Hold The Corn! More Corn Ethanol May Increase Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The Lid/Various ^ | 3/15/2010 | The Lid

[Shellybenoit]

Ethanol is a controversial issue. To some the use of corn to make fuel is causing food shortages and driving up to cost of food. Here is a little secret. It would be much more efficient to use sugar cane to make ethanol than corn. Corn Ethanol generates 2x the energy than it takes to produce it. Sugar Cane Ethanol generates 8x the energy than it takes to produce it. So why are we using Corn? Well Sugar Cane comes from other countries, and most of our Corn based Ethanol comes from Illinois conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland. During the Campaign, the NY Times reported:

Obama's lead advisor on energy and environmental issues, Jason Grumet, came to the campaign from the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan initiative associated with Daschle and Bob Dole, the Kansas Republican who is also a former Senate majority leader and a big ethanol backer who had close ties to the agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland.

Not long after arriving in the Senate, Obama himself briefly provoked a controversy by flying at subsidized rates on corporate airplanes, including twice on jets owned by Archer Daniels Midland, which is the nation's largest ethanol producer and is based in his home state.

Now there is another "bump" in the corn ethanol road. A new analysis (embedded below) analyzes greenhouse gas release for maize ethanol produced in the United States. The study shows that at the very least Corn based ethanol does not reduce green house and it may very well increase green house emissions.

[BitWielder1]

Whenever you cook one kind of fuel into another, there will be losses.
The best way to use bio-energy is to cultivate whatever weed grows best in that locale and shove it into a nearby burner to generate electricity or heat.
No other conversion is necessary.
Let the cars run on pure gasoline.
Don't compete with our food supply.
Wood is good!

[I got the rope]

Corn Ethanol generates 2x the energy than it takes to produce it. Sugar Cane Ethanol generates 8x the energy than it takes to produce it.

Wrong!!!!! Corn ethanol generates 2x less energy than it takes to produce it. Not sure what the figure is for sugar cane...but both are net losers.

[Hoodat]

Burning ethanol for fuel emits twice the CO2 as its gasoline equivalent.

[I got the rope]

True...for two reasons...because it has a lower energy content in Btu/gal of fuel than gasoline you are burning more “carbon” based fuel (ethanol).

Two... you have to burn some fuel...usually natural gas to create the heat to generate, distill, and ship the ethanol from places that create it.

[Mr. Lucky]

Facts rarely are allowed to get in the way of a good rant, but "most of" the ethanol produced in the United States does not come from Archer Daniels Midland.

In 2009, there were 160 American producers of fuel grade ethanol, the largest of which produced 11% of the total volume. ADM, by the way, wasn't the largest; Poet Biorefining was, while Valero Energy was third.