Bloomberg News

Al Gore has apparently irked some members of the ethanol lobby by suggesting during a panel discussion at a green business conference on Monday that his earlier support for corn-based ethanol subsidies was “a mistake.”

From Reuters:

“It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for [U.S.] first-generation ethanol,” the former vice president declared at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank. “First-generation ethanol, I think, was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small,” he said. “It’s hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.” He linked his own support for the original program to his presidential ambitions. “One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”

Mr. Gore is not alone in thinking that corn-based ethanol is a losing proposition. Several environmental groups have voiced concerns that the market sets food and fuel needs in direct competition.

European Pressphoto Agency

They also point to studies suggesting that corn ethanol is among many crop-based biofuels that encourage land-use changes — turning forests into farmland, for example — that are, on the whole, detrimental to both environment and climate.

Next-generation biofuels derived in less energy-intensive ways, and from non-food sources like switchgrass, are potential solutions.

But Mr. Gore’s comments nonetheless drew return fire from Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group in Washington.

Writing at the group’s E-Xchange blog, Mr. Hartwig charged that Mr. Gore’s chief concerns — that the energy benefits of corn-based ethanol, when considered over the entire production and consumption life cycle, are marginal at best — were unfounded.

Mr. Hartwig wrote:

As the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in 2008, ethanol produces about 2.3 BTU of energy for every 1 BTU of inputs. That’s a big improvement from 2000 and before, when Gore supported ethanol. In fact, ethanol production keeps becoming more efficient: over the five years preceding 2009, there was a 27 percent decrease in consumptive water use, a 22 percent reduction in fossil energy use and a 7 percent increase in the amount of ethanol produced per bushel of grain. Nor does ethanol production compete with the food supply. Using virtually the same acres as two generations ago, America’s corn farmers produced the highest corn crop on record in 2009 -– 13.2 billion bushels. About 4.2 billion bushels were used to produce a record 11.75 billion gallons of ethanol and 33 million metric tons of feed.

As the Reuters article points out, much is at stake — including substantial tax breaks for blenders that are due to expire at the end of this year. The article also suggests that ethanol enjoys something on the order of $7.7 billion in subsidies in the United States.

(Worth noting: Reuters attributes that figure to something called the International Energy Industry — although the International Energy Agency is probably the intended source. And for what it’s worth, the I.E.A. actually attributes that $7.7 billion figure to the Global Subsidies Initiative — part of the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Geneva.)

A spokeswoman for Mr. Gore, Kalee Kreider, pointed out that the former vice president’s evolving feelings on first-generation biofuels — that is, corn ethanol — were not new, and that Mr. Gore discussed the matter at great length in Chapter 6 of his 2009 book, “Our Choice.”

There, Mr. Gore reflected on his early optimism for the potential of corn-based ethanol to help clean up the nation’s fuel sector — and the disappointment he now feels over its shortcomings:

I feel the disappointment personally because, as vice president of the United States in 1994, I cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of moving forward with a large national commitment to ethanol. In 1978, as a young congressman from a farming district in Middle Tennessee, I organized and hosted a daylong workshop on what was then called “gasohol” for 5,000 constituents, mostly farmers, eager to be a part of the national effort then under way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Throughout my 16 years in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, I was a persistent advocate of helping farmers to earn income from the production of alcohol fuels for cars and trucks. … In practice, however, the results over the last several years have convinced many analysts that producing first generation ethanol from corn is a mistake.

Mr. Hartwig of the biofuels lobby clearly disagrees. “Gore should stop apologizing for having supported ethanol,” he wrote. “He had it right the first time.”