I said it before: It's not easy being green.
As people become more environmentally conscious and gas and oil prices go up, a young man's (or woman's) fancy turns to thoughts of alternative fuels.
Ethanol is one that has gotten a lot of attention. Unfortunately, it falls prey to the laws of unintended consequences. Most ethanol fuel is made from corn products...corn is made in abundance in this country, and it is found in almost everything we eat. (Cows and pigs and poultry eat huge amounts of corn. It is the sweetener in your soda, and its byproducts are used to make the cups and utensils your fast food comes from. It's biiiig business.)
So when corn is diverted from its usual food product uses to make fuel, it becomes a scarcer commodity for those food products, and their prices go up. According to Foreign Policy.com this effect is causing chaos on the world's grain markets, and wreaking havoc on the economies of some less affluent nations that are dependent on corn.
I've seen reports both ways (which I always find disturbing; you can prove anything with figures, and you can always find conflicting figures) but according to Slate.com, the cost of and energy used to make a gallon of ethanol fuel exceeds the energy you can extract from that ethanol. And ethanol doesn't deliver as much energy as a gallon of fossil fuel, so a gallon of ethanol, or ethanol mixed with gas, won't take you as far as a gallon of gas.
The corn lobby, of course, is very interested in making this fuel the replacement for imported oil.
Foreign Policy.com makes some amazing statements about harnessable wind energy. If what they say is true, I'll put a windmill in my back yard, pronto.
Finally, though I have a relatively new vehicle, I get the warm fuzzies at the thought of purchasing a hybrid vehicle. I will when this one gives up the ghost. Even at these inflated gas prices, though, I might save $500 a year if I double my mileage. Not a smart move considering the amount of money I'd lose selling a perfectly good car (and one I enjoy driving), plus the cost of a new hybrid. And I have heard that the energy used in making a car is more than that car will use in fuel in its lifetime. (I tried to find confirmation of this on the internet, but either it's not there, or I didn't find the right search phrase.) So it seems that it is wise to drive a car until it is not longer useful as transportation, before replacing it. When that happens, I'll go hybrid (or whatever the greenest option is when that happens).
[Image via Ecofriend]
In addition to fuel, corn is now used as a fiber source to be spun into yarn. Annually renewable is the beauty of it, supposedly.
Posted by: juliane | June 05, 2007 at 09:05 AM
I live in Brazil and ethanol became a much better fuel for using in cars than gasoline. Just see the polution it makes when you use gasoline and compares to ethanol. Plus we have several families been blessed by the new type of work for producing alchool and biodiesel instead of a slavery type of plantaiotn we used to have in the past.
We still have thousands of land for going beeing used for ethanol and food crops.
Sorry is too late...
Posted by: Wilson Bonfim | December 07, 2009 at 04:12 PM