U.S. unlikely to meet its biofuel goals
research, they have taken on that challenge and tied their models to estimates of how climate change — reflected in predicted regional levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, temperature and precipitation — could affect agriculture in the U.S. heartlands.
The team built computer simulations based on crop data from the nation’s top ten corn-producing states — Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Kansas.
They also used estimates of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and other elements from a number of models, including the government’s well-tested Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model.
They used the simulation to predict crop outcomes over the next 40 years in relation to expectations of climate change.
The researchers found states in the Corn Belt (Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Missouri) and the Great Lakes (Minnesota and Wisconsin), where corn growth is primarily fed by rainfall, would be subject to more intense but less frequent precipitation, especially during the summer. Maintaining crops would require a 5 to 25 percent increase in irrigation, which would in turn require more extensive — and expensive — water catchment infrastructure.
On the Northern Plains of South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas, where the growth of corn for ethanol already depends heavily on irrigation, the study found that crop yields would decline even if irrigation continued to be “applied as needed,” the researchers wrote. In fact, the 2012 drought has already damaged Great Plains farmlands where long-reliable aquifers used for irrigation are beginning to run dry.
The researchers said agriculture costs the water supply in two ways: through the drawdown of groundwater from irrigation and through loss to the atmosphere via evapotranspiration (ET), by which water moves through plants and evaporates. Higher atmospheric temperatures increase ET at a cost to groundwater, they wrote.
The production of one liter of gasoline requires three liters of water, according to the researchers.
The production of one liter of corn ethanol requires between 350 and 1,400 liters of water from irrigation, depending on location. A liter of ethanol also translates into 1,600 liters of ET water that might not directly replenish the local watershed.
The researchers suggested the growth of crops for ethanol was already questionable because of its impact on the environment. Rising temperatures in the decades to come, they wrote, could lead to reductions in crop yields and an increase in irrigation demands to the degree that the government mandate is no longer economically viable.
“The projected increases in water intensity due to climate change highlight the need to re-evaluate the corn ethanol elements of the Renewable Fuel Standard,” Dominguez-Faus said.
— Read more in Rosa Dominguez-Faus et al., “Climate Change Would Increase the Water Intensity of Irrigated Corn Ethanol,” Environmental Science and Technology, Article ASAP (23 May 2013) (DOI: 10.1021/es400435n)
