Study: Corn-based fuel 'inefficient, expensive'

The corn-to-biofuel concept took another hit this week as researchers at Duke University concluded it’s an “inefficient and expensive greenhouse gas mitigation policy.”

Biologist Robert Jackson led the study that found the potential carbon benefits of corn-based ethanol can take years to materialise:

“Depending on prior land use, our analysis shows that carbon releases from the soil after planting corn for ethanol may in some cases completely offset carbon gains attributed to biofuel generation for at least 50 years,” Jackson and his team write in an article in the March issue of Ecological Applications.

Compared to cellulosic ethanol,which can increased soil carbon levels by 30 to 50 percent, corn-based biofuels end up removing between 30 and 50 percent of the carbon from soil, the researchers found. They concluded it’s better to leave conservation lands unfarmed rather than plow them for corn-to-ethanol production.