The Elusive Alternatives
Many of the alternative fuel solutions from ethanol to biodiesel are intended to mitigate climate change, which could protect water levels. But they won’t if they use more water than they save.
“We definitely have a balancing act here where international security, national security, resource use, are sometimes at odds and need to be balanced out,” Davis said.
The conflict puts some conservationist like Davis in a tough spot. Their inclination is to support alternatives to the oil that carries so many environmental and political downsides. But there is a sense that viable oil replacements still need some refining.
McCain has walked the tightrope with ethanol, saying he supports the industry. But he recently joined 11 U.S. Senators in co-sponsoring legislation to freeze the ethanol mandates at current levels. He has continued to harp on developing alcohol-based fuels that don’t use corn. But his qualms with corn ethanol, as with other policymakers — including Texas Gov. Rick Perry who had his request to cut the 2008 mandate in half rejected by the EPA — lie mostly with its affects on food prices, not water availability.
Obama too has spoken about the importance of advanced biofuels with switchgrass, a feedstock like corn that is also plentiful in his home state of Illinois.
The 9 billion gallons mandated for 2008 is not driving production up this year, according to Hightower. But he warns that as the mandate grows in the coming years, it will weigh more heavily on how much corn and water is fed into the ethanol industry.
It is also possible that increased demand for corn ethanol could stretch producers outside the Corn Belt to drier land, increasing the percentage of corn that requires irrigation.
Conversely, advances in agriculture may allow the corn yield per acre to increase, which would limit the amount of irrigation needed to produce each bushel. Ethanol supporters are also quick to point out that corn ethanol is capped at 15 billion gallons a year after 2015. The rest would come from advanced biofuels, including ethanol from sugars, starch and other organic matter; cellulosic ethanol derived from plants like switchgrass and woody biomass; and biodiesel from soybean oil.
These alternatives to corn-based ethanol could alleviate some concerns about using food for fuel, expanded land use and potential water usage. But Hightower is worried irrigation might become an option for these alternatives as growers would want to stabilize their yields.
While ethanol may get the most attention from both the public and the politicians, it is not the only water-intensive alternative fuel.
With U.S. oil shale resources estimated at 1 trillion to 2 trillion barrels of recoverable oil — more than triple the proven oil resources of Saudi Arabia — some, including President Bush, have advocated tapping this resource. It had been prohibitively expensive but soaring oil prices have tilted the scales. With oil fluctuating near $120-a-barrel, digging up and heating the shale to extract the oil seems a more viable option.
Houston-based Shell Oil Company is already extracting oil at a test site outside of Rifle, Colo., a remote town on the western edge of the state.
Bush recently lauded the potential for oil shale. Yet candidates McCain and Obama have been quieter on an option many environmentalists warn comes with negative consequences.
Water use is among them. Oil shale consumes two to three gallons of water per gallon of fuel produced. That might not seem much, except that the shale is located in already water-stressed states, such as Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Rifle, for example, issued a restriction in June on watering lawns due to increased demands of the water system.
“Virtually every alternative transportation fuel being considered will require more water than current petroleum refining,” according to the Sandia report. By mixing alternative fuels into the nation’s energy diet, the report predicts total water consumption for transportation fuels could increase by 3 billion to 4 billion gallons of water per day by 2030. That’s roughly the same amount used by 12 million American homes.
With record gas prices on voters’ minds, the presidential candidates’ focus lately has been on transportation fuels. But McCain and Obama are also talking about increasing the country’s thermoelectric power production. Obama emphasizes clean coal while McCain calls for 45 new nuclear plants by 2030. But both sources require a lot of water.
Thermoelectric power plants, including coal-fired and nuclear plants, accounted for 39 percent of freshwater withdrawals in 2000, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
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