ALL the Corn for E85 Equals 15% of U.S. Gas Consumption
Math is not my forte, in the sense that I grew up thinking times tables supported New York newspapers. But there are many of you who know your way around a calculator. For your number crunching pleasure, I submit this article from Seeking Alpha, a stock tip site. The unnamed author crunches the numbers: the total amount of potential ethanol production vs. total U.S. gas consumption. The conclusion: "Corn ethanol will never replace any meaningful quantities of gasoline nor diesel." More specifically, "ethanol (spark ignition) will not substitute for diesel (compression ignition) anyway without substantial vehicle and fuel changes. Ethanol will not easily substitute for heating oil nor jet fuel neither. And if you add in ALL the energy-related inputs, some have said we may be able to replace, at best, 3-4% of U.S. gasoline using all U.S. corn." And so ethanol supporters will move on to cellulosic sources or trash or lithium ion crystals, with your tax money.
More by Robert Farago
Comments
Join the conversation
Economical and ethanol=oxymoron
People...this is why we need to use SWITCH-GRASS to make ethanol. An acre of corn...on it's best day...will get you between 300 and 350 gallons of ethanol. Switch-grass will get you 1,150 gallons of ethanol out of that same acre, can be grown in a much more vast area (it is basically prairie grass), and it will grow if there is major rains...or major drought. But yeah...lets stick with the corn...
The fact that GM jumped into bed with E85 says some very sad and revealing things about GM, a company that once led the way with EVs. Keep yapping Bob [K]Lutz and hope nobody pays attention to the facts...