Will ethanol solve the oil shortage?

Answer 1

NO *Burning a gallon of clean ethanol is pointless if it takes more than a galon of fossil fuel to produce it.David Pimentel, an agriculture professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. said "Producing ethanol or biodiesel from plant biomass is going down the wrong road because you use more energy to produce these fuels than you get out from the combustion of these products."

Pimentel's study says it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to make corn ethanol and 45 percent more fossil energy to make ethanol from switchgrass than the energy produced. The numbers for wood biomass are worse. According to Pimentel, it takes 57 percent more fossil energy to produce ethanol from wood chips than the energy produced. Those numbers won't get the U.S. out of the Middle East oil situation anytime soon, he said. In fact, "ethanol is contributing to us being there."

UC Berkeley geoengineering professor Tad W. Patzek published a study of the energy required to produce ethanol in the journal Critical Reviews in Plant Science. He included all the energy required from the amount of fuel used to produce fertilizers and corn seeds to the transportation and wastewater disposal costs. He concluded that the total energy required for ethanol production is six timesgreater than the power provided by the fuel produced.

The US Department of Agriculture claims there is an energy GAIN of 67 percent when corn is converted into ethanol. Everyone who passed high school science should know this is not possible because some energy must be consumed to convert one form of energy into another!

*Ethanol production causes starvation!

The enormous volume of corn required by the ethanol industry is sending shock waves through the food system. In March 2007, corn futures rose to the highest level in ten years. Wheat and rice prices have also surged to decade highs, because even as those grains are increasingly being used as substitutes for corn, farmers are planting more acres with corn and fewer acres with other crops. Food processors who use crops such as peas and sweet corn have been forced to pay higher prices to keep their supplies secure. Rising feed prices are also affecting the livestock and poultry industries. According to Vernon Eidman, a professor emeritus of agribusiness management at the University of Minnesota, higher feed costs have caused returns to fall sharply, especially in the poultry and swine sectors. If returns continue to drop, production will decline, and the prices for chicken, turkey, pork, milk, and eggs will rise. A number of Iowa's pork producers could go out of business in the next few years as they are forced to compete with ethanol plants for corn supplies. Richard Bond, the chief executive of Tyson Foods, warned that if corn continues to be diverted from animal feed, consumers will likely pay “significantly” more for food.

Biofuels may have even more devastating effects in the rest of the world, especially on the prices of basic foods. If oil prices remain the people most vulnerable to the price hikes brought on by the biofuel boom will be those in countries that both suffer food deficits and import petroleum. The risk extends to a large part of the developing world.

*There isn’t enough.

Already, about 20% of the corn crop goes toward ethanol production. If all the arable land in the US were used for corn, the total crop could only supply about 20% of our gasoline needs.

*But even if ethanol costs a lot, isn't it good for the environment?

Not necessarily. Because it's an oxygenate, ethanol increases levels of nitrous oxides in the atmosphere and causes smog. Researchers are debating the extent to which it reduces greenhouse gases, with some estimates as low as 5%. Ethanol is less efficienct than gasoline, and it requires fossil fuels like coal, gas, and oil to refine and transport it.