Ethanol - The Stuff of Dreams

On the surface it sounds like the wonder fuel of the 21st century. It's clean-burning, it grows on plants on American soil, it puts no more carbon dioxide back into the air than it takes out, it creates jobs and it doesn't send dollars weakened by Republican fiscal irresponsibility to pay for ever-increasing oil. It's ethanol, the Holy Grail of Republican energy strategists. And today, AP ran a rather breathless article praising ethanol as a fuel source here.

And like the Holy Grail, it is an empty promise. To start with, it's buring food for fuel which, in an increasingly over-crowded world, will bring as much if not more destabilization than burning oil. Here's the moral dilema: Will we let people starve to power our SUVs? Then there's the energy balance. Between growing the corn (energy intensive, requiring chemical fertilizers mostly made by firing natural gas), shipping the corn, distilling it and shipping it to market, a gallon of ethanol requires an estimated energy equivalent of 1.25 gallons of ethanol (depending on the study you read) to produce. What that means is that energy to produce ethanol has to come from another source - you can't produce ethanol by burning ethanol, you have to add something else. In a cynical statement about the environmental aspects of ethanol production, many stills are turning to coal firing as a way to distill cheaply. Coal is just about the dirtiest fossil fuel to burn and the Bushies don't think a little mercury will harm the rural poor so it's a good thing.

A good summary of the problems of ethanol production is found here.

The major plus to ethanol production is much the same as the gay marriage amendment - it's good politics for the Right. Corn is produced in "their" states so by subsidizing ethanol, they're subsidizing "their" voters. Which, as opposed to the good of the nation, seems to be the Right's only priority, retaining power at all costs.
A good summary of the problems of ethanol production is found here.