Originally Posted By: NibbanaBanana
From what I read, ethanol is a scam. It's made from corn and the only ones who benefit are the heavily subsidized corn producers and ethanol industry. It take 1 gallon of diesel fuel to produce 1.25 gallons of ethanol. Why? Because the corn has to be processed and then distilled. In the meantime, all that corn that could have been used for food has been burned up.
It's another thing that sounds good on the surface and is easy to sell to the public. But the only ones who really benefit are the ethanol producers.
Are corn flakes or corn bread muffins becoming scarce and cost prohibitive? Even with the ethanol production, there is more than enough corn to meet food needs. Now whether people in other parts of the world can't get it, that is a function of their government and local economics.
And one thing that gets overlooked, is that for every bushel of corn that goes into an ethanol plant, 17 lb of food grade products, plastics/polymers, and such comes out the other end. Once a bushel of corn goes into the plant it is not lost to anything else.
Corn is rock bottom cheap now. Based on price in mid year 1995 for a bushel of corn, about $3 a bushel, if the pricing had kept up with inflation, the per bushel price would be $4.78. But the trading price as of today in hovering around $3.25 at my local grain cooperative. So corn is technically cheaper than it was in 1995. Thus, there is no scarcity in corn for food or any other purpose.
That energy to make ethanol thing is skewed. It is not a gallon per gallon equation. It is actually 1 BTU of energy to make 1.25 BTU of ethanol. There is a net gain. And that energy input is from all sources of energy used in the process..... diesel, natural gas, propane, etc. It is not 1 BTU of diesel to make 1.25 BTU of ethanol.
If folks would just do a little research and not rely on articles with biases in them, they might actually know what they are talking about.
Now I will concur somewhat, that ethanol is not the best way to go about this. Taking ethanol production one more step and making Butanol from the same feed stock and ethanol plant processing would be a better fuel for a broad range of applications. Until there is a real demand for using Butanol over ethanol, there is going to be no motivation for the ethanol producers to invest in the upgrades to make Butanol from their ethanol. Maybe folks that have such a fit over ethanol should direct some of that ire towards the hired help at their state capitols and D.C. to convince them to make the business climate more favorable to producing butanol over ethanol. I regularly write my hired help and advocate for this. But I am just one voice. It takes a lot of us doing it to have any effect.