The Promise of Ethanol may be an illusion

Because of the oil spill, the ham handed cleanup process, an absolutely corrupt administration and cronyism that would make baksheesh look like a well meaning tip, Ethanol producers are pressing the flesh, hiring consultants to urge congress to pass ethanol-friendly bills and advertising to convince Americans that ethanol is the future of internal combustion fuels. But is this realistic?

Ethanol seems so, so. . . well, not oil. It's more expensive to produce, needs lots of additives and is, in my thinking impractical. Here's the problem: Most ethanol is made from food crops. In essence, we are using our food to power our transportation. We could have a situation where the cost of both fuel and food rise because of the competition between sales of either. Farmers may switch to ethanol intended crops because a country like China may be willing to pay "whatever" to get fuel as its water supplies dry up. They will be willing to buy anything they need. We witnessed this during the Olympic Games in China where they bought up all the oil they could get and often paid far more than they needed just to ensure that they had such stockpiles of gasoline and oil that there would be no snags during the games.

Who in their right mind wants to see a situation where growers, who grow for profit, choose to send food crops to the ethanol processing plant because it's easier to grow. There are few restrictions for growing crops that will not be consumed. The chemicals and pesticides are not controlled as they are in food crops and the handling is far less expensive. After all, nobody cares about E. coli and salmonella in crops destined for your engine.

If people want to use a biosource for fuel, I would suggest using algae. It has advantages on almost every level like potential. Where the amount of usable fuel from corn is roughly 8%. Various estimates posit that algae can produce 50 to 400 times that. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel). Algae is a little more expensive to convert than sugar based fuels but the impact is far less. Eventually costs will come down as processing increases and new processing discoveries are made. But as long as we think we can rely on fuel from food, we will never fully realize the potential of algae.

So, forget sugar and corn and let's go with pond scum.

FB