Rajesh Valluri has an interesting take on the amount of energy it takes to produce fuel grade ethanol over on his blog. One of the things that strikes me about the fuel ethanol debate is that there is very little spoken about fuel efficiency, and it is ironic that many of the first autos in the US which have been sold as being capable of running on biofuels are MPVs, which typically have very low fuel efficiency. We need to get away from a situation where ethanol production is effectively keeping expensive oil in the ground by displacing gasoline instead of replacing it.
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The energy needed to produce ethanol
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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on September 10, 2007 4:16 PM.
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Comments (2)
Hi Simon, it's an interesting point. The focus on alternative fuels does seem to be diverting attention away from fuel efficiency.
The Network for New Energy Choices (http://www.newenergychoices.org) published a scathing report on bioethanol a while back: "The Rush to Ethanol - Not all Biofuels are Created Equal".
They claimed that devoting the entire US corn crop to bioethanol would only cut gasoline use by 15%, and concluded:
"The biggest source of immediately available new energy is the energy that we waste every day"
Posted by Simon @ Living | September 12, 2007 5:13 PM
Posted on September 12, 2007 17:13
Fuel efficiency and biofuels should go hand in hand. Otherwise good fuel is simply displacing bad fuel. Unfortunately as a society we are pretty bad at joining some ideas together.
Posted by Biofuelsimon | September 14, 2007 1:38 PM
Posted on September 14, 2007 13:38