My Issues with Ethanol

I felt that I could start a solid blog based on how much time I spend on Swivel.com. One of the first topics that I wanted to talk about is the debate over Ethanol. So far, the massive (government funded) corn surplus that the U.S. currently produces is being depleted by ethanol production. It seems that people are going crazy over using corn to fuel their vehicles, but it is simply not an effective solution. As you can see in the graph, corn is among the least productive crops for growing ethanol.



Furthermore, according to people from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) state that producing Ethanol from corn uses almost as much (coal-fired) energy as it actually puts out for powering automobiles.

Now I know that producing Ethanol is a way for the U.S. to use its excess coal reserves to move away from foreign-produced petroleum, but it doesn't seem like it is moving in a long-term sustainable direction.

This is further hurt by the gas mileage of some of the Ethanol fueled vehicles. In the latest fuel economy studies by the U.S. government, it seems like the flex fuel vehicles (FFV) that use Ethanol have poor gas mileage. Some of the FFV vehicles that are 4WD get between 9 and 11 gallons per mile on E85 Ethanol, and are the lowest on the graph.