What is this? OPEC saying ethanol is bad?
 

The biofuels industry is responding to OPEC's claims that ethanol is
the reason for high gas prices. Yeah right! Ethanol keeps the prices
lower. Several biofuels organizations issued the following press
release to draw attention to their ad in the Financial Times.

If you click on the link at the bottom you can view the full ad.

Links:
http://www.goodfuels.org/opec
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/7/prweb1115304.htm

What is this? OPEC saying ethanol is bad?
 

"Fuelguru" > wrote
> The biofuels industry is responding to OPEC's claims that ethanol is
> the reason for high gas prices. Yeah right! Ethanol keeps the prices
> lower.

That is arguable at best. The cost of producing ethanol from corn (like
it is done in the US) is actually very high. It is very inefficient
(granted, it will improve over time), and it consumes food crop, so it
has negative effect on food prices. Ethanol price is
government-subsidized with tax money that could have been used for other
purposes (education, healthcare, paying off national debt, etc.). In
addition, using ethanol-blended gasoline (E85) results in degraded fuel
economy, so you end up using more of it.

But I do see the benefit of using biofuels to reduce our reliance on
oil. It's just that currently this benefit comes at a pretty high
price.

Pete

What is this? OPEC saying ethanol is bad?
 

"Pete" > wrote in message
...
>
>
> "Fuelguru" > wrote
>> The biofuels industry is responding to OPEC's claims that ethanol is
>> the reason for high gas prices. Yeah right! Ethanol keeps the prices
>> lower.
>
> That is arguable at best. The cost of producing ethanol from corn (like
> it is done in the US) is actually very high. It is very inefficient
> (granted, it will improve over time), and it consumes food crop, so it has
> negative effect on food prices. Ethanol price is government-subsidized
> with tax money that could have been used for other purposes (education,
> healthcare, paying off national debt, etc.). In addition, using
> ethanol-blended gasoline (E85) results in degraded fuel economy, so you
> end up using more of it.

I'm noticing poorer mileage even with the ubuquitous E10 we're getting these
days.

> But I do see the benefit of using biofuels to reduce our reliance on oil.
> It's just that currently this benefit comes at a pretty high price.
>
I was using corn along with wood pellets to heat my home until the price for
corn more than doubled - making it equivalent to about $5.00/gal, heating
oil.

Tom K.

What is this? OPEC saying ethanol is bad?
 

Pete wrote:

>The cost of producing ethanol from corn (like
>it is done in the US) is actually very high. It is very inefficient
>(granted, it will improve over time), and it consumes food crop, so it
>has negative effect on food prices. Ethanol price is
>government-subsidized with tax money that could have been used for other
>purposes (education, healthcare, paying off national debt, etc.). In
>addition, using ethanol-blended gasoline (E85) results in degraded fuel
>economy, so you end up using more of it.
>
>But I do see the benefit of using biofuels to reduce our reliance on
>oil. It's just that currently this benefit comes at a pretty high
>price.

It's ****ing STUPID is what it is. I don't know why were are allowig
the farm lobby to hijack us like this.

I mean, HOW MANY gallons of fuel must be burned to produce the paltry
net-gain of energy at the end?

Here's what Warren Buffet thinks:

"I would say that ethanol is a relatively inefficient way of creating
gasoline--gasoline equivalent, and it uses a lot of energy in the
process of raising the corn that does it. And, as correctly pointed
out, it has a by-product of raising agricultural products elsewhere.
In economics you can never do one thing. Anytime anybody tells you
they're doing something in economics, then you have to say, `And then
what?' And the `and then what' in the case of ethanol is A, if you use
it to plant more corn, you're going to use--in terms of fertilizer and
everything, you're going to use a lot of energy. And secondly, you're
going to raise the prices, on balance, you'll raise the prices of
other agricultural products. So there's no question that that--that's
a fairly correct statement of the problem."