Today in Biofuels Opinion: “The more and more ethanol that’s produced, however, the less and less it looks like a solution”
USA Today editorial: “In 14 years, under current federal mandates, about 40% of America’s corn crop would be heading for its gas tanks. The more and more ethanol that’s produced, however, the less and less it looks like a solution. Ethanol hasn’t prevented gas prices from topping $4 a gallon. Instead, the diversion of so much corn into fuel has contributed to rising prices for everything from corn oil to beef. Overseas, higher food costs are increasing hunger and generating political instability. Turning America’s breadbasket into a fuel pump, it seems, is looking like one of the dumbest ideas of recent years.”
Secretary of Agriculture Ed Shaefer: “Billions and billions of dollars are moving overseas and the investments here to replace that just aren’t sufficient. We’re not spending enough money, we’re not focusing on it enough. We’re just sitting back and saying, ‘Let that oil come in from overseas’ and we’re not doing enough about it.”
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Jim Lane | Aug 1, 2008 | Reply
RE: USA Today.
They don’t realize that corn and other food crops are the first step in going to a biofuel system. The ultimate goal will be to use other sources which are not food and which do not need as much fertilizer as corn but that is down the road. Also, if ethanol fuels are not subsidized OPEC will keep the price of oil just below that needed to make biofuels profitable. As you can already see the price of oil has stabilized around $ 125 as that is as big a pill as they can get us to swallow! OPEC has been following this path for 30+ years with great success!
We cannot expect major advances in biofuels until we have enough vehicles which can run on E85 (or E100) and biodiesel to provide economics of scale. Remember how long it took to phase out leaded gasoline because people couldn’t just buy a new unleaded car when their old one was in good condition. We need to get biofuels in the system now even if it requires subsidizes in order to encourage people to buy the vehicles that can use biofuels and to use biofuels. Increases in production efficiency for biofuels will come just as increases in the amount of gasoline per barrel of crude came about.
Curtis Dyle