US House: cars are cleaner, so we should use less ethanol

[HeavyGunner]

On May 30, 2016 at 8:56 AM, TeamsterGrrrl said:

As for energy use in making ethanol, do you really believe they're going to spend more on energy to make ethanol than they can sell the ethanol for?

Yes, that's why it's SUBSIDIZED. 

[TeamsterGrrrl]

There is no ethanol subsidy, it went away in 2011.

[m16ty]

Call it what you want but the government is still dumping tons of money into biofuels. 

All I'm saying is that if biofuels are such a great idea and so efficient, let the market decide. We don't need the government pushing it down our throat and spending huge amounts of my tax dollars on it.

 

 

David Pimentel, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University, et al., wrote the following in their Sep. 2008 article titled “Biofuel Impacts on World Food Supply: Use of Fossil Fuel, Land and Water Resources, published in Energies:

“Manufacture of a liter of 99.5% ethanol uses 46% more fossil energy than it produces and costs $1.05 per liter ($3.97 per gallon). The corn feedstock alone requires more than 33% of the total energy input.

The largest energy inputs in corn-ethanol production are for producing the corn feedstock plus the steam energy and electricity used in the fermentation/distillation process. The total energy input to produce a liter of ethanol is 7,474 kcal. However, a liter of ethanol has an energy value of only 5,130 kcal. Based on a net energy loss of 2,344 kcal of ethanol produced, 46% more fossil energy is expended than is produced as ethanol…

In 2006, nearly 19 billion liters of ethanol were produced on 20% of U.S. corn acreage. These 19 billion liters represents only 1% of total U.S. petroleum use. However, even if we completely ignore corn ethanol’s negative energy balance and high economic cost, we still find that it is absolutely not feasible to use ethanol as a replacement for U.S. oil consumption. If all 341 billion kg of corn produced in the U.S. were converted into ethanol at a rate of 2.69 kg per liters of ethanol, then 129 billion liters of ethanol could be produced. This would provide only 7% of total oil consumption in the U.S.”