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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated

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To: tbancroft who wrote (164642)	4/27/2006 7:35:40 AM
From: kech	Read Replies (1) of 794025

The primary concern is I would have is with the energy required to create the ethanol. If it is to be truly beneficial, then no petroleum-based fuel should be needed to make the ethanol because you should be able to use the ethanol to fuel the process (maybe even the fuel needed for the tractor used in growing and harvesting the corn). This isn't necessarily a very good rule because it avoids the distinction between ethanol as a provider of energy in mobile situations and ethanol as a provider of energy. The whole point of fuel cells is to take electric energy (either nuclear or coal) and make it available for mobile uses such as cars. Ethanol does the same. The trend (as you can see in the articles I cited earlier) is to switch from use of natural gas in powering ethanol plants toward the use of coal as the cost of natural gas skyrockets. This is fine with me as it makes the ethanol much lower in cost to produce because the $/btu in coal is lower than for ng and for ethanol as well. But the ethanol produced is now available for use in cars.

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