Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Ethanol — what gives?

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Gas prices are up, so this isn’t saving me money at the pump. Food prices are up, so I’m getting paying the corn industry more there, too.

I checked the latest Consumer Reports issue for recommendations of cars with better mileage. Today’s cars — and I’m talking small sedans — have awful fuel efficiency. A small sedan should be getting better than 23 mpg. I could shell out more $$$ for a hybrid. In the end, someone is going to be getting more of my money for an inferior product.

In time, advances in technology will produce a more efficient ethanol engine. And market demand will bring these car prices down. Until then, I want the old gasoline back.

Why say you? Has your mileage tanked? If not, what are you driving?

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  1. I used to think it was smart to use fuel that came from the American Heartland as opposed to Arabia or Venezuela… but since producing ethanol is not that efficient,

    …researchers at Cornell University and the University of California-Berkeley say it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces. For switch grass, a warm weather perennial grass found in the Great Plains and eastern North America United States, it takes 45 percent more energy and for wood, 57 percent.

    It takes 27 percent more energy to turn soybeans into biodiesel fuel and more than double the energy produced is needed to do the same to sunflower plants, the study found.

    “Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation’s energy security, its agriculture, the economy, or the environment,” according to the study by Cornell’s David Pimentel and Berkeley’s Tad Patzek. They conclude the country would be better off investing in solar, wind and hydrogen energy.

    I still think that my friend who runs his diesel truck on the leftover oil from a Chinese restaurant is doing something smart, since that oil would just be thrown in the dump.  

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    p>But growing food to burn it in our cars is crazy, even insulting when one considers the famine and malnutrition in the world.

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