The future is now
Last October, Princeton University published its Net-Zero America report that lays out five different pathways to make the American economy carbon neutral by 2050. The plans all eliminate coal use, reduce oil and gasoline consumption by half and, after storing huge amounts of carbon dioxide in underground geological formations, call for generation of between two-thirds of the country’s electricity with wind and solar energy.
Where the plans part ways is about the role of agriculture.
One of the five options calls for growing biomass, including switchgrass, on the 40 percent of Midwest corn cropland currently used for ethanol production. The biomass can be gasfied into hydrogen, which can be used to make fuel cells that run cars and trucks by a chemical reaction, not combustion. The biomass, at the same time, will capture atmospheric carbon in the soil.
This option calls for investment of $810 billion across rural America, including Wisconsin, to create a new bioenergy industry that would generate up to 24 percent of the nation’s energy. Hydrogen gasification plants would be built across the Corn Belt. The plan would sequester a fifth of a giga-ton of carbon dioxide per year in the soil on between one and two million farms.
The question is not whether this larger proposal is the future. It is. California is burning. Florida is flooding. Hurricanes roar across Texas. Global warming must be dealt with.
No, the real question is whether Midwest farmers, including those here in Marathon County, will embrace a carbon net-zero future or push it away. If farmers don’t want it, the government and private industry will look elsewhere to reduce the nation’s carbon footprint. They will build more solar arrays and wind turbines. They will build more electric cars and electrically heated houses.
We think this, however, would be a mistake, a missed opportunity.
Marathon County, as well as every agricultural county across the Midwest, struggles with run-off and surface water pollution. The problem gets worse as climatecaused storms become more violent, moving more soil into ditches, creeks and rivers.
This county, as well as many others, has tried to get farmers to clean up barnyard facilities, plant cover crops and reduce tillage. There have been successes, sure, but lots of failures, too. More algae-causing phosphorus dumps into lakes and reservoirs each year. It could realistically take centuries to reverse decades of agricultural pollution.
What is attractive about replacing corn with a high yielding biomass grass is that you solve two problems in one stroke. The biomass, converted to hydrogen, replaces gasoline in cars and trucks, reducing carbon emissions. At the same time, the grass, which is planted as a perennial, sequesters carbon. There is zero soil loss because there is no tillage. You get a cooler planet and cleaner water at the same time.
A study released this month by the University of Wisconsin points in this direction. The research documents that no-till corn planted with cover crops helps with agricultural run-off, but does little to sequester carbon. An acre of perennial grass in a managed grazing operation, however, puts five tons of carbon in the soil each year.
Cynics may think all of this is a fool’s fantasy that may never happen.
UW professor Randy Jackson, one of the authors of the report, notes, however, how fast American agriculture switched to corn production when the government put in place ethanol mandates for gasoline. He says American agriculture can turn on a dime when the incentives are right.
We think the researcher has a point. That’s why we think local farmers and county conservation officials need to start asking politicians not just for cash to deliver the same results-starved conservation programs, but, instead, for plans and funding to fix an old agricultural run-off problem with a new global warming solution. Kill two birds with a single rock.
Currently, America’s energy dollar pays for stylish malls in Saudi Arabia. With a new policy, it could pay for all-electric Ford 150 pick-up trucks on biomass farms across the Midwest. The future is now. We need to seize opportunities a new green economy will offer. Editorial by Peter Weinschenk, The Record-Review
