Carriers want to replace jet fuel with ethanol to fight global warming. That would require lots of corn, and lots of water. Part of a series on the causes and consequences of disappearing water. Vast stretches of America are dominated by corn, nearly 100 million acres of it, stretching from Ohio to the Dakotas. What once was forest or open prairie today produces the corn that feeds people, cattle and, when made into ethanol, cars. Now, the nation’s airlines want to power their planes with corn, too. Their ambitious goals would likely require nearly doubling ethanol production, which airlines say would slash their greenhouse gas emissions. If they succeed it could transform America’s Corn Belt yet again, boosting farmers and ethanol producers alike, but also potentially further damaging one of the nation’s most important resources: groundwater. Corn is a water-intensive crop and it can take hundreds of gallons to produce a single gallon of ethanol. But as airlines embrace the idea of ethanol, prompting lobbyists for agribusiness and ethanol makers to push for clean-energy tax credits in Washington, the threat to groundwater is largely missing from the discussion. “We’re on track to massively increase water usage without any real sense of how sensitive our aquifers are,” said Jeffrey Broberg, who is concerned about groundwater in Minnesota, a major corn state, where he is a water-use consultant and founder of the Minnesota Well Owners Organization. United Airlines this year signed a deal with a Nebraska ethanol company to buy enough sustainable aviation fuel, as the biofuel is known, to power 50,000 flights a year. In August, Delta announced a plan to create a sustainable fuel hub in Minnesota, a major corn state. The Biden administration could decide on its tax incentives for the industry as soon as December. “Mark my words, the next 20 years, farmers are going to provide 95 percent of all the sustainable airline... |