Ethanol Pros And Cons

With the fuel crisis that is happening in the world today it is now more important than ever to begin the look towards alternative fuel sources. One smart step for the US would be to wean the country slowly off of the gasoline fix and to look into alternative fuels to replace the “never coming back” fossil fuels. It turns out that Ethanol as a hybrid fuel proves to be a notable candidate for this gasoline intervention, per say. Now the United States is currently looking to subsidize fossil fuel alternatives. However, before considering ethanol production as a governmental subsidy, using large amounts of hard earned tax payer money, there has to be many alternative factors that come into play such as making sure the pros out weight the cons as far as environmental benefits and performance output and not to mention looking at the entire matter from an economic or investment perspective. First we need to consider what the ethanol we are talking about actually is and how can we obtain it.

When we say ethanol production we are referring to the use of ethanol as a hybrid fuel for automobiles. What hybrid fuels means is that instead of running a car solely off of ethanol or gasoline alone, ethanol is actually blended in with standard fuel grade gasoline to create the ethanol fuel hybrid. Ethanol is derived from alcohol; it is a grain alcohol that is typically broken down from corn, although it can be obtained by other means such as Brazilian sugar cane, wheat, barley and potatoes (West). The way ethanol is created, according to Larry West in an article titled How is Ethanol made, is by fermenting plant sugars from photosynthesis, treating them with enzymes followed by then inserting tiny microbes to feed on the sugar that will finally b...

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...self to not be such a good place for hard earned taxpayer money. It shows great signs of reducing of automobile pollution, decreased foreign oil dependency as well as steps towards being a greener society. On the reverse, the implicated price would be significantly higher, at a starting price of $3.95 per gallon, the induced miles per gallon in FFVs takes a huge hit and are the miles per gallon are significantly lower which would lead to an even higher estimated cost for consumers. Not to mention the production of corn ethanol draws a net negative energy loss due to ethanol’s weak energy output. This all meaning that more money goes in to get less energy out. Over all, ethanol is a great idea in the mindset of moving towards a greener society and becoming self-sustainable as a country, but proves to be a negative investment choice as far as a government subsidy.