Corn Based Ethanol: A solution or scam?
Written by: Admin
President Obama along with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new bio-fuel standards on February 3, 2010 to increase supply of renewable fuels especially the corn-based ethanol. The steps are also aimed to create jobs and combat global warming. To read the press release, visit EPA. The announcement raised concerns throughout the oil industry.
The use of corn-based ethanol as a renewable fuel has been always surrounded with the controversies. The proponents claim that the ethanol will help reduce future fossil fuel or gasoline shortages, improve farmers’ income, prevent global warming, and would be a great investment. The opponents are concerned that ethanol as a fuel is quite corrosive, has less net gain energy, uses large amount of water, increases food prices, and has adverse impact on the environment.
Both sides present their cases with strong arguments. Ed Wallace in his column on BusinessWeek wrote that ethanol is a scam. He said, “Don’t let anybody mislead you: The new push to get a 15% ethanol mandate out of Washington is simply to restore profitability to a failed industry”. Growth Energy which is an ethanol trade group responded with another article rebutting all claims made by Ed Wallace. Growth Energy mentioned, “In his column, Mr. Wallace fails in his journalistic duty to provide readers with the facts. He relies on anecdotal evidence in support of his erroneous claims while completely ignoring the large body of scientific literature that supports the use of higher blends of ethanol in vehicles”. To read full counter arguments of Growth Energy, read Growth Energy Responses to BusinessWeek.com Article.
Each group may have their own agenda. We like to know your views as an independent person. Do you consider corn-based ethanol as a renewable fuel and worth the investment? or you think that ethanol based fuel is a scam favoring a particular industry on the expense of oil industry?
Post your comments here!
February 7th, 2010 at 11:51 am
The trade groups will always try to protect their best interest whether it is oil industry or the ethanol industry. I think ethanol is worth an investment. I understand the concerns that it uses more water and has less net energy gain. However, those seem like the result of lack our knowledge and use of technology to efficiently produce the ethanol. Everything that is new and requires change looks difficult in the begining. For example, when computers came out people thought that it will take away jobs. However, as we can see now that computers actually replaced those jobs by high paying jobs and improved efficiency in everything that we do today.
As far as ethanol producing less net gain is concern, read article at http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/TA/267.pdf and decide.
February 7th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
I am not sure whether ethanol is the right solution or not. I am just curious about its scalability. I mean, how much corn we have to grow to come up with sizable amount of bio-fuels that could make a difference in replacing fossil fuel? The idea sounds good if someone can efficiently convert corn into fuel- that is without wasting much of the corn.