Growing Energy: Is Sugar the New Corn in America?
by Stacy Feldman - Jun 11th, 2008
Louisiana Green Fuels (LGF), a Colombia Business Group, is taking a step that a lot of people in the ethanol industry will be watching carefully: It’s opening America’s first commercial-scale sugar ethanol plant in Louisiana next year.
Interesting to read the round-up of reactions.
"The saving grace for sugarcane farmers..." The Daily Advertiser
"A landmark moment in southern Louisiana..." The Miami Herald
"A good experiment for the American ethanol industry." Earth2Tech
Amazing how things change.
Just two years ago corn was the new oil. And now it makes no sense as a fuel source. And sugar, with its record of success in Brazil, is suddenly the food-based biofuel of the hour in the US, at least in sugar country.
Good timing, PR-wise, for LGF to land on the scene -- right when the nation is ready for a sweeter ethanol alternative.
Truth is, LGF has been working for several years to get its plant off the ground. Post-Katrina, it started buying up shuttered sugar mills and dormant equipment. To date, it has taken over the operation of three sugar mills in the area -- all exclusively dedicated to converting sugar into ethanol.
The company is now promising to produce up to 100 million gallons of the sugar fuel per year, eventually.
And LGF isn’t alone. The Times-Picayune reports that an anonymous foreign investor has been propositioning the state's 11 other sugar mills to build ethanol factories.
A domestic sugar ethanol industry in America? Not quite. But if Big Sugar gets its way, that may change.
Take the brand-new farm bill. It’s stuffed full of pro-sugar provisions, including a sucrose-ethanol program that will move surplus sugar into the ethanol-producing sector for the first time ever, thanks to heavy lobbying.
To be fair, not all ethanol is created equal. Sugar may be the "new corn," but it’s not corn, or any other food-based biofuel for that matter. For one, it's far more energy efficient. From Yahoo Finance’s Green Investor:
Ethanol from sugarcane has an energy output/input ratio of 8.3 versus 1.9 for sugar beets, 1.3 to 1.8 for corn, and 1.2 for wheat. And sugarcane has the highest ethanol productivity per hectare among currently commercially viable renewable fuel feedstocks.
But sugar is still food. Turning it into motor fuel is risky business for a sugar ethanol industry newcomer like the US (Brazil's been in the biz for 30 years) and could be a false solution that makes problems worse.
History shows that once cropland is diverted from making food into fuel on a large-scale, commodity prices skyrocket. And the impact is greatest on poor consumers in developing nations.
Some of America’s big ethanol producers, like Pacific Ethanol, are moving into cellulosic ethanol, instead. It comes from garbage-bound biowaste and other materials that no one eats.
Cellulosic fuel is still unproven on a mass scale, but it’s no mystery why it’s becoming the safest future ethanol bet for America, and the rest of the world.
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