Ethanol More Trouble Than It's Worth?

call -151 writes "Yahoo reports this story by researchers from Cornell and Berkeley who show what a number of people had suspected- it takes significantly more energy (at least 29%) more energy to produce ethanol than it yields. Since ethanol production plants don't use ethanol themselves for their own energy needs (with presumably negible delivery costs) this has been widely suspected but not so bluntly stated: "Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation's energy security, its agriculture, the economy, or the environment." Ethanol producers dispute the study, predictably, which deducts the multi-billion US dollar subsidy. It's not clear how this compares with this earlier Union of Concerned Scientists article that claims that the yield from corn kernels is net 50% positive- and the UCS is usually quite unbiased on these things."

Comments

Brazil does just fine on ethanol

[Djinh]

It depends how and from what you make your ethanol. And how you farm your feedstock of course...

Brazil does just fine with it's sugarcane:

http://www.eroei.com/articles/16_jun_05_brazil_fue l_p.html

Meaningless

[Kukester]

Gasoline takes more energy to produce than you can get from it. That energy just came from the sun a million (?) years ago. Gasoline is a means by which we can transfer solar energy to our cars without sail-ssized solar panels.

Consider ethanol as a means to store energy from nuclear, solar, wind, tidal, hydro or other clean energy sources and transport it to your auto's engine.

I'd like to see ethanol compared to chemical batteries, fuel cells or others on an basis of efficency & cost.

Who paid for this study.

[IainMH]

TFA doesn't tell us who paid for the research.