[Ken in Eastman]

Oh, I forgot. The 60 to 65% more fuel consumed than produced includes fertilization, planting, harvesting, etc. and that seems to be the standard on reputable sites. Can you give me a site that gives figures that disprove the numbers I used (including all energy spent on crop production and refinement)? If I’m wrong, I’d like to know and I need to see studies that show it.

Thanks.

[thackney]

http://www.nrdc.org/air/transportation/ethanol/ethanol.pdf

I do not believe you will find a single real study that claims 60~65%.

Ethanol contains 23.6 megajoules per liter of ethanol. The highest values claimed (but disproved) were by Pimentel and Patzek of 29%.

[thackney]

This brief publication includes a chart of the energy requirements for the production of ethanol, and by who and when. You can see that some of the earlier studies like by Patzek were later replaced by a study showing less energy used to produced.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/program/ethanol_brochure_color.pdf

I'm not trying to push ethanol; I work in the oil/gas industry. I am against the ethanol subsidy. But I want to see the information given out on Free Republic to be factual.