Editorial
Biofuel mandate: a drop in the barrel
Despite objections from oil industry representatives and to the delight of local environmentalists, the Portland City Council unanimously approved an ordinance in July that will require all gas stations in the city limits to blend biofuels with the gasoline and diesel they sell.
Biofuels – any fuels that are derived from recently living organisms or their metabolic byproducts – are unlike petroleum-based fossil fuels in that they can be reproduced quickly.
Portland’s ordinance specifies two biofuels in particular: ethanol, which can power a gasoline engine and is commonly produced from corn; and biodiesel, which can power a diesel engine and is produced from plant oils and waste animal fats.
The requirements for Portland gas station owners take effect in July 2007, mandating that all gas sold here must be blended with at least 10 percent ethanol, and that all diesel sold must contain a blend of at least 5 percent biodiesel.
Commissioner Randy Leonard, who proposed the ordinance, called the initiative an “important first step” that “will reduce our dependence on oil and lower greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles.”
As national demand for oil increases while events in the Middle East (the most endowed oil-producing region in the world) become ever more unstable, the need for us to reduce our dependence on foreign oil has never been more urgent.
Exactly how far biodiesel and ethanol will go toward reducing our dependence, however, remains to be seen.
During the same month that the Portland City Council was passing the heralded biofuels ordinance, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study on the effectiveness of biodiesel and ethanol.
According to the study – done by researchers at the University of Minnesota and at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn. – biodiesel and ethanol do indeed reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a worthy goal in itself.
The study’s authors found that, from production to consumption, ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 12 percent compared to fossil fuels, and that biodiesel reduces such emissions by 41 percent.
While not as astounding as some ethanol proponents would have us believe, those reduced emissions are promising. But the authors of the study also found something else.
The researchers assert that, even if the entirety of U.S. corn and soybean agricultural production were dedicated to biofuels, that fuel would only replace 12 percent of the national demand for gasoline and 6 percent of the national diesel demand.
With demand for food rising right alongside that for oil, the prospect that the country could afford to devote even a fraction of our agricultural output toward fuel production is dubious.
As the researchers proclaim in the study, “neither biofuel can replace much petroleum without impacting food supplies.”
Commissioner Leonard should be applauded for his efforts to make Portland a leader in alternative energy. With the vast majority of the United State’s infrastructure dependent on cheap oil, steps toward a better solution, however small, are nothing short of patriotic.
As a nation, though, we’re a long way from overcoming our addiction to oil, even as the possibility of going cold turkey becomes imminent. Some experts believe that world oil production has already hit its peak, and that remaining reserves will be much more difficult to extract as supplies dwindle.
Let’s hope that as we here in Portland take this small first step toward alternative fuels, it brings us all closer to a real solution to the oil problem.