Ethanol will be highly toughted by uninformed greenies. But
there are many facts that will surely be omitted in the
discussion. From an April, 2005 energy bulletin:
“In terms of renewable fuels, ethanol is the worst solution,” Patzek
says. “It has the highest energy cost with the least benefit.”
It may sound green, Patzek says, but that’s because many
scientists are not looking at the whole picture. According to his
research, more fossil energy is used to produce ethanol than the energy
contained within it.
Patzek’s ethanol critique began during a freshman seminar he taught in
which he and his students calculated the energy balance of the biofuel.
Taking into account the energy required to grow the corn and convert it
into ethanol, they determined that burning the biofuel as a gasoline
additive actually results in a net energy loss of 65 percent. Later,
Patzek says he realized the loss is much more than that even.
Then again, we probably won’t hear much about these facts in the ensuing debate. Makes you go HUH??
