Ethanol may cause more global warming?

1. Gasoline has an energy balance of 5 to 1, that is you get 5 times out what it takes to produce it. Corn ethanol has an energy balance of 1.3 to 1, barely any energy advantage. We consume almost as much making it that we get out of it.

2. Ethanol breaks down easily. It cannot be shipped by pipeline or stored for long periods. So it must be delivered by trucks. All that additional trucking produces more pollution, possibly more than what would be prevented by using ethanol. Not to mention additional wear on the roadways.

And because it can't be stored for long periods it may cause fuel shortages during peak demand.

3. Agriculture business is among the highest polluters. Farming and harvesting corn produces pollution. Possibly more than would be prevented by using ethanol. In order to produce enough ethanol to replace gasoline it would require farming every single piece of land available, greatly increasing pollution from agriculture business.

4. Ethanol may not produce as much usable power in combustion engines compared to gasoline. Lower fuel economy from ethanol means it takes more of it for the same functionality as gasoline.

Plus, corn is the top subsidized crop in the United States. A major portion of the pump price for ethanol is already paid for with tax money. If you take out the subsidies and tax incentives to produce it, it costs significantly more than gasoline.

And, the United States corn crop is responsible for feeding the world. If that goes into making fuel the most impoverished lands will suffer more.

Sugar cane ethanol is much better, an energy balance of about 8 to 1, but there's nowhere near enough available to make it practical.

Ethanol isn't the answer PERIOD.

For ethanol to be our answer, it would require ensuring the plants a minimum profit to keep them in operation...something liberals would oppose, and strictly regulating them to a maximum profit margin....something cons would oppose.

An article like this should tell you one thing if you knew anything about how science and corporate economies merge. This is trying to push people away from the ethanol idea, and get them moving toward Hydrogen fuel.

Considering Production has been increase per unit of raw material during fermentation recently, and now the government is handing out a few million dollar grants to people for research in how to boost production even more.

Hydrogen fuel cells are right around the corner.

Also the scientists doing the research in this article, fail to realize that currently research is being conducted to reduce agricultural emissions with use of microorganisms.

I said it before, and I'll say it again...

Ethanol will probably be the future source of fuel for smaller portable engines, while a combination of bioldeisel and hydrogen fuel cells are utilized for the larger engines and automobiles.

I give ethanol a mixed review. In the US, ethanol fuel is produced mostly from maize. Some studies have indicated that the production of ethanol from corn consumes more energy than it yields. America’s energy policy is based solely on market forces, such as maximizing profits and investment, and is not based on a sound environmental policy or alternative fuel policy.

Ethanol from corn is one of the least effective ways to produce it. It very well could be true that if maize ethanol was America’s primary source of energy, then we would all starve.

On the other hand, with better research and technology, we could make ethanol work. Produce ethanol from switchgrass and we would have better results; but, farmers would still have to plant less crops to grow a significant quantity of switchgrass to produce a worthwhile quantity of ethanol from this source

I’ve read articles that suggests that algae can be manipulated to produce ethanol.[1] Each region of the country could have an ethanol-algae producing plant; and then, not only could farms continue to grow food items, we also would not have to worry about transporting ethanol around the country (which uses energy).

Another potential source of ethanol is landfills.[2] There is probably enough garbage rotting in landfills to produce ethanol energy for a significant portion of the nation’s energy needs. Ethanl will never be the ENTIRE solution, but combined with solar, wind, wave, and geothermal energy, we can reduce our dependency on fossil fuels.

When it comes to reducing our dependency on fossil fuels, we are only limited by our lack of imagination and the political power of special interests.

as said below gas is 5:1 and Ethanol is 1.3:1

the new high tech engines of today burn SOO clean it's not funny a new ford focus PZEV will drive about 50 miles to make the same co2 footprint as a gas mower makes in 5 minutes...

petrol based gas makes more power burns extreamly clean and is cheaper to produce

Ethanol is... well it's make from plants and therfore renuable... but it'll take it's toll on the soil, in time

no because ethanol lets out a VERY signifigantly less amount of CO2 emissions then regular petroleum does. Then again I'm only sure of this with CO2, but even if it does emit other primary pollutants they can most likely be broken up by NO naturally anyways

Ethanol added to gasoline makes the gas less effecient so you get less mpg's. so the more the ethanol in the gas, the more gas must be used since the lower effeciency

it dose reduce greenhouse gas emissions but only slightly. oil is still used to grow and transport grains which are used to make Ethanol.

Ethanol is at best a temporary solution. unless we can somehow work out how to grow all the food the world will need and also have enough land to "grow" fuel ethanol will only create problems. the future of fuels are hydrogen fuel cells. they are the most energy dense and hydrogen is very abundant.

read this about ethanol production

Only transient Aliens could have aproved that.

They are intending to replace most of the indigenous Forrest's in the world ,with mono cultures for the production of Ethanol,

Non sustainable, chemically grown ,heavily irrigated (with water needed for communities)one specie Forrest's,that have only plagues of insects as fauna which are controlled with pesticides.

Killing all bio diversity,in both flora and fauna ,adding to the destruction and extinction of species ,like nothing we have ever seen before.

All in the quest for alternative energy and to save the Environment ,

The irony here is that the growing eagerness to slow climate change by using biofuels and planting millions of trees for carbon credits has resulted in new major causes of deforestation, say activists. And that is making climate change worse because deforestation puts far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire world's fleet of cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined.

"Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil," said Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition, an environmental NGO based in Asunción, Paraguay. "We call it 'deforestation diesel'," Lovera told IPS.

Oil from African palm trees is considered to be one of the best and cheapest sources of biodiesel and energy companies are investing billions into acquiring or developing oil-palm plantations in developing countries. Vast tracts of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and many other countries have been cleared to grow oil palms. Oil palm has become the world's number one fruit crop, well ahead of bananas.

Biodiesel offers many environmental benefits over diesel from petroleum, including reductions in air pollutants, but the enormous global thirst means millions more hectares could be converted into monocultures of oil palm. Getting accurate numbers on how much forest is being lost is very difficult.

The FAO's State of the World's Forests 2007 released last week reports that globally, net forest loss is 20,000 hectares per day -- equivalent to an area twice the size of Paris. However, that number includes plantation forests, which masks the actual extent of tropical deforestation, about 40,000 hectares (ha) per day, says Matti Palo, a forest economics expert who is affiliated with the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica.

"The half a million ha per year deforestation of Mexico is covered by the increase of forests in the U.S., for example," Palo told IPS.

National governments provide all the statistics, and countries like Canada do not produce anything reliable, he said. Canada has claimed no net change in its forests for 15 years despite being the largest producer of pulp and paper. "Canada has a moral responsibility to tell the rest of the world what kind of changes have taken place there," he said.

Plantation forests are nothing like natural or native forests. More akin to a field of maize, plantation forests are hostile environments to nearly every animal, bird and even insects. Such forests have been shown to have a negative impact on the water cycle because non-native, fast-growing trees use high volumes of water. Pesticides are also commonly used to suppress competing growth from other plants and to prevent disease outbreaks, also impacting water quality.

Plantation forests also offer very few employment opportunities, resulting in a net loss of jobs. "Plantation forests are a tremendous disaster for biodiversity and local people," Lovera said. Even if farmland or savanna are only used for oil palm or other plantations, it often forces the local people off the land and into nearby forests, including national parks, which they clear to grow crops, pasture animals and collect firewood. That has been the pattern with pulp and timber plantation forests in much of the world, says Lovera.

Ethanol is other major biofuel, which is made from maize, sugar cane or other crops. As prices for biofuels climb, more land is cleared to grow the crops. U.S. farmers are switching from soy to maize to meet the ethanol demand. That is having a knock on effect of pushing up soy prices, which is driving the conversion of the Amazon rainforest into soy, she says. Meanwhile rich countries are starting to plant trees to offset their emissions of carbon dioxide, called carbon sequestration. Most of this planting is taking place in the South in the form of plantations, which are just the latest threat to existing forests. "Europe's carbon credit market could be disastrous," Lovera said.

The multi-billion-euro European carbon market does not permit the use of reforestation projects for carbon credits. But there has been a tremendous surge in private companies offering such credits for tree planting projects. Very little of this money goes to small land holders, she says. Plantation forests also contain much less carbon, notes Palo, citing a recent study that showed carbon content of plantation forests in some Asian tropical countries was only 45 percent of that in the respective natural forests. Nor has the world community been able to properly account for the value of the enormous volumes of carbon stored in existing forests.

One recent estimate found that the northern Boreal forest provided 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services such as absorbing carbon emissions from the atmosphere and cleaning water. The good news is that deforestation, even in remote areas, is easily stopped. All it takes is access to some low-cost satellite imagery and governments that actually want to slow or halt deforestation. Costa Rica has nearly eliminated deforestation by making it illegal to convert forest into farmland, says Lovera.

Paraguay enacted similar laws in 2004, and then regularly checked satellite images of its forests, sending forestry officials and police to enforce the law where it was being violated. "Deforestation has been reduced by 85 percent in less than two years in the eastern part of the country," Lovera noted. The other part of the solution is to give control over forests to the local people. This community or model forest concept has proved to be sustainable in many parts of the world. India recently passed a bill returning the bulk of its forests back to local communities for management, she said.

However, economic interests pushing deforestation in countries like Brazil and Indonesia are so powerful, there may eventually be little natural forest left. "Governments are beginning to realize that their natural forests have enormous value left standing," Lovera said. "A moratorium or ban on deforestation is the only way to stop this."

This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ - International Federation of Environmental Journalists.

© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service

Source: http://www.commondreams.org/