Energy Use

Running Head : ENERGY USE

Ethanol Fuel

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Ethanol is regarded as an attractive alternative to gasoline and other fossil fuel-based automotive energy sources because they can assist in ending dependence on foreign-based oil imports , a dependence which reaches 140 billion gallons a year in the United States alone . Gal Luft a director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security , asserts that oil dependence is problematic not just for economic reasons , but for political ones as well , maintaining that the relationship between the United

States and the oil-producing Muslim nation states is strained at best (as well as noting that this political tension is probably of greater concern than any purported political instability are said to plague these oil-producing nations ) As such , oil dependency constitutes a political liability . Furthermore , geologists have argued that oil prices are not going to get any better , what with the increasing costs of drilling current oil reserves , and ethanol is therefore an economically sound alternative

However , ethanol is not without its critics . Critics charge that the ethanol boom in the United States , which relies primarily on corn for feedstock has resulted in dramatic increases in food prices (and it is worth noting that many non-corn based food commodities utilize corn syrup . Farmers have begun to see the ethanol boom as lucrative incentive for corn production , which in its most positive sense has raised their incomes and given new hope to flagging rural economies This translates to a diversion of grain-based agriculture towards fuel production , imposing dramatic impacts upon the costs of maintaining food supply for both the world 's hungry and the world 's well fed . Grunwald maintains that the grain it takes to fill an SUV tank could feed a person for a year ' Furthermore , research presents that the rapid expansion of corn agriculture to feed the ethanol boom holds environmental consequences . Environmental journalist Richard Manning charges that industrialized agriculture is detrimental to soil fertility . Mindy Lubber concurs , maintaining that massive land conversion of lands towards the production of corn could recreate the conditions of The Great Dust Bowl , a period in the American heartland which saw hundreds of thousands of would-be wheat farmers plow the soil to death to profit from golden grain

However , ethanol proponents are careful to remind us that it is also a renewable fuel source . Because it is derived from grain and other starch crops , and may also be obtained from cellulosic biomass such as crop residue , sugar cane bagasse and old newss , it is essentially a sustainable resource insofar production is concerned . Additionally , its energy potential , while being significantly less than that of gasoline is endowed with a high octane level that gives it the power that is crucial to the operation of high compression engines such as those found in high performance automobiles . Furthermore , Khosla argues that the trajectory of ethanol development will result in continuously increasing potential for energy density and engine efficiency that would rival that of gasoline . While opponents...