"Ethanol is currently the best replacement for gasoline at the current time. Most gasoline now has a 6& to 8% ethanol content (check the stickers on the pump next time you fill up). Why don't we bump up the ethanol percentage and it will help reduce our gasoline usage."
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http://www.free-eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=21
The Ethanol Boondoggle
Most ethanol is made from Midwest corn. Hence, it's not surprising the region's congressmen and their agribusiness constituents support this mandate. Ethanol producers, led by Archer Daniels Midland, would have us believe ethanol will increase U.S. energy independence, clean up the environment, and provide new markets for farmers. These are lies.
Both the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Academy of Sciences reported that adding ethanol to gasoline at best will have no effect on air quality and could even make it worse.
Pollutants in automobile emissions have been dropping for decades and are
now only 5 percent of their 1960s levels. Most of the improvement is due to
technological innovations, i.e., better emissions equipment and cleaner-burning engines. Further, fuel-injection systems (standard equipment since the early 1980s) eliminate the need for oxygenated fuels.
Adding oxygenators to gas to reduce carbon monoxide made sense 30 years ago.
However, for cars built since 1983, oxygenated fuels are obsolete and pointless.
A study last year by Cornell University scientist David Pimentel highlighted
another problem. Most replacements for gas--including ethanol--have to be
manufactured. It turns out this process is both energy-intensive and expensive. Pimentel's analysis showed that it takes about 70 percent more energy to produce ethanol than the resultant ethanol yields. The additional energy comes from, you guessed it, fossil fuels.
Pimentel found it costs $1.74 to produce a gallon of ethanol, twice that for
gasoline. He notes that's why "fossil fuels--not ethanol--are used to produce ethanol.... Growers and processors can't afford to burn ethanol to make ethanol."
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And that's you and me subsidizing the production of ethanol - wasting more energy and tax dollars, and harming the environment.
All so we can line the pockes of companies like ADM and buy votes in Iowa for politicians.
Yay.
You might want to Google on this professor Pimental that so many of you folks think hung the moon. His problem with ethanol is that it's largely derived from corn and he hates corn because it's used as an animal feed. He's a raging vegan. (and his claims as to energy innefficiency have been thoroughly repudiated by virtually every other researcher to look into the matter)