Often lost in the hysteria over Global warming are the facts. We keep hearing about biofuels as though they are the savior of the environment, but in a recent issue of Science...
"A study published in the latest issue of Science finds that corn-based ethanol, instead of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by a hoped-for 20%, will nearly double the output of CO2 and other gases that trap the sun's heat. A separate paper in Science concludes that the clearing of native habitats around the world to grow more biofuel crops will lead to more carbon emissions, not less."
This is beside the fact that since corn, sugar, and other sources of sugars for ethanol are commodities, buying lots of them to go into distilleries drives up the prices for everything from cattle feed to tortillas to bread to popcorn. Not to mention that ethanol's lower vapor point than gasoline makes it more difficult to distribute by pipeline, so it has to be trucked around, limiting the distribution for it. Dropping huge subsidies on a problem just because it looks like change is something the government is good at. Actually bringing about the desired effect is something else entirely.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
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I saw an interesting talk at an AIChE (chemical engineering society) conference wherein a guy did the math on what sources can produce significantly more energy than they consume in creating them. The only sources that produce a reasonable power surplus are wind and slightly improved mass solar farms. Ethanol, unless it's from cane sugar, almost always consumed more energy than it produced, especially cellulosic ethanol (the new hotness in biofuels).
Naturally, the next month I noticed that Congress passed an energy bill that requires a certain quota of cellulosic ethanol. Awesome.
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