What are your thoughts on Sugar cane ethanol?

Question

What are your thoughts on Sugar cane ethanol?

Answer 1

ask my v****a.

Answer 2

It's not as good as the new studies that are using certain types of algae that produce 20 times more oil per acre then any other food stock.  

Answer 3

High-cellulose sugar cane is a more efficient source of ethanol than corn.  So is switchgrass.

It would be very interesting if the US normalized relations with Cuba in order to get sugar cane for ethanol production.

Answer 4

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?...

good?

Answer 5

Using food for fuel is not the answer.

Answer 6

I love it

Answer 7

its ok but algae is a lot more efficent.

Answer 8

since you can't grow the stuff in the US, other than in hawaii, i really don't think about it much.

in addition, it's not like there's a terrible food excess in the world today.

maybe we ought not take food off people's table to burn in our car.

Answer 9

Ethanol looks like a dead end.  Every approach so far requires more energy to produce than it generates, and sugar cane is likely to be no different.  And look what corn-based ethanol has done to the price of food.  Do we really want farmers growing sugar cane instead of food?

Answer 10

Great if you live somewhere where it can grow.  Unfortunately in those places you need to cut down the pesky jungle first.

Answer 11

Well, Sugar cane does not require the agricultural inputs we use for corn, and because it is grown in the tropics it has a high sugar yield per hectare, when grown on land that is wet.

Its net energy yield is very much superior to corn, sugar beet, sorghum, or Jerusalem Artichoke.

When land is appropriate to grow sugar cane it is not prime place to grow many other crops, but it can be adapted to grow rice or millet. If the world is not willing to pay for rice or millet the farmer may make more from cane sugar or sorghum.

(The other way of saying this is, if people want to buy rice they should be careful not to pay so much for ethanol as to induce farmers to switch to ethanol production.)