..ethanol to run cars, nukes for everything else. We can do this now.Some analyists point out that we don't have enough of something termed 'farmland' to produce the required ethanal; not to mention the current pipline infrastructure (national piping system) won't handle pure ethanol either ...
Thermodynamics of the Corn-Ethanol Biofuel Cycle
[the] conclusion is that corn ethanol is a net loss to the environment and in energy, and a net contributor of CO2.Corn ethanol research is funded because the farmers are a powerful lobby, not because it makes sense to grow corn for energy.Conclusions
- Excluding the restoration work of decontaminating aquifers, rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico, the minimum cumulative exergy consumption in restoring the environment polluted and depleted by the industrial corn-ethanol cycle is over 7 times higher than the maximum shaft work of a car engine burning the cycle's ethanol.
- This unfavorable ratio decreases to ~4, when an efficient internal combustion engine is used to burn the ethanol, and to 2.4 when an imaginary hydrogen fuel cell is used.
- The industrial corn cycle is not renewable, and is unsustainable by a wide margin (at least 2.4 -- 7.1 times).
- No process changes can make this cycle more viable.
- The annual corn-ethanol biofuel production is a human assault on geologic processes and the geologic time scale, and it can never work.
- The limiting factors, nutrient-rich humus and water that carries the dissolved nutrients to plant roots are augmented by chemicals obtained in the linear, irreversible fossil fuel-based processes.
- Over the last fifty years, corn yield has grown five-fold, mostly because of the steep increases in fertilization rate of corn fields.
- Sunlight is not a limiting factor, and could be used to great benefit if we were in less of a hurry
That's what I thought, too, but I was too lazy to google it.