ETHANOL FOR DUMMIES

If all the automobiles in the United States were fueled with 100 percent ethanol, a total of about 97 percent of U.S. land area would be needed to grow the corn feedstock. Corn would cover nearly the total land area of the United States. That’s total. Including every city, town, and community. This assumes that all desert land and all rock land such as mountains and the Dakota Badlands would be used.

The average U.S. automobile, traveling 10,000 miles a year on pure ethanol (not a gasoline-ethanol mix) would need about 852 gallons of the corn-based fuel. This would take 11 acres to grow, based on net ethanol production. This is the same amount of cropland required to feed seven Americans, who by the way won'’t be eating anything at all since all land has been used up to grow corn.

Besides the environazis, U.S. corporations joined the drive to ethanol, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Carghill being the biggest. Wonder why? Well, the way ethanol is made, corn also yields products such as high-fructose corn sweetener, the major sugar substitute in candy and soft drinks . It is here that things get really hairy because the sugar people get into the act. Why? Because sugar processors get a subsidy of around eighteen cents per pound, a price that prices sugar out of the market for candy and soft drink use because the CORN syrup comes in at around sixteen cents, a two cent savings (this year there is a temporary spike in sugar prices). The big agri-business processors are behind both the sugar subsidy AND the drive for corn based ethanol.

Cutting to the chase on this point: The same companies behind the sugar subsidies are fueling the charge to switch to ethanol. It's the money, stupid.

Continuing with the ethanol stupidity: Gasoline is more efficient than ethanol. One gallon of gasoline is equal to 1.5 gallons of ethanol. This means that a 30 mpg Camry would only get about 20 miles to the gallon if it were running on ethanol. Through research performed at Cornell University, we know that 1 acre of land can yield about 7,110 pounds of corn, which can be processed into 328 gallons of ethanol. That is about 26.1 pounds of corn per gallon.

Let's pretend we're planning to cross the country. How much ethanol fuel will we need? Well, 2,774 miles / 20 miles per gallon = 138.7 gallons. We know that it takes 26.1 pounds of corn to make 1 gallon of ethanol, so we can now calculate how many pounds of corn we need to fuel the Camry on its trip: 138.7 gallons times 26.1 pounds = 3,620.07 total pounds of corn (which is also known as seventeen shitloads). This means that someone has to plant a little more than a half an acre of corn to produce enough ethanol to fuel your trip.

If you think you would save any money by using ethanol, guess again. Producing ethanol costs a hell of a lot of money compared with fossil fuel energy. Ethanol is expensive to process. According to the research from Cornell (the best left wing study going), you need about 140 gallons of fossil fuel to plant, grow and harvest an acre of corn. So, even before the corn is converted to ethanol, you're spending about $1.05 per gallon (that's 2001 dollars, the year of the study. Today it's $3 per gallon x 140 which is $420 total).

The energy economics get worse at the processing plants, where the grain is crushed and fermented. The corn has to be processed with various enzymes; yeast is added to the mixture to ferment it and make alcohol; the alcohol is then distilled to fuel-grade ethanol that is 85- to 95-percent pure. To produce ethanol that can be used as fuel, it also has to be denatured with a small amount of gasoline.

The final cost of the fuel-grade ethanol is about $1.74 per gallon in 2001 dollars. So with gasoline at $2 not counting taxes, ethanol is cheaper even though wewouldn't have any roads to run our cars on because all the land will be used to grow corn, and even better for the environuts, there will be no factories left in which to build cars because they too are growing corn.

We, the USA, consume about 20 million barrels of oil each day. If you look at the statistics you find that a barrel of oil will yield something like 19 or 20 gallons of gasoline, depending on the refinery. Therefore the United States consumes something like 400 million gallons of gasoline every day. Taking this out to a year, the U.S. consumes about 146 billion gallons of gasoline per!

Now get this one: It takes more energy to make ethanol from grain than the combustion of ethanol produces. The lefty Cornell study tells us that, "abusing our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient process that yields low-grade automobile fuel amounts to unsustainable, subsidized food burning." Lefty intellectual speak for "we will starve because the land will be useless in a few growing seasons."

The Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences and Technology says: An acre of U.S. corn yields about 7,110 pounds of corn for processing into 328 gallons of ethanol. But planting, growing and harvesting that much corn requires about 140 gallons of fossil fuels and costs $347 per acre, according to the analysis. Thus, even before corn is converted to ethanol, the feedstock costs $1.05 per gallon of ethanol (2001 dollars and prices).

Further, the study found that about 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in ethanol. Every time you make 1 gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTU.

In other words, ethanol is another hate Republicans hype by the usual suspects on the Left who are joined by the "let's make money" usual suspects on the Right who populate our ethically challenged business community. So there!

Tomorrow: whale oil, the cheaper alternative.

Sources include Cornell research
The Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology. I have shamelessly plaigarized from both. They are both too complicated to understand anyway.