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Environment Would Suffer From Biofuel
By Mr Ethanol | February 1, 2008
Golden Gate [X]Press:
Many presidential candidates are driving the United States down a dangerous road. For weeks leading up to the Iowa caucus, candidates were talking ethanol. Ethanol can be used to fuel cars and is one of the upcoming alternative fuels to oil. Iowa is a major distributor of corn, which is what ethanol is made from in the United States. It made sense for the candidates to push ethanol there in order to entice voters. However, the long-term effects of an ethanol policy would have a negative impact on the United States.
The two largest arguments for biodiesel are reducing the dependence for foreign oil and reducing the negative effects on the environment. Presidential candidate Barack Obama said in 2005, “For too long now we’ve relied too heavily on foreign oil to fuel our energy needs in this country.”
However, recent studies are showing that ethanol is not the answer to oil, despite what presidential hopefuls tell the public to win votes from the agriculture industry.
Howstuffworks.com reported that Cornell University professor of agriculture David Pimental said that one gallon of ethanol contains 77,000 British thermal units of energy, however it takes 131,000 Btus to create (one Btu is the amount of heat needed to increase the temperature of a pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit). In other words, ethanol takes more energy to create than it produces. On top of that he estimates that a car would take 11 acres of corn to run for a year. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics said that in 2005 there were 250 million registered vehicles in the United States. That would be 2.75 billion acres of corn just to keep U.S. vehicles running, and that is without taking into account that a semi truck would take even more acres to run. Deforestation, along with less corn being produced for food are just two of the negative impacts that corn-based biofuel would create. Full article.
Topics: Biofuel, Ecology, Negatives, News |
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