Unintended Consequences and the Ethanol Deathwatch
The U.S.’s rush to grow corn for fuel has already been blamed for rising food costs that are pricing the world’s poor into hunger and malnutrition. But the high cost of corn is having another unintended consequence: a plunge in biofuel plants’ profit margins.
About one-fourth of all corn grown in the U.S. is now cultivated for fuel rather than for food. Meanwhile, the growing demand for both food and fuel is driving commodity prices for crops like corn to record highs. That means, even with the federal government’s generous subsidies for ethanol production, today’s biofuel profits aren’t what they used to be.
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While the pro-ethanol corporate types aren’t ready to call it quits entirely, some are shifting into lower gear or putting biofuel plants on hold. Which makes for interesting viewing, courtesy of the Biofuel Deathwatch List at Google Earth. The national map features an assortment of those Google Earth, yellow-balloon-like markers, each one indicating the location of a planned biofuel refinery that has been put on ice because of “unfavorable market conditions.”
On-hold plants range from Pacific Ethanol’s proposed facility near Calipatria, California, suspended last December; to Biotown USA’s planned refinery near Reynolds, Indiana; to the most recent, POET Energy’s proposed plant in Glenville, Minnesota, which the company axed last week citing permitting costs and holdups.
And if you think the Biofuel Deathwatch map is interesting, you’ll probably also enjoy another compilation by Earth2Tech: the Google Earth locations of all the recently canceled coal-fired power plants across the U.S.
Amen to that. This decade will be known as the decade of shortsighted policies.
Do you have a citation on the 1/4 of corn in the US being grown for fuel rather than food? I’ve been having trouble figuring out the actual numbers on the issue. Thanks!