Truth in Advertising: University of Minnesota's Ethanol Fleet

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By SCOTT CARLSON

While sustainability efforts are well intentioned, the results — particularly in the short term — do not always match the rhetoric.

The claim: The university's fleet is one of the nation's "greatest users of E85 fuel," a fuel that is 85 percent ethanol, derived from corn, and often touted as renewable. About 70 out of more than 800 vehicles in the fleet burn E85. A press release notes that the fleet won a sustainability award from the Minnesota governor's office. Bill Roberts, the fleet's director, says the E85 cars are "good for the environment."

Fine print: Stephen Polasky, a professor of applied economics at the University of Minnesota, recently analyzed ethanol's net-energy gains, economic viability, supply potential, and environmental impacts for a July article in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. From a standpoint of sustainability, ethanol did not fare well in his study.

Scholars have long debated whether ethanol is a "net-energy loser" — that is, whether producing ethanol uses more energy than the fuel yields. Mr. Polasky found that ethanol was a net-energy winner, producing a gain of about 25 percent.

However, Mr. Polasky says it is not clear that ethanol is an economic winner. His study, using gas prices from 2005, found that ethanol production was slightly more expensive than gasoline production. Corn-based ethanol also has a supply problem: If America dedicated all of its corn crops to ethanol production, it would offset the country's thirst for gasoline by a mere 12 percent.

Corn-based ethanol's reputation as a "green" fuel is perhaps undeserved. Corn often needs heavy applications of fertilizers and pesticides, which run off into groundwater. Studies show that E85's life-cycle emissions of major pollutants are similar to those of gasoline, Mr. Polasky says, and its greenhouse-gas emissions are only marginally better — about 12 percent less. The Minneapolis Star Tribune recently noted that new ethanol plants in Minnesota might burn coal to produce the corn-based fuel; in that case, Mr. Polasky says, ethanol might produce more greenhouse-gas emissions than gasoline.

If a university wants a cleaner fleet, "we should be looking more at the demand side of the equation," Mr. Polasky says. A car that gets great gas mileage might be a better option than an E85 car. The University of Minnesota may be thinking along the same lines: The fleet owns 14 hybrid vehicles, and has just ordered 14 more.