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The Strange Energy Budget of Ethanol Production

Posted by timothy on from the subsidy-heaven dept.

joeflies writes "The San Francisco Chronicle published an article regarding research on how much fuel is required to make Ethanol. The results indicate that it make take 6 times more energy than the end product delivers."

3 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. comparisons? by TheClam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Compare this to gasoline and hydrogen and you've got yourself a real article.

  2. The real future is not in corn by 1967mustangman · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ethanol has long been a problem. The real insteresting prospect is the company up in Canada that is creating ethanol from the woddy portions of plants with a genetically modified bacteria see this slash dot story http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/0 7/1846247&tid=14

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    Madre de Dios! Es El Pollo Diablo! -- Captain Blondebeard
  3. This is flawed. by EvilMagnus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Taking grain apart, fermenting it, distilling it and extruding it uses a lot of fossil energy," he said. "We are grasping at the solution that is by far the least efficient.".

    He ignores the fact that, if we wanted to, we *could* arrange the production chain so that it was not dependent on fossil fuel. You could build your farming and fermentation facilities to use solar or hydro power, for example.

    Sure, it's fossil-intensive *now*. But it's also not a major energy source yet. If we needed to we could clean up the energy chain - there's no part of the process that requires fossil fuel sources.

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    -EvilMagnus