“Clean” energy sources may not be so clean after all
BY DANIEL HANDLIN

As politicians have increasingly promoted energy efficiency in the last few years, the traditional notions of “clean” and “green” energy have been turned on their heads. A growing body of research has demonstrated that ethanol fuel, traditionally perceived to be clean, can actually be dirtier and less efficient than gasoline. On the other hand, nuclear energy, often considered unclean, is actually among the very cleanest of energy sources from a greenhouse point of view. As a political movement to curb greenhouse gas emissions gains ground, nuclear power is overtaking ethanol in the debate over what constitutes “green” energy.

Dirtier Gasoline at Higher Cost?
A growing body of scientific research is rapidly disproving conventional wisdom about the cleanliness of ethanol energy. Not only is burning ethanol just as damaging to the environment as burning gasoline, but the energy required to produce ethanol is actually greater than that released by the ethanol when it is burned. This leads to even more greenhouse damage than is caused by gasoline alone. “The most up-to-date studies show that there’s no carbon reduction from converting to using ethanol, because of all the energy that’s needed to produce it,” Mark Z. Jacobson, a researcher at Stanford University, told the HPR.

In fact, ethanol is actually less clean-burning than gasoline. In an interview with the HPR, David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, said, “The environmental impacts, talk about not being green, are enormous. It takes 40% more fossil energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than you get out of ethanol itself.” Jacobson suggests that a conversion from gasoline to ethanol over the entire US vehicle fleet would actually increase the number of air pollution deaths per year by as much as “two hundred deaths per year”.

Green Nuclear Energy
For the first time in decades, nuclear power has started to take center stage in clean energy debates. As Stanford Levin, professor emeritus of economics at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville told the HPR, “The big change with nuclear power has been the focus on greenhouse gases, which gives an advantage to nuclear power generation, because it doesn’t [produce] any.” Due to the large amount of energy required to produce solar cells, nuclear power may even produce less greenhouse emission than photovoltaics over their lifecycles. “Except for hydro, nuclear is much cleaner in a greenhouse sense,” explained Theodore Besmann, a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in an interview with the HPR. No new nuclear power plants have come online in the United States since 1997. However, in the last several months, approval for the first new nuclear reactors in the US in over a decade has been granted. “You’re seeing a lot of American utilities starting to come forward with proposals for additional nuclear power plants,” Levin said.

The Pendulum Swings Back
This shift in attitudes can be largely attributed to the overwhelming focus on greenhouse gases in the popular media, through both print publications and films like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Nuclear scientists insist that atomic has always been clean, and the technology has not changed recently. But the fact that they have no greenhouse emissions makes them politically feasible to build for the first time in years.

Despite the emerging scientific consensus on the superiority of nuclear power, ethanol has retained a favored position in the energy community. Indeed, the powerful and well-funded ethanol lobby, primarily composed of farming and auto interests, has dominated the political discussion on alternative energy. This has hindered a widespread public discussion of the disadvantages of ethanol. “In the case of ethanol, people are basically lying, not telling the truth about their product,” Jacobson said. “The lobbies of corn ethanol are so huge. They viciously attack scientists who disagree with them.”

Discussion of alternative energy will never cease to be politicized. Recent support for the construction of new nuclear reactors is the result of a sea change in political opinion on the dangers and promises of nuclear power. But the future of ethanol is less certain. If scientific research continues to undermine the case for ethanol as a clean energy source, its success will become a question of whether special interests can triumph over environmental science.¨ ]]>