Biofuel Production Threatens Water Supplies

The production of bioethanol may use up to three times as much water as previously thought, a new study finds, becoming the latest work that could burst the biofuel bubble.

A gallon of ethanol may require up to more than 2,100 gallons of water from farm to fuel pump, depending on the regional irrigation practice in growing corn, according to the study detailed in the April 15 issue of journal Environmental Science & Technology.
For the new study, Sangwon Suh of the University of Minnesota in St. Paul, along with his colleagues, made a new estimate of bioethanol’s impact on the water supply using detailed irrigation data from 41 states.

The water requirements of the bioethanol produced in 2007 was possibly as high as 861 billion gallons of water from the corn field to the fuel pump, the researchers found.

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