ethanol a scam?

[3/5/06] A recent careful study by Cornell University's David Pimentel and the University of California at Berkeley's Tad Patzek added up all the energy consumption that goes into ethanol production. They took account of the energy it takes to build and run tractors. They added in the energy embodied in the other inputs and irrigation. They parsed out how much is used at the ethanol plant.

Putting it all together, they found that it takes 29 percent more energy to make ethanol from corn than is contained in the ethanol itself.

[4/19/06] Making 4 gallons of ethanol requires the energy in 3 gallons of ethanol (4/3 = 1.33). So you must make 4 gallons of ethanol to save 1 gallon of gas. But ethanol has less energy per gallon, so to save 1 gallon of gas, you must make 6 gallons (4 x 1.5) of ethanol.

To become energy independent, we would have to grow corn on every square inch of the U.S., including Alaska, and then half that much again. To meet President Bush's goal of ethanol providing 30 percent of energy, corn would cover 50 percent of the United States.

[6/20/06] DuPont and BP, riding the global wave of enthusiasm for bio-based fuels, announced today that the two companies have developed a new biofuel called biobutanol that they say has 30% more energy density than ethanol.

DuPont and BP (nyse: BP - news - people ) have been working on the new fuel since 2003. The two companies plan to introduce the first generation of biobutanol in the U.K. by the end of 2007. And they hope to roll out an improved second-generation biobutanol by 2010. DuPont and BP aim to make the fuel competitive with gasoline, even when oil is priced as low as $30 to $40 a barrel. In the U.K., the partnership will produce the new fuel by extracting fermentable sugar from sugar beets and converting that into a fuel, similar to the way ethanol is produced.