In the Frbruary 12, 2007 issue of U.S. News & World Report magazine is a story about ethanol. It asks 'Is Ethanol the Answer?'. It mentions Galva, Iowa as an example. This small town of less than 400 has put $13 million into the hands of investors since 2002. This is good for this small town. But is ethanol the answer? I think not. The government is paying out billions in subsidies to the ethanol industry. That's our money. While running alcohol in cars is nothing new; Henry Ford Ford built his 1909 Model T to run on gasoline or ethanol. While it's good for Archer Daniels Midland, Vera-Sun, and others, we as consumers get hit more than once. We pay for it with the federal subsidies, we are going to pay for it with higher meat prices and produce prices this summer, and we pay for it because it's extimated that we use 1.5 gallons of E-85 to go as far as 1 gallon of gasoline will get us. Last year's ethanol production used up 20% of the U.S. corn crop. This could grow to 50% by next year in the governments new push for ethanol. Feed corn, on the other hand dropped by 10%.
Now it's E-85 that's getting pushed. Even though it's only available at 1,000 of the Nation's 180,000 gas stations. The house should pass a bill this year that will direct federal agencies to figure out how to make the change. And even if E-85 was widely available, only 2.5% of all the cars in the country could run it. Automakers aren't making more E-85 vehicles because Congress created an incentive that allows them to produce more gas guzzlers so long as they make a minimum amount of flex fuel vehicles. Thanks to Congress's CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards fuel effiency has dropped since 1988, which is a problem since E-85 makes for lousy gas mileage. Ethanol CAN be produced with non-food based vegetation. Things like cornhusks and rice hulls, or even switchgrass. This would ease reliance on edible grain and add another bonus: Biotech enzymes rather than heat energy would break down the cellulose to fuel, reducing greenhouse gases to a fraction of those produced by corn. I'll keep running regular unleaded. And instead of pushing a product that ends up so costly, shouldn't research and development of other viable fuels be the priority?
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3 comments:
Ethanol is not THE answer. It's only one part of a much more complicated solution to the overall problem.
The costs and the government subsidies are too high, I agree. Without the subsidy we'd be left to pure capitalist forces. We'd still be waiting for the first gallon of ethanol if that were the case. We need to start replacing the oil from the Middle East. Some of that replacement needs to come from ethanol and other bio-fuels.
America needs to take action quickly to start a multi-faceted approach to reducing our consumption and dependance on foreign oil as well as CO2 emmisions. There are no easy answers and there will be many parts to any good solution.
Good points dave. Maybe if the government would allow all the capped oil wells to start pumping we wouldn't rely of Foreign oil at all. DuPont and BP are working on Butanol R&D in England, but they're still around 4 years away from having that perfected. If that happens the ethanol plants could be converted and the pipelines could be used. At the same cost as ethanol to produce per gallon and the ability to use 100% butanol to power vehicles it seems like the next logical step.
Well, if we eliminate the Subsidies and allow in the better, Brazilian made sugar cane Ethanol we'd be getting somewhere.
Though, butning things is just no longer a good idea.
If we spent what we've spent on the war on energy R&D (especially fusion) we'd be on our way to cheap/available power. BUT the current energy companies want nothing to do with it.
Hmmmm, wonder why?
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