A very short debunking book on economics – Economics in one lesson by Henry Hazlitt – may also be of interest to your readers.

I can always see why a person would defend or go against other arguments for ethanol. But I cannot see anything negative from setting us free from the clutches of our oil addiction.

Some highlights:
“Studies show that the amount of energy ethanol produces and the amount needed to make it are roughly the same.”
“Because ethanol degrades, it can’t be moved in pipelines the way that gasoline is. So many more big, polluting trucks will be needed to haul it.”
“For corn ethanol to completely displace gasoline consumption in this country, we would need to appropriate all cropland in the United States, turn it completely over to corn-ethanol production, and then find 20 percent more land on top of that for cultivation.”
“Studies indicate that the standard mixture of 90 percent ethanol and 10 percent gasoline pollutes worse than gasoline.”
“Virtually all studies show that the greenhouse gases associated with ethanol are about the same as those associated with conventional gasoline once we examine the entire life cycle of the two fuels.”

I probably get a MPG drop of 20%. It sure doesn’t cost 20% less.

Admittedly, acceleration seems just a teence faster, but not enough to be worth the mileage loss.

Making fuel from food just doesn’t seem smart.

Ethanol is, convienently, easily biodegradable when it spills. However, when mixed with gasoline it makes a spill more of a problem as it makes the nasty components of gasoline (eg: BTEX components) more soluble so groundwater plumes will be larger. This may not seem like a big deal, but ethanol can corrode underground storage tanks faster unless they are a special type (not at all common) made especially for the increased ethanol content.

I am extremely skeptical of claims about cellulosic ethanol.

I’ve seen many press releases, but little data on how much ethanol has been produced.

It does appear that it is still confined to the lab bench (you can get amazing results in the lab which do NOT translate to commercial scale production)

The only verified program I know of was the TVA’s pilot scale plant that used wood chips. But they had to use sulfuric acid to break down the wood chips, and that proved too expensive.

Rob’s right that diesel is the way to go at this point in time if you must drive and want to minimize the environmental impact.

Efficient turbo-diesel cars like the Jetta and Passat get better mileage than any gasoline burning hybrid, in the city or on the highway.

I don’t know how far away cellulosic based ethanol is. I’m currently at a university that is (probably) one of the top three for biodiesel research, and I hear a lot about it, but it still seems like a ways off.

Secondly American cars are way over powered why in gods name do you need 250hp to take the kids to school. I lived in Germany for 7 years and 80% of the cars are under 100hp yet when summer comes you see the autobahn jammed with the small cars (think Honda Accords) pulling 20 foot trailers and most of those cars are in the 120 hp range. Even large German SUVs come in lower HP than the equilavant American SUV.

Secondly lower HP doesn’t mean sticking to the right lane. I had ran an Audi A4 for 3 years and even at a whimpy (by American standards) 130 HP I had no problem crusing at 110 (180 kph) all day.

Incedently 70% of the German autobahns have speed limits (not that I paid much attention trick is to know where the cameras sit) and heavy traffic means you can’t run flat out much anymore.

My wife was in Germany recently with here boss and he hit 160 MPH on the autobahn before she finally told him to slow down! He went down to a more sedate 90 mph (180kph)

John Stossel just wrote a great piece on this today too.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/05/the_many_myths_of_ethanol.html

I went to college in Iowa, and I was shocked to learn, in the middle of the greenest summer landscape I’d ever seen, that so little of the state is actually natural. It’s mostly soy, corn, alfalfa–monocultures. Is that really the kind of landscape we want to promote elsewhere?

Yes, fossil fuels need to be replaced, but I’m not convinced ethanol is the answer.

So, based on the above, my next personal transportation will be powered by a system that can a) sip very sparingly from the petro/bio/whatever fuel tank b) run on electricity as well as internal combustion and c) generate it’s own electricity from braking/solar/whatever. And most probably built by Toyota.

BTW, it’s gotta be able to move four adults, four carry-ons and two large suitcases. My Corolla does this.

In terms of future purchase, the Toyota’s Synergy drive meets most of the above. I’m sticking with Toyota because of the quality: The above mentioned Corolla has 44,000 miles and has had oil and filter changes and one set of tire. Nothing else. The thing runs like the day I drove it of the lot.

I will buy a Toyota Synergy Drive sometime in the next three to five years because I am impressed with the quality of my current Corolla (so I believe that Toyota extends that quality to the Synergy Drive), and because it’s soooo much easier to go hybrid than to do flips and twists for sci-fi Hydrogen Fuel Cells (woosh, look it’s W flying around in a jetpack!), bio-dielsels (honey, are we driving around behind a fast food restaurant?), etc.

Just my .02 cents. I may be completely wrong, I often am.

There are much better ways of producing bio-fuels. The most promising is to grow algaes on sewage waste. With corn you only get one crop/year, but with algae you get a crop every month and fertilizer too.

Cellulosic ethanol is still a science experiement at this point: if we can get it working it would improve the yield of corn-based ethanol, though it would be better to use things like switch grass that don’t need much in the way of cultivation, pesticides or herbicides.

BTU per gallon
Gasoline – 114,100
E100 – 76,100

http://www.nafa.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Resource_Center/Alternative_Fuels/Energy_Equivalents/Energy_Equivalents.htm

This is not my area of expertise, so someone please jump in and correct me if this is not accurate. Thanks.

Another viable source of ethanol is cellulose, a structural carbohydrate that makes up the stems and stalks of plants. You can’t feed this material to humans or animals, and this ‘agricultural residue’ is quite often simply burned or landfilled. The cellulose can be broken down into glucose, which can be fermented into ethanol, using enzymes produced by fungi or bacteria. This technology is more expensive than using starch to make ethanol, but it is already competitive at today’s oil prices. The media is starting to do a better job in conveying that there are different ways to make ethanol, with varying degrees of environmental impact depending on source, but there is still a tendency to refer to a single, homogenous ‘ethanol’.

Full disclosure: I am a scientist currently involved in studying the enzymes that break down cellulose. I should also note that I don’t necessarily believe that ethanol is the be-all, end-all fuel solution, but I do believe that it can serve as a valuable bridge technology while other fuels/technologies are developed.