Is ethanol really a good alternative fuel?
Published Fri, May 18 2007 2:43 PM
Technorati Tags: Global Warming, Political Correctness
We've all been told that "ethanol", being a renewable bio-fuel is good for the environment and will help to cut back on emissions of CO2 as well as our need for "foreign oil". I have to ask though, is ethanol really a good alternative fuel?
Here are a few things to consider. In the United States, most ethanol for fuel comes from corn. Normally, the corn that is used to make the ethanol would have gone into the food supply. Even when corn is used to make ethanol, some of it still goes into the food supply, but it's the parts of the corn that can't be used to make ethanol, so it only goes into the food supply as low quality animal feed.
The demand for ethanol, coupled with government subsidies and mandates means that more land is used to grow corn. This is land that used to sit idle as habitat for animals, or whatever. This surely ought to have the environmentalists up in arms, as the Wall Street Journal has noted (with a hat tip to FaultLine USA).
Ethanol is produced through the fermentation of sugars by yeast. All of the sugars used to produce ethanol from corn are removed from the food supply. That means that there's less corn syrup available to put on grocer's shelves, or to be used to make soda pop, or many other foods. The CSPI is probably jumping up and down with glee over that one. Me, I'm watching food prices rise.
I'm not just watching food prices rise where the foods contain corn as an ingredient either. Meat prices are on the rise, because the price of animal feed is going up. That cost gets passed on to the consumer. The CSPI is probably loving that one too, since it means less people can afford to eat meat. PETA is probably rejoicing over it too.
Liberals though ought to be horrified by this. After all, they're the "champions of the downtrodden". The entire progressive tax system is meant to help those with lower incomes by taking money from those with higher incomes and redistributing it amongst the "needy". Yet here we have a government mandated program that makes food more expensive, and thus less available to the poor. Unless they're on food stamps that is.
Ethanol is supposed to be good for the environment in other ways. It's supposed to reduce pollution when used as a motor fuel. One of the reasons is that as a fuel it's already partially oxygenated. It turns out though that burning ethanol still produces CO2, as well as other pollutants. After all, ethanol is made up of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Burning that carbon will still produce CO2. You just can't get away from it.
Let's not forget either that ethanol is produced by the fermentation of sugars as I mentioned earlier. Guess what one of the byproducts of that fermentation is... go on... That's right... CO2.
So even if you're burning ethanol instead of gasoline, you're still producing greenhouse gasses. Oh, and burning the hydrogen in ethanol produces H2O, another common greenhouse gas. Of course you get that one from burning gasoline too.
But ethanol is a "renewable" fuel source the environmentalists say. That's true, but guess where the fertilizer to produce the corn that becomes ethanol comes from? That's right... petroleum. And it takes almost as much energy to produce ethanol as a fuel as that ethanol provides when it's burned. Not quite as much energy, but the savings aren't as great as some would have you believe.
There are other factors to consider too, like the fuel efficiency of vehicles using ethanol, as well as the corrosive effects it has on aluminum engine parts. Altogether, I would say that the only people that really benefit from the corn-based ethanol scam are midwest farmers that grow the ethanol and get government subsidies. And the states that reap the tax benefits from the sale of the ethanol.
It's certainly overrated as an alternative fuel.
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Panhandle Poet responded with:
 | Ethanol is a boondoggle any way you slice it. Spend our tax money on something that makes sense! |
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