Ethanol

On Sunday night I was watching "Broken Government" on CNN. The first topic that they were talking about was ethanol and pros and cons to using it. It had a couple different people on the show arguing both sides. Bob Dineen from Renewable Fuel Commission, Ken Cook and environmental expert, and Professor Pinintall from Cornell University.



Bob Dineen stated that the government is trying to move into a more doemstic fuel production so we aren't relying on foreign oil.



Ken Cook states that ethanol isn't as clean as people think. To produce ethanol we use coal plants, which are the biggest polluntants of all. We need to put more energy into producing to then we get out of it, so even though ethanol itself is "green," it is not efficient. He believes that politicans don't want to face "the wrath of the corn lobbyists."



Professor Pinintall states that we can't produce enough ethanol to even put a dent in our oil consumption. He brings up the point that using ethanol will not lessen our depedence on foreign oil.



One quick basic fact that was said during the show was that the government spends $5 billion in corn subsidies for ethanol. This iis a lot of money coming from the taxpayers pockets.

I thought it was a very interesting segment. I learned quite a bit more about ethanol. At first I thought it was a good thing, but now after watching this and doing some more research I would have to disagree with using ethanol (sorry Krista!!). If the government is paying $5 billion in subsidies and it is more expensive than oil then it is definitely not cost effective. Also it pushes the price of food as a whole up for consumers. Another negative I found on cnn.com is that "It takes about seven barrels of oil to make eight barrels of ethanol." (True or False: Ethanol") So it is not lowering our dependency on foreign oil, and it would not help gas prices go down. Another thing is that ethanol isn't as fuel efficient as oil so we will be using more oil and ethanol the more we produce ethanol as an energy source for vehicles. Lastly I think that it is negative because of Ken Cook's comment from above. He talks about ethanol being less environmentally friendly than most people think. And that it takes more energy to produce ethanol than the output of ethanol energy.

There are some benefits of using ethanol, such as, it is a renewable energy source. It can be domestically produced for us. And lastly it burns cleaner than gas does. Even though these three things are positives, I believe that the negatives outweigh the positives and this country needs to begin to look for different alternative energy sources for vehicles.

Some websites to check out for more facts include:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/02/25/eco.myths.oil/index.html?iref=newssearch

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2006/tc20060519_225336.htm (this one has a lot of background information on ethanol)

http://www.ethanol.org/

http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/fuels/ethanol.html