Give ethanol a chance

Saturday, May 31, 2008 | 2:04 a.m.

Ethanol made from corn is not a perfect solution to weaning the country from its dependence on increasingly expensive, dirty and decidedly finite foreign oil.

That much is clear from the criticisms that have been leveled at corn ethanol for years.

Many critics say it takes more energy to create the fuel than the fuel produces. Other critics say growing more corn than is needed for food harms the land. Rising food prices in the United States and elsewhere are partly blamed on the diversion of a significant portion of corn crops to fuel factories.

These and other criticisms contain more than a kernel of truth, no pun intended.

Yet we hope the ethanol industry perseveres at least for the near future, despite many critics calling for its demise. That’s because the industry is in its early years, which are always low-tech — look at the first cars, the first computers, the first cell phones.

Early years are also fraught with technical problems. Users of early typewriters, for example, couldn’t see what they were writing, and the ribbons were always jamming.

Like any other product, ethanol will likely improve once a market is assured. We can see it happening already. Just this week a Cambridge, Mass., company, Verenium Corp., opened a “second generation” ethanol plant in Louisiana. Another company broke ground on a second-generation plant in November in Georgia.

These plants do not use corn. Instead they use organic waste and nonfood crops to make ethanol, and their executives are expressing faith that their processes will quiet the critics.

The issue is not about whether ethanol will play a big role in America’s energy future, Verenium Chief Executive Carlos Riva told the Houston Chronicle. The issue is, he said, “How can we do it right?”

We are confident that the same American ingenuity that created second-generation ethanol plants will create a third generation, a fourth generation and so on, ultimately producing a viable alternative to foreign oil.