Sunday, July 22, 2007

Not all Ethanol is created equal

Our government is trying to sell us on Ethanol as the answer to the future's energy needs. But not Ethanol is the same! Ethanol can be made from many things including a recent report that says they will make some from orange peels in Florida. Ethanol from a citrus peel or some post consumer recycled plant product is good. Ethanol from Sugar cane the way they do it in Brazil is not that bad. Sugar cane can yield a decent amount of energy for the effort.

The catastrophic error in sense and judgment comes from those who propose using corn as the base for Ethanol. Using corn for ethanol is a vast waste of agricultural potential... and the effects have been to put a squeeze on the corn markets so that poor people in countries like Mexico feel the negative effect. We can never grow enough corn to sustain our energy demands in vehicles and even trying would make corn the only crop grown ever again. And corn is an environmentally poor crop due to its needs of water and fertilizer. Using corn for ethanol is a big mistake. We should be putting our recourses into finding the best source for ethanol which might be sugar cane... might be hemp... anything but corn.

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