Published March 17, 2008
by iris_author
The Sunday Toronto Star carried a sobering article on the "Ethanol Craze" and how it is impacting Ontario's farmers and the province's food supply. With the cost of food rapidly increasing due to higher oil prices, conversion of a significant amount of the supply for fuel may only exacerbate the problem. It has already sparked massive protests in Mexico, where corn prices have quadrupled due to the enormous demand for corn by the US ethanol industry. Moreover, since corn is used in so many products, the downstream economic costs will be widespread. The environmental costs will also be profound, given that corn monocultures will require massive chemical inputs to keep up production.
There's much more in this feature article, so definitely take a look.
Posted in: Blogs
We found an interesting article about the problems with Ethanol on ConsumerReports.org:
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/2008/03/ethanol-e85.html
“But there are some problems with increasing ethanol blends. Ethanol contains less energy than gasoline, so increasing the amount of ethanol in gasoline will likely result in lower fuel economy. Increasing standard fuel blends from zero to 10 percent ethanol, as is happening today, has little or no impact on fuel economy. In tests, the differences occur within the margin of error, about 0.5 percent. Further increasing ethanol levels to 20 percent reduces fuel economy between 1 and 3 percent, according to testing by the DOE and General Motors. Evaluations are underway to determine if E20 will burn effectively in today’s engines without impacting reliability and longevity, and also assessing potential impact on fuel economy.”
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