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West Central Illinois | This is an ag site that's why I poked at ethanol.
I do not like the fact the gov has to subsidize ethanol when corn prices are a record highs. Maybe if the price of corn were $3.00 per bu I could see the logic.
The premise behind ethanol is to gain enery independence. Ok, how much energy indepence do we gain ..... basically a grain of sand. For every 1 btu of energy we are spending on ethanol maybe at best we get 1.1 - 1.2 btu back. So, you are consuming 1 gallon of energy to get 1.2 gallon back. A very small gain for all the other impacts to water usage, etc. and converting 1/3 of a food crop to fuel. We could take all the bio mass, includeing food crops, created in the US and the rest of the world, turn it to energy and it would only cover at most 5% of the worlds energy needs. Not much energy independence. See my point yet.
Why don't we take those $ and knowledge spent on ethanol efforts and find how to make cars more efficient, find a way to package LNG for cars, lessen the EPA diesel regulations for cars to allow more diesel cars (like the EU), open up all the off shore oil areas for development, open up ANWR in Alaska, work with Canada to develop pipe line to pump their crude to our refineries, develope shale oil in Colorada, improve the efficiency of solar, improve battery storage devices, etc.. Ethanol does not fit this model. There is just not enough gain for what it costs.
I feel the same about Wind energy. It does not pay. The gov subsidizes over $1M for every 1.5 megawatt installed. The wind towers are only producing 20% of what intitial estimates show. Plus, you still need to Coal and Nuclear plants at full capacity cause when the wind stops you still need to have electricity.
I just think we are wasting money and want to gov to get out of Ag and many other programs that take our tax $. | |
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Corn Ethanol
