The lead story in today's Yomiuri newspaper (in Japanese) says that
Bush will announce new steps to address global warming in his State
of the Union speech on Jan. 23. He will emphasize "ethanol and other
alternative fuels."
Sigh . . .
Well, at least there has been some anti-ethanol press lately. I saw
articles in Sci. Am., Consumer Reports, and the Atlanta Journal
calling into question the use of ethanol. One of them reported a
horrifying statistic: filling up a 25 gallon tank with ethanol fuel
uses up as much potential nutrition from corn as a human being
consumes in a year.
That seems over the top but . . . Yikes, it is as bad as that.
Ethanol has 89 MJ/gallon. 25 gallons * 89 MJ = 2,225 MJ. That
converts to 531,788 kilocalories. Divide by 2,000 recommended daily
allowance and you get 266 days. (I am ignoring fossil fuel and
electric power input, which are ~1.7 times the total energy output of
the ethanol.) Perhaps the ethanol factories extract more energy per
kilogram of corn that human digestion does, but I doubt it.
- Jed
- [Vo]: Yomiuri: Bush to promote ethanol in State of the... Jed Rothwell
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