by Anima Mundi

Created on: February 21, 2007   Last Updated: April 25, 2007

Ethanol Fuel is the latest attempt by humanity to get a free lunch. The main motivation behind government programs that support the use of ethanol fuel is that it will reduce our dependance on oil and other fossil fuels. It is also held up as a more 'environmentally friendly' alternative to fossil fuels. A scientific analysis of the problem shows that ethanol doesn't deliver on either of these promissed benefits.

The main problem is that the production methods we use for ethanol are heavily dependant on fossil fuels. So dependant in fact that the production of a given volume of ethanol requires a greater volume of fossil fuels. There have been many scientific papers that discuss this, but a recent one that clearly outlines this problem with supporting facts and figures is

"Ethanol Production Using Corn, Switchgrass, and Wood; Biodiesel Production Using Soybean and Sunflower"
Natural Resources Research, Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2005

The paper concludes that ethanol produced from corn requires 29% MORE fossil fuel energy than the ethanol that is produced. The production of ethanol from other biomass also proved to consume more energy than produced, to various degrees. The reasons have to do with the energy intensive methods used for industrial farming. Corn is a crop that requires a lot of fertilizer and the production of artificial fertilizers consumes a lot of fossil fuel. There is also the energy required to purify the alcohol after it is produced by fermentation.

In addition to this problem of energy imbalance there is the ecological impact of ethanol production. Although ethanol is renewable it requires the use of land for the production of corn. An interesting calculation was done in the following scientific paper;

"Ethanol as Fuel: Energy, Carbon Dioxide Balances, and Ecological Footprint"
BioScience July 2005 / Vol. 55 No. 7

The calculation showed that, if the all vehicles in the USA were to use 85% ethanol fuel, and if there is a 4% annual increase in the number of cars used, then by 2012 ALL the available cropland in the USA would have to allocated to the production of corn for making ethanol.The paper shows that the ecological footprint of ethanol production is greater than that of fossil fuels.

I want to be clear here that I am not suggesting fossil fuels aren't a problem that we need to deal with. In my opinion, the burning of fossil fuels is an enormous problem. Ethanol, however, is not the solution. In fact, using ethanol as fuel makes the problem worse.

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