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Ethanol Surges In Spite Of Questions About Demand, Environment, Food
By Mr Ethanol | May 5, 2007
USA Today:
Corn-and-soybean farmer John Adams considered the pitch too good to pass up.
The 58-year-old Adams, who works 950 acres in central Illinois, didn’t immediately join the farmer cooperatives pooling together to build a 100-million-gallon-a-year ethanol plant. But when he dropped by an informational meeting a few months ago, he had to have a piece.
“I was impressed,” he recalled. “I had to do a lot of thinking about where the ethanol market was and where I think it’s going.”
Ethanol, for decades largely an afterthought in the global fuels market, is in the midst of a booming renaissance, despite a host of questions.
It is a hot topic from agribusiness boardrooms to Midwestern diners to world capitals including Washington. President Bush says the fuel additive distilled from mashed and fermented grain is a cheap-and-easy alternative to high-priced foreign oil, and some day it’s already been an economic boon for moribund rural stretches.
Yet skeptics wonder if the rush to ethanol makes sense given the murky outlook for demand. They worry, too, about ethanol’s fuel efficiency — lower than traditional gasoline — and its effects on both the environment and food prices as corn chews up more farmland.
“There have been ethanol booms before, not with quite this much fire behind it,” said David Sykuta, executive director of the Illinois Petroleum Council trade group. “The thing that should make people cautious is the irrational exuberance, that somehow ethanol is going to be the silver bullet that gets us out of our energy woes. That’s just not true.”
Still, ethanol remains a darling of Capitol Hill lawmakers yearning to curb the nation’s reliance on foreign crude.
“As long as they’re committed, it’ll be more than just a flash in the pan,” said Darrel Good, a University of Illinois crop marketing specialist. “It’s basically growing because of fairly large subsidies and mandates; right out of the chute, that philosophically doesn’t sit well with some folks.”
Carry on reading: ‘Gold-rush mentality’.
Topics: BizOp, Ethanol, Health, Industry, News |
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