The Biofuel Back Lash

As my friend Lara would say, “it’s always something”.

Her most recent use of the adage came up in a discussion we were having about ethanol.

After reading about ethanol, blogging about ethanol, and learning about what a clean burning fuel ethanol is, I couldn’t stop singing its praises. I even looked into converting my 2002 Honda into flex fuel vehicle—a car that can run on both ethanol and gasoline. For an eco-minded consumer like myself, the benefits of making the switch are tempting. Take a look at the facts (courtesy of the Green Energy Network):

• The first car Henry Ford mass produced was a flex car—able to run on both gasoline and ethanol.

• Ethanol burns much cleaner then gas. The average car pumps about 4 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, a car that runs on E85—a standard mix of ethanol and gasoline used to fuel flex cars—only produces about half the waste.

• Ethanol is nontoxic, renewable and biodegradable, and can be made from agricultural feedstock like corn, beets and soybeans. Any organic matter that is high in sugar and starch can be used to create ethanol. The folks at the Sebastopol Ethanol Collective make it from rancid wine!

Even the leading Presidential candidates are singing ethanol’s praises. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both promise to make a law that would require all gas stations to carry the E85. John McCain, who called ethanol snake oil a few years back, has recently changed his tune.

So with all the benefits, what could possibly be bad about ethanol? The problem with ethanol is not the fuel itself, but the lengths that companies are going to feed the fierce demand for the product. In Brazil for example, farms are multiplying at an unprecedented pace to create crops, to manufacture ethanol. As a result, deforestation in Brazil has doubled, and the country now has the 4th highest level of carbon emissions in the world. Not to mention, increased ethanol production is driving up the cost of food. Factoring in transportation and production, it’s possible that the carbon footprint created by commercial production of ethanol is more polluting then the alternative.

Resources:

www.greenenergynetwork.com
Check out the Green Energy Network for information about environmentally friendly sources of ethanol.

www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html
Link to Time magazine article, The Clean Energy Scam.

Image courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net