What’s Going to be the Effect of the Government Ethanol Mandate?
31 12 2007With Dreams of Sustainable Alternative Fuels, This is Kinda Frustrating
The federal government has called upon oil companies to buy 4.7 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel in 2007. Normally ethanol is more costly than gasoline, adding pennies at the the pump, but because of overproduction, ethanol is currently cheaper than gasoline by about 5-10 cents per gallon. Other pro-ethanol mandates in the past that are helping contribute to this overproduction include a 51 cent per gallon tax credit, subsidies for small ethanol producers and payments to corn farmers.
Although ethanol is higher octane, burns cleaner and helps engines last longer, it’s long been known that, contrary to the support it’s getting from the government, ethanol is not an ideal fossil fuel alternative due to its inefficiency (taking about as much energy to produce the ethanol as it burns), and it’s taking away from corn production for food sources, making corn products more expensive. It’s less fuel efficient than gasoline, because it contains only around 2/3 the energy content of gasoline.
So what’s going to happen as a result of this government mandate? It’s currently raising food and energy prices, and being that America consumes around 140 billion gallons of gasoline, is this mandate little more than lip service in the right direction?
This will only raise the price for corn, ethanol is only a quick fix for such a huge problem. We need to find other alternatives.