Corn-based ethanol is bad even from a simple technical view: it takes a huge amount of energy to raise the corn, harvest it, and ship it to the production plants. Then it takes even more energy — and a huge amount of water as well — to process it from corn into ethanol. The energy-in to energy-out ratio is at best 1:1, though some studies find it to be more like 1:.80. Either way, it's not good.
However, biofuels (by that I mean ethanol and its superior cousin, biodiesel) can be made from more than one source. Corn-based ethanol is expensive and inefficient to produce. Biodiesel, on the other hand, is made from plant oil, such as canola or soy oil (the former being preferable to the latter in terms of energy output), or even fry grease. There's a plant up in Cashton, Wisc. that will make biodiesel from corn oil leftover from the corn-based ethanol plants. And there's active work on making biodiesel (and ethanol) by reusing the tons of scraps from paper mills. Far better that the scrap goes into making fuel rather than into our rapidly filling landfills.
Corn-based ethanol is bad even from a simple technical view: it takes a huge amount of energy to raise the corn, harvest it, and ship it to the production plants. Then it takes even more energy — and a huge amount of water as well — to process it from corn into ethanol. The energy-in to energy-out ratio is at best 1:1, though some studies find it to be more like 1:.80. Either way, it's not good.
ReplyDeleteHowever, biofuels (by that I mean ethanol and its superior cousin, biodiesel) can be made from more than one source. Corn-based ethanol is expensive and inefficient to produce. Biodiesel, on the other hand, is made from plant oil, such as canola or soy oil (the former being preferable to the latter in terms of energy output), or even fry grease. There's a plant up in Cashton, Wisc. that will make biodiesel from corn oil leftover from the corn-based ethanol plants. And there's active work on making biodiesel (and ethanol) by reusing the tons of scraps from paper mills. Far better that the scrap goes into making fuel rather than into our rapidly filling landfills.