More Facts about Fuel Ethanol

http://zfacts.com/p/870.html

How far can you drive?
If you get 30 mpg on gas, you'd get 20 mpg on pure ethanol. It has just less than 2/3 the energy-per-gallon of gasoline. That's physics. EPA has measured every type of flexible-fuel car in the US fleet, and that's how it turned out in reality.

Corn ethanol is just 200 proof corn whiskey.

Doesn't ethanol have a positive net energy balance?
Sure enough. Best current estimate is that it uses only 80% of its energy to make it. Because it uses coal, is saves more imported fossil than this indicates, but does worse on greenhouse gases. And what does it cost. Net energy just doesn't tell us much.

Doesn't switching to ethanol make lots of jobs?
Yes, but it destroys just as many. Big job number assume money from heaven. Sending billions to the corn states, stimulates their economies, but where does it come from?

Feeding 20% of our corn to cars is raising food prices.
What happens when it's 45%? This is one more uncounted cost, and it's a cost to Mexico and China as well as the US.

Does ethanol make the air cleaner?
Using a little ethanol in old cars reduces pollution. But there is almost no effect for cars built after 1990.

Isn’t corn ethanol a new technology that will soon be much cheaper?
No, we’ve been making corn whiskey for 150 years. Henry Ford's Model T's ran on ethanol. There is very little technical progress on corn (sugar) ethanol any more.

http://zfacts.com/p/870.html | 01/18/12 07:21 GMT