethanol, however, is not yet a commercially viable alternative.
Researchers, which included Minnesota, Stanford University and the U.S. Energy Department, said the debate over whether substituting biofuels for fossil fuels benefits or harms the environment needs to be expanded beyond greenhouse gas emissions in order to get an accurate picture of costs.
The American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE), the industry’s trade association, condemned the study, saying it bases its findings on erroneous assumptions about corn-based ethanol.
“I’m disappointed with what appears to be another politically motivated study with an ax to grind against corn ethanol,” said Brian Jennings, executive vice president of ACE, in a statement “The steps our nation must take regarding climate change and energy policy must be founded on the most thorough and defensible science, but this paper does not represent a meaningful contribution to the discussion surrounding these critical issues.”
The group said the primary assumptions the study relies on disregard technology innovations that help farmers produce additional corn and companies produce ethanol more efficiently.
The Minnesota study also contradicts another study released in January by the University of Nebraska that found corn-based ethanol directly emits an average of 51 percent less greenhouse gas than gasoline, as much as three times the reduction reported in earlier research, thanks to recent improvements in efficiency throughout the production process.
According to the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, the state has 38 operational ethanol refineries with a combined annual capacity of over 3 billion gallons. There are also five ethanol refineries under construction that will add nearly 700 million gallons of capacity.
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