No, ethanol is not a poor alternative, though corn is a poor source for it.

Yes, corn is an energy/fertilizer/chemical-intensive crop to grow. Yes, it's widely used as a food crop, and we'd all prefer to avoid the fuel/food conflict (though I'd like to point out that the skyrocketing price of corn last year was driven WAY more by market speculation than it was by actual demand shifts).

There's a very easy way to deal with the shortcomings of corn-based ethanol: stop using it. Cane-based ethanol is considerably more efficient on a LOT of levels, and as Brazil's experience proves, it actually works.

Mind you, this would mean dropping the 50% tariff on ethanol imports, since there's not enough territory in the US to grow sugar cane. However, it would provide an awesome opportunity for countries like Haiti and the Dominican Republic to develop their economies.

/rant
I swear, there's a cadre of people out there who seem to be flat against the adoption of any alternative energy technologies, and want to seize upon any excuse imaginable not to adopt them. It drives me batty.

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Pimintel Alert!

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Pimentel assumes that ethanol corn is irrigated; but only 16% of the corn crop is, and no irrigated corn is used for ethanol. Spectacularly embarrassing failure.

What would you expect from an entomologist writing far outside his area of expertise to push a radical Malthusian, anti agriculture, anti-human agenda?

For someone who actually understands fuel and energy, consult former space program rocket scientist and nuclear engineer Robert Zubrin:

http://energyvictory.net/index.htm

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Yes, ethanol is often made from edible material (the starchy or sugary portions of a variety of plants), so it's understandable that the uninformed would rush to conclude that ethanol production "competes" with food, diverts needed food into fuel tanks, raises food prices, etc. It's especially easy to conclude that when an oil cartel-funded PR campaign has been blaring this from many sources (the United Arab Emirates for example hired a top DC firm to do this).

But it's not true.

For example, although US ethanol corn production has gone up several hundred percent in the last decade, "food corn" production has NOT declined, but has risen as well. Other US staple crops also saw their production levels rise in the same timeframe as well.

There's huge slack, unused capacity in the US and world ag sectors, so expanding farming to accommodate biofuels won't affect food production or availability. For example, only half of arable land in the US is farmland, and well under half of our farmland is even cultivated.

In fact, according to an analysis by Merril Lynch cited in the Wall Street Journal, biofuels have played a key role in keeping petroleum prices even lower than they otherwise would have been, thus helping, rather than hurting world food prices.

For more see here (search for the "Fueling Fears About Food" section):

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/in-defense-of-biofuels

"Ethanol does not solve city pollutions that kill 40000 people every year."

This is completely wrong. Yes, the EPA says that smog kills 40,000 people a year, but smog is caused by smoke, soot, and particulate matter (SSPM). The major sources of SSPM is unsophisticated coal plants and petroleum fuel (gasoline and diesel) burning vehicles (which is why roadside snow turns black).

But when alcohol fuel such as ethanol is burned, it emits no SSPM at all. NONE. And while that does nothing about coal-fired power plants, it certainly solves (or with E85 goes a long way toward solving) the problem of SSPM from vehicles.

That's just a fact of chemistry and physics. Firefighting crews have had to be re-trained to deal with ethanol car crashes because burning ethanol doesn't have the billowing black smoke that firemen are used to relying on to tell when there's a fire. In fact that lack of smoke is a key reason that the Indy 500 switched to alcohol fuel, because a major crash caused other crashes because the smoke from burning gasoline blinded other drivers.

So ethanol would be a big help in reducing smog. Brazil, which has moved to ethanol in a major way, has seen dramatic improvements in urban air quality as a direct result.

And it's not just SSPM.

Compared with gasoline, burned ethanol emits significantly less NOx (the key ingredient in ozone smog). Not only that, ethanol vapor (which, like gasoline vapor, gets in the air from imperfect combustion or refueling nozzle leaks) reacts to atmospheric NOx at less than a tenth of the rate at gasoline vapor. And finally, ethanol vapor washes out of the atmosphere easily when it rains, unlike gasoline vapor which is stubbornly persistent.

Speaking of water solubility, that characteristic of ethanol not only makes for delicious drinks but makes water pollution physically impossible. If the Exxon Valdez had been carrying ethanol, it would all have dissolved away into the vast hydrosphere within a few days at most. Petroleum products stay concentrated and potent, killing wildlife until expensive cleanup operations happen - and yet a decade later sea otters there are still dying from eating contaminated shellfish. Not only that but alcohol is readily biodegradable and breaks down within days into harmless components. (That's why nobody cares about the methanol in windshield washer fluid being washed into the water supply). No oil spill disasters, and no floating oily rainbows in roadside puddles or recreational waterways.

Finally, ethanol emits NO sulfur, the key cause of acid rain.

"The efficiency is very low at less than 2% of the solar energy hitting the ground compared to 10 to 30% with solar electricity conversion."

Solar is extremely expensive and inefficient on a dollars per kilowatt basis. For the same money, solar buys far less energy than other sources. Thus, given the same energy budget, solar, if adopted as a replacement rather than a supplement, imposes cripplingly draconian constraints on human movement and activity. In any event, solar power is not the only method of providing electric power and thus recharging battery electric vehicles - in fact, solar is by far the least used method of electricity generation within the US and worldwide.

The biofuel vs. battery electric vehicle debate, to the extent that there is one, is thus not really a biofuel vs. solar debate - solar is THE smallest and most minor of players out there in the electric power world: 0.04% of the world market (or one-thousandth the size of the 40% for coal), at 50 cents per kilowatt/hour, more than 1,200% more expensive than coal's cost of 4 cents.

"We need really clean energy that does not compete with food production."

Exactly, so consider joining the growing ranks of alcohol fuel supporters.

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No more carburetors.
OBD2.

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The problem is not gas station owners.

For a four pump station, converting a pump to sell ethanol means setting aside 25% of his sales capacity. Even for a twelve pump station, that's around 8%. But only 3% of cars on the road can use ethanol! You can't expect an owner to accommodate a tiny market like that.

Given that reality, I'm amazed and grateful so many actually do and that the number of ethanol pumps nationwide has gone up from a few hundred to over two thousand in just the last several years. And while that's a small fraction of the 250,000 stations, it's impressive growth.

As for California, I think your site is out of date.

Check here:

http://www.e85refueling.com/locations.php?resultpage=1&state=CACalifornia

That shows 33 stations, most of them public.

In any event the real key is to increase the market share of ethanol compatible cars up from the tiny 3% level. The way to do that is to simply make alcohol compatibility a standard feature in all new cars sold in the US. Congress is considering the Open Fuel Standards Act (H.R. 1476 in the House and S. 835 in the Senate) which is supported by conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats alike, as well as centrists. If you contact your Member of Congress, they might sign on too.

Since 10% of cars on the road at any given time is new that year, in just 3 or 4 years we'd have enough market share so that even a four pump owner would consider switching.

As for profit margins, think about this. They make about 8% (way under the fat margins Apple gets for an iPod). World prices rise and fall based on the dictates of OPEC; the sellers just pass those expenses on to us.

But methanol was selling in 2007 for 80 cents a gallon, $1.60 in energy equivalent terms. That's way lower than the $4 gasoline was hitting at its peak, and gives gas station owners a fat margin to play with and still undercut their rivals.

Make the cars compatible and you'll see alcohol fuel being sold, fast.

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Ethanol corn is not irrigated. FAIL.

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Not the crop - the ethanol plant.

So FAIL on corn-based ethanol.

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