By: Billy Beerslugger
A couple of weeks ago i was talking to some random person at a bar. Somehow we got into talking about the environment and in particular gasoline prices, U.S. natural gas reserves and Ethanol.
If everyone switched to using Ethanol instead of gasoline she said would reduce greenhouse gasses by a shit ton. With Ethanol and those crazy incandescent light bulbs we could basically forget about global warming.
I’ll admit I fell for this myth as well in the early to mid 2000’s. I was thinking if I threw some money into one of these Midwest cornfield turned ethanol plant I could make some real money when this whole going green thing really took off.
What I didn’t know is that it takes more energy to make a gallon of Ethanol than the gallon of Ethanol actually provides. You see Ethanol is made (primarily) from Corn. This corn has to be harvested by huge farm equipment which runs on diesel fuel. The harvested corn then goes through a process including Fermentation, Distillation and Dehydration. This cumulative process consumes a lot of energy.
The resulting product, “Ethanol” holds approximately 34% less energy by volume than regular gasoline. Couple that with it’s general higher price (on the East and West Coast) and treehuggers are not only paying more for less Miles Per Gallon but are also producing a whole bunch of Greenhouse Gasses in the process.
“Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley recently examined six major studies of ethanol production and concluded that using ethanol made from corn instead of gasoline would lead to a moderate 13 percent reduction in greenhouse emissions.” (cite).
However, using a significant portion of the U.S. corn crop for energy production drives up corn based food products. Supply and Demand, Action and Reaction.
Now I’m all for anything that lowers our dependence on foreign oil and if technology advances sufficiently this may be a viable option in the future. Sadly though, right now, it may be doing more harm than good.
That’s not to say that Ethanol is not useful. Far from it. Back in my halcyon collegiate days we took a 40 gallon trashcan, put a fresh trashbag in there, filled it up with water from the shower, threw about a billion packets of Kool Aid in there and dumped a couple of handles of Ethanol (commonly sold in Liquor stores as Grain Alcohol) and you got yourself a kick ass party. Freshman girls were amazed at how great it tasted and Grain Alcohol is a great at lowering inhibitions.
I remember one time when I was dared to do a Gator Bomb. A shot of Grain Alcohol dropped in to a larger Gatorade bottle and chugged. While this did cause temporary blindness, when I got my sight back and picked myself off the ground I gotta say I was really fucked up.
In summary, Ethanol may be a feasible fuel in the future. Today, however, I suggest drinking it rather than putting it in your car.