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Report: Ethanol worse than fossil fuels

 
3 3,718 views Feb 22, 2008
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Report: Ethanol worse than fossil fuels

Report: Ethanol worse than fossil fuels

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Several major carmakers, most notably GM, and farming industries alike are touting ethanol as the solution to curb the world’s dependence on fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gasses but the facts show that ethanol is actually worse than the stuff that comes out of the ground. A new report highlighting a number of studies claims biofuels produce more greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels when all of their production inputs are factored into the equation.

The report, published in the latest issue of Science, investigates two separate studies, which show replacing fossil fuels with corn-based ethanol would double greenhouse gas emissions over the next three decades. Using switchgrass, an alternative to ethanol, is almost as bad, boosting emissions by 50% over the same period.

Most of the extra emissions come from the energy required to fertilize, harvest and refine the fuels as well as clearing the land to grow fuel plants in the first place.

This could all be moot, however, as the U.S. Government has already invested heavily in ethanol production and there are plenty of carmakers that see biofuels as the way to go. Only yesterday GM announced that it would be selling ethanol for just 85 cents per gallon in the Los Angeles area to promote the fuel and that it was predicting the number of E85 flex-fuel vehicle sales to increase by five million units by the end of the decade.



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Comments (3)

  1. By chris Posted: 2/22/2008 9:03am PST

    ah yes.... along with the fact that the US is mandating the MPG's, and not the CO2's like europe, this just goes to show that the USA doesnt give a rat's rear-side about pollution.

    its all about dependence on foreign oil. both republicans and dems in washington want to be self sustaining so they can piss off the arabic nations and not have to worry about suffering economically because of it.



    ............mean while, france just built another nuclear reactor.
     
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  2. By BIG JOHN Posted: 5/27/2008 5:03am PDT

    Chris, you're an idiot !
     
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  3. By  r4 ds karte Posted: 2/8/2010 11:09pm PST

    They did mention one type of cellulosic ethanol. Switchgrass is turned into ethanol because of its high cellulose content."The studies show that switchgrass, an alternative to ethanol that's more weed than plant, would boost emissions by 50%."
     
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