Reply #6: Depends [View All]

[Squeech]

The current subsidy structure privileges ethanol from corn. The agribusiness way of growing corn depends not only on energy-intensive cultivation practices, but also on heavy use of petroleum-derived fertilizers. Then there's the cargo handling involved in collecting the corn and delivering it to the Archer Daniels Midland plant. I saw a paper that claimed that, *if* everybody along the chain followed best practices, that there would still be a net gain of some 20% of overall energy-- that we would expend 5 gallons of gas to brew the equivalent of 6 gallons.

Now, what are the odds of everybody involved following best practices? Especially when the rationale for doing it in the first place is mainly to get the subsidy?

In Brazil, they make ethanol from sugar cane, which they've been growing as long as there have been Europeans in Brazil, and there's a lot of bricolage (making do without expensive tools). As a result they have an ethanol industry that really does yield net gains-- partly because sugar cane is better as a feedstock, of course, but partly because they really depend on this stuff. There are three pumps at every gas station in Brazil: gasoline, diesel, and alcohol.