Ethanol really be the answer to our problems?
GRIST - It's unlikely that an automotive fuel is one of the big answers to our problems. Less driving, friend, and fewer cars on the road. Fewer roads, in fact.
Ethanol is an interesting fuel, though, with some potential to transform our big problem into less of a problem. Grist's Muckraker pieces on ethanol politics can give you the skinny on government and industry attention, so why don't I back up and go to the rudiments for all dearest readers.
Apparently the first cute little internal combustion engines used alcohol fuels, and ethanol is indeed alcohol, ethyl alcohol, made from fermented plants.
Ethanol is an interesting fuel, though, with some potential to transform our big problem into less of a problem. Grist's Muckraker pieces on ethanol politics can give you the skinny on government and industry attention, so why don't I back up and go to the rudiments for all dearest readers.Apparently the first cute little internal combustion engines used alcohol fuels, and ethanol is indeed alcohol, ethyl alcohol, made from fermented plants.
Conventionally grown corn is not the best ethanol feedstock from an environmental perspective because of petroleum crop inputs, monoculture agribusiness, poor energy balance (a shorthand way of saying that it takes more energy to make a fuel than is embodied in the resultant fuel itself), and other problems (see our piles o' biofuels info for more details). For electoral incumbents and unpopular presidents, it's a great ethanol feedstock.
