Is Domestically Produced Ethanol Worth the Cost?

A million times yes, there needs to be more awareness of how ridiculous corn ethanol is.<p>Corn ethanol is more an indirect way of converting coal to something your car can run on. There are many other more efficient plant sources that do not require large doses of fertilizer and herbicides, usually drawn from coal energy.

As much as I'd like to see us move away from oil, everything I've seen has pointed to corn ethanol not being very good for the task.

The article and its implications is worth reading in its entirety. Corn-based ethanol is a farm subsidy, an inefficient energy solution, and it's bad for the environment (corn is grown as a monoculture) and its growth takes up a lot of water. Corn just grown for ethanol (with 10% in our gas) takes up 115,800 square miles -- or more than the entire state of Arizona! Imagine other things we could do with that land. With talk of increasing it from 10% to 15%, that's another half a state of Arizona dedicated to corn. It increases the cost of land. Growing corn involves adding nitrogen fertilizer, tractors, transportation, and the net yield of energy is barely more than the energy put into growing it. And yet our dysfunctional country can't seem to get enough of this terrible idea. How do we stop it?

american biofuels: subsidized food burning.

Ethanol itself is far superior to petroleum distillates for internal combustion engines, especially small displacement turbocharged ones. This point needs to be made /extremely/ clear to everyone before pursuing the political end of the discussion.

Some counterpoints to the article<p><a href="http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-busted-2/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-bust...</a>

"But even setting subsidies aside—after all, every energy source in use in the U.S. today continues to receive federal tax benefits, among other incentives—there's the simple economic cost of building all those corn mills, stainless steel fermentation tanks and other infrastructure needed to churn out ethanol on the tremendous scale of transportation fuels."<p>Maybe the subsidies should go there, to promote job creation in those areas for the infrastructure buildup.

Corn welfare must END (and I am very liberal/progressive if that matters).<p>But considering it's Iowa we are talking about, most politicians if they want to be president won't touch it with a 10-foot pole.<p>Ethanol is destroying small engines (generators, lawn mowers, etc) and most definitely reduces mpg by 10%<p><pre><code> a gallon of ethanol costs approximately 17 percent less than that of a gallon of gasoline </code></pre> That is why gas distributors love it - they not only get goverment welfare for using ethanol, it allows them to dilute the less profitable gasoline (to 'cut' it).<p>(and yes, I use "subsidies" and "welfare" interchangeably because it's corporate welfare)<p><pre><code> Researchers at U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory </code></pre> Let's get INDEPENDENT scientists not funded by the oil industry or government to write an article and I'll trust it.

I don't know. I do know that upping ethanol levels in gas will not make all the motorcycle riders out there happy.

That reminds me; the saison I've got going in the secondary needs to be bottled this weekend.<p>(Didn't read the article)

I tried the foreign stuff: It also gave me a hangover in the morning.