Oh please. There is nothing funnier every 4 years than watching all the presidential hopefuls suck up to corn farmers in Iowa.
Volatility in the oil market is hurtful because it is so fundamental.
How does adding more expensive ethanol to the mix help reduce the volatility of the oil market?
Finally, economic efficiency, while very, very important, cannot be our only criterion. We are funding governments whose interests are inimical to us.
I agree, we should reduce money going to these regimes.
If an application of US techology to the energy sector could render oil unimportant, that is worth some subsidy.
I would love it if ethanol made sense economically and if it added to instead of subtracting from our energy supply. I don't think it does at this point. I think a better idea would be more nukes, ANWR, offshore CA and FL drilling and perhaps a program to turn coal into liquid fuel.
>>>Oh please. There is nothing funnier every 4 years than watching all the presidential hopefuls suck up to corn farmers in Iowa.<<<
Watching you on this thread is funnier. :)
That is a complete falsehood.
From: http://www.ethanol.org/pdfs/msu_ethanol_study.pdf
The net energy associated with ethanol in the system expansion approach is 0.56 MJnet/MJ of ethanol in the base scenario, including ethanol transportation to consumers. Therefore, the available energy from ethanol is much higher than the input energy for producing ethanol. In other words, using ethanol as a liquid transportation fuel would significantly reduce domestic use of petroleum even in the worstcase scenario.
I'm going to assume you mean ((more expensive) ethanol) as in more expensive than gasoline as opposed to (more (expensive ethanol)). If I'm wrong, let me know.
That claim is debatable and it certainly isn't necessarily true with oil prices as they are now and seem likely to be for some time. Further, ethanol is quite amenable to improvement by technical means, specifically biotechnology. Fundamentally it is about harvesting solar energy which is just as free as petroleum in the ground. I don't see why ethanol cost can't be driven quite low.
Ethanol would reduce volatitlity by diversifying the supply of transportation fuels. It would be a buffer against oil producer manipulations. Oil prices are also highly susceptible to Middle East political scares. It wasn't so long ago that Saddam Hussein was making a killing with cycles of saber rattling interspersed with soothing talk. I suspect we'll see the same again when the Iran nuke problem comes to a head.