Posted by manualblock [ 69.112.43.172 ] on May 09, 2006 at 09:24:56:

In Reply to: Interesting article on ethonal posted by Bill Martinelli on May 09, 2006 at 08:35:49:

The Ethanol lobby is growing exponentially as the price of oil goes up. Now the basic laws of economics will tell us that soemone sees the potential to make lots of money or the business associations would not be paying huge sums to lobby to push this initiative.
So I check out a few facts surrounding the manufacture and sales of ethanol.
Adding up the energy costs of corn production and it's conversion to ethanol, 131,000 BTU's are needed to make one gallon of ethanol. The one gallon of E has an energy value of 77,000 BTU's. That means about 70% more energy is needed to produce E than is in E. Thats a net loss of 54,000 BTU's. The big problem is that it requires 1.74$ per gallon of E to produce one gallon of fuel. But in that price is all of the government subsidies that go to the folks who grow corn. So the taxpayer is shouldering much of the price of making that E. So we switch from paying at the pump to paying at the polls if we go to an Ethanol based feul economy.
Corn is a very damaging crop to grow in terms of the land. Corn production erodes the land twelve times faster than it can be restored. If we were to revert to a Ethanol based system we would run out of arable land to grow corn faster than we use up petroleum. Then of course the price skyrockets for E.
There is approximately one Billion dollars a year in subsidies going to Ethanol production. This shunts land for growing other things out and also since most of our cattle and livestock are corn-fed; the use of the land for fuel will cause a rise in prices for all foodstuffs. This rise will not only offset the increased price of oil but will eventually eclipse it as the land degrades.

Remmember....There is no FREE LUNCH.

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