Something tells me that it isn’t but I would like to get the facts. I am seeing more and more advertisements selling the merits of corn turned into alcohol fuel and I wonder if it is true. It would be interesting to compare the actual amount of fossil fuel it takes to get 1 gallon of ‘green fuel’ into the tank of a vehicle.
Let’s just start from the beginning. First you have to burn fossil fuel to operate the machine used to harvest the corn seed’s to begin with. Next you have to transport the seed to the field and plant it. As the corn is growing it has to be watered. This takes electric power that was probably generated by some fossil fuel. What about fertilizing or delivering pesticides to the crop? All of these steps require a tractor using fossil fuel. Then the corn has to be harvested and then transported from the field to the distillery where the alcohol is produced. Seriously, isn’t this process just a large whisky making venture? How much heat is required to distill the alcohol and where does the power to generate the heat come from? Most likely it will have come from some kind of fossil fuel. It will take power to mix the alcohol with gasoline to achieve the proper mixture. Finally, the alcohol mixture must be transported via a truck to a gas station for delivery to the driver. The final insult is when the little hybrid job burning its ‘green’ fuel gets in the way of normal drivers burning standard fuel. Something doesn’t add up here. What do you think?
