Ethanol Fueling a New Economy

Fox News ^ | 5/9/2006 | Staff

[Dark Skies]

The burgeoning ethanol industry is changing the economic landscape of rural America, as companies pour billions of dollars into production plants in a race to meet demand and ease America's addiction to gasoline.

Ethanol backers foresee vast vistas of corn fields churning out feedstock for the clean burning fuel additive running millions of cars in the United States, the world's largest consumer of energy.

"Ethanol is a tremendous economic engine for rural communities, it results in good paying jobs. You hear stories about opening up new gas stations and businesses taking off the boards from windows on main street," said Matt Hartwig of Renewable Fuels Association.

He said the industry helped create more than 153,000 jobs last year, boosting U.S household income by $5.7 billion.

[CedarDave]

I was curious about your tag line, but this is what I get:

The page cannot be found

The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

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[P-40]

I was curious about your tag line, but this is what I get:

Thanks, they just changed their webpage around so I guess I will have to go fix the link.

[thackney]

Overall ethanol accounted for 37% of the fuel used in Brazil in 2005

Will you please share the source of that information? Is it for all fuel, or only fuel for passenger cars?

[Dark Skies]

Thx for the links on switchgrass. You are absolutely correct.

Keep getting the message out there!

[reluctantwarrior]

seepost 62

[TKDietz]

I don't know where I got that figure. It may have been for passenger cars only. You can see from the figures in the table in the article you linked us to that as a total percentage of all diesel, gasoline and ethanol fuels used in Brazil in 2005, ethanol only accounted for a little over 15%. It would be around 37% of all the non-diesel fuel consumed. I don't have figures for it but my understanding is that the amount of ethanol consumed in Brazil compared to straight gasoline has increased in 2006 over that used in 2005. I've been to Brazil a couple of times and have ridden in vehicles burning nothing but straight ethanol (E100) there. It's pretty neat. But Brazil is such a massive country with the right climate and so much land suitable for growing sugar cane, which is much better than corn when it comes to producing alcohol. They also have a big supply of dirt cheap labor to work the fields and the ethanol plants. I doubt we could ever produce ethanol at such a low cost as they do.

[thackney]

It may have been for passenger cars only.

I asked because several articles have used that in the past to make it seem bigger that it was. Without a doubt, the ethanol production has helped Brazil. But a far greater portion of their new oil independence came from producing their domestic petroleum resources. I think Brazil is a great example of what the US should do. We should explore many different types of alternative fuel, 15% would be a great help. But we also need to produce our resources: ANWR, NPRA, Bristol Bay, OCS, all our coastlines, Oil Shale and coal.

[TKDietz]

One other thing is that E25 you are talking about is their standard fuel for standard cars just like we have E10, ten percent ethanol gasoline sold at all gas stations here. When they started switching to ethanol they started with E15 or E20 being required at all gas stations. They skipped E10. At first it was a problem for some people driving older cars but they just made some small modifications to the cars and they worked fine. Then they started requiring that all gasoline sold be a little over 24% ethanol, which most new cars apparently handle fine without modifying the engines any, as will older cars with only slight modifications. If we went from E10 to E20 or E25 it would probably only be an issue for people driving cars manufactured in the eighties and before that. From what I understand, newer cars for the most part would handle it fine without modifications.