If I understand it correctly, the idea is to use up large amounts of money, fuel, land and water to grow food, and then, using up more money, energy and water, that food is turned into ethanol.
Then, that ethanol gets blended with gasoline, which by itself has more energy than ethanol, to create a lower energy replacement for gasoline, in order to save money and have a cleaner environment.
However, because the gasohol has less energy than gasoline, vehicles get fewer miles per gallon than with pure gas, and thus burn more fuel to go the same distance.
Is that close, because that sounds crazy. Does anyone speak "Common Core" and can explain this math to me?
Why don't we just use gasoline for fuel, eat the food we grow, responsibly enjoy the ethanol we distill and save the water for better uses?
Ethanol was developed as an extender. It was viewed as a real threat by the oil industry, till they got a piece of the action.
The best companies (of which my former company used to be one till they went chasing solar) used ethanol as a way to make cattle feed and CO2. That makes you a decent amount of money, and keeps your by products balanced.
What happened recently is that corn got so cheap the beef producers would rather feed high carb diets to the cows (corn alone is not good for them) than the normal ration. Many have scaled down. Also, the wet mills are not making as much sugar lately because we don’t drink as much soda as ten years ago.