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Originally Posted by BillTex
To create just one gallon of fuel, ethanol slurps up 1,700 gallons of water, according to Cornell's David Pimentel, and 51 cents of tax credits. And it still can't compete against oil without a protective 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on imports and a federal mandate that forces it into our gas tanks. The record 30 million acres the U.S. will devote to ethanol production this year will consume almost a third of America's corn crop while yielding fuel amounting to less than 3% of petroleum consumption.
In December the Congressional Research Service warned that even devoting every last ear of American-grown corn to ethanol would not create enough "renewable fuel" to meet federal mandates...Now scientists are showing that ethanol will exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions. A February report in the journal Science found that "corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years . . . Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%."
And, what happened to our pocketbooks at the grocery store????
Clearly, ethanol is NOT the answer...
Bill
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Your information from Pimentel is very old and based on early production of Ethanol decades ago. This is exactly the data the oil companies are using and the ethanol industry does a poor job of defending the huge improvements made in only the last 5 years.
I agree corn is a poor source, but it is a means to the end. I truly believe we will see switch grass and then algae as the prime source for ethanol. Regardless of your opinion, it here to stay and will be a significant portion of our energy choices. We can discuss differences, but when diesel hits 10 to as much as $15/gallon by 2013 as predicted, we will all want something other than what they drill out of the ground. Demand caused by China and India have us in a total different situation than the last energy crisis in the 70s. Look at this months National Geographic, they show daily/annual new cars on the road in China alone. It is no longer just ours for the taking. We must find alternatives.