Saturday, January 27,
2007
EXPENSIVE, WASTEFUL ETHANOL
CAN'T SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS
BY JERRY TAYLOR AND PETER VAN
DOREN
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Bush spoke
a lot
about energy independence and alternative energy sources like
ethanol.
According to the president, ethanol is the magical elixir that will
solve
virtually every economic, environmental and foreign policy problem on
the
horizon. In reality, it's enormously expensive and wasteful.
Lie
No. 1: Ethanol will lead to energy independence. If all the corn
produced in
America last year were dedicated to ethanol production (and only
14.3 percent
of it was), U.S. gasoline consumption would drop by only 12
percent. For corn
ethanol to displace gasoline in this country, we would
need to appropriate
all cropland, turn it over to corn-ethanol production,
and then find 20
percent more land on top of that for cultivation. The U.S.
Energy Information
Administration believes that the practical limit for
domestic ethanol
production is about 700,000 barrels a day -- a figure they
don't think is
realistic until 2030.
Read more at
http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/231613,CST-EDT-REF27B.article