Will ethanol be the future fuel and why?

Question

Will ethanol be the future fuel and why?

Answer 1

No.  It is more expensive than gas and has less energy as well.  It can't be shipped in pipes, it must be shipped in trucks.

There is only government corporate welfare supporting these projects, individual investment still doesn't exist.

This is not the fuel of the future.

Answer 2

Surprisingly enough, I'd have to agree with Mr. Jello.    The website renewableenergyaccess.com talks about the pro's and con's of ethanol often.

Answer 3

No, it is too expensive, and the government does nt want to seem to want to get off oil dependency. How is it that the US is paying high oil prices, but a country like Brazil can move away from oil dependency? makes sence does'nt it?

Answer 4

When you put ethanol in your (E85 rated) car, you get lower gas mileage.  It's also very resource intensive to make,  compared to gasoline, so the carbon emissions from its production is greater than gasoline.  

A factory that makes fuel-grade ethanol typically smells up the surrounding community, unless it uses air pollution controls (which in itself use natural gas to operate).

Answer 5

Until it comes down in price and becomes cheaper to manufacture probably not but i do see us spending more on alternative fuels research and it could become an increasingly large part of the fuel supply

Answer 6

the question is not whether it will be or not the question is can afford not too look at oil prices.



i dont want sound pessimistic we have to find a way thats the bottom line.

h**l we can reach the moon 40 years ago why we can find an alternative fuel

Answer 7

well, eventually, there won't be a choice -- it will have to be, along with other alternative fuels.

The current problems with ethanol will have to be addressed, though --- that is, the problems that cause production of it to demand too much energy itself.

Answer 8

Yes ethanol does play a role as a future fuel.  The current corn to ethanol industry in the U.S. is not the best model though.  If all the U.S. corn crop was converted to ethanol only 13% of the U.S. gasoline consumption is displaced.  As conversion technology improves crops like grasses, woody fiber, and agricultural residues (corn stalks) will make ethanol more sustainable and produce higher quantities.

Ethanol does have its issues, but all alternative energy sources do.  There's not ONE solution to the issue.  Butanol, another alcohol, is produced similarly to ethanol but has an energy content closer to gasoline.  The different microorganism is used in the fermentation process so ethanol plants could be converted to butanol plants very easily.  Conservation is still the key to greater energy independence.

Answer 9

We better hope not or we wont have any Nature left and food prices will rise even more ,than they already will.

read this about ethanol production

Only transient Aliens could have aproved that.

They are intending to replace most of the indigenous Forrest's in the world ,with mono cultures for the production of Ethanol,

Non sustainable, chemically grown ,heavily irrigated (with water needed for communities)one specie Forrest's,that have only plagues of insects as fauna which are controlled with pesticides.

Killing all bio diversity,in both flora and fauna ,adding to the destruction and extinction of species ,like nothing we have ever seen before.

All in the quest for alternative energy and to save the Environment ,

The irony here is that the growing eagerness to slow climate change by using biofuels and planting millions of trees for carbon credits has resulted in new major causes of deforestation, say activists. And that is making climate change worse because deforestation puts far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire world's fleet of cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined.

"Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil," said Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition, an environmental NGO based in Asunción, Paraguay. "We call it 'deforestation diesel'," Lovera told IPS.

Oil from African palm trees is considered to be one of the best and cheapest sources of biodiesel and energy companies are investing billions into acquiring or developing oil-palm plantations in developing countries. Vast tracts of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and many other countries have been cleared to grow oil palms. Oil palm has become the world's number one fruit crop, well ahead of bananas.

Biodiesel offers many environmental benefits over diesel from petroleum, including reductions in air pollutants, but the enormous global thirst means millions more hectares could be converted into monocultures of oil palm. Getting accurate numbers on how much forest is being lost is very difficult.

The FAO's State of the World's Forests 2007 released last week reports that globally, net forest loss is 20,000 hectares per day -- equivalent to an area twice the size of Paris. However, that number includes plantation forests, which masks the actual extent of tropical deforestation, about 40,000 hectares (ha) per day, says Matti Palo, a forest economics expert who is affiliated with the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica.

"The half a million ha per year deforestation of Mexico is covered by the increase of forests in the U.S., for example," Palo told IPS.

National governments provide all the statistics, and countries like Canada do not produce anything reliable, he said. Canada has claimed no net change in its forests for 15 years despite being the largest producer of pulp and paper. "Canada has a moral responsibility to tell the rest of the world what kind of changes have taken place there," he said.

Plantation forests are nothing like natural or native forests. More akin to a field of maize, plantation forests are hostile environments to nearly every animal, bird and even insects. Such forests have been shown to have a negative impact on the water cycle because non-native, fast-growing trees use high volumes of water. Pesticides are also commonly used to suppress competing growth from other plants and to prevent disease outbreaks, also impacting water quality.

Plantation forests also offer very few employment opportunities, resulting in a net loss of jobs. "Plantation forests are a tremendous disaster for biodiversity and local people," Lovera said. Even if farmland or savanna are only used for oil palm or other plantations, it often forces the local people off the land and into nearby forests, including national parks, which they clear to grow crops, pasture animals and collect firewood. That has been the pattern with pulp and timber plantation forests in much of the world, says Lovera.

Ethanol is other major biofuel, which is made from maize, sugar cane or other crops. As prices for biofuels climb, more land is cleared to grow the crops. U.S. farmers are switching from soy to maize to meet the ethanol demand. That is having a knock on effect of pushing up soy prices, which is driving the conversion of the Amazon rainforest into soy, she says. Meanwhile rich countries are starting to plant trees to offset their emissions of carbon dioxide, called carbon sequestration. Most of this planting is taking place in the South in the form of plantations, which are just the latest threat to existing forests. "Europe's carbon credit market could be disastrous," Lovera said.

The multi-billion-euro European carbon market does not permit the use of reforestation projects for carbon credits. But there has been a tremendous surge in private companies offering such credits for tree planting projects. Very little of this money goes to small land holders, she says. Plantation forests also contain much less carbon, notes Palo, citing a recent study that showed carbon content of plantation forests in some Asian tropical countries was only 45 percent of that in the respective natural forests. Nor has the world community been able to properly account for the value of the enormous volumes of carbon stored in existing forests.

One recent estimate found that the northern Boreal forest provided 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services such as absorbing carbon emissions from the atmosphere and cleaning water. The good news is that deforestation, even in remote areas, is easily stopped. All it takes is access to some low-cost satellite imagery and governments that actually want to slow or halt deforestation. Costa Rica has nearly eliminated deforestation by making it illegal to convert forest into farmland, says Lovera.

Paraguay enacted similar laws in 2004, and then regularly checked satellite images of its forests, sending forestry officials and police to enforce the law where it was being violated. "Deforestation has been reduced by 85 percent in less than two years in the eastern part of the country," Lovera noted. The other part of the solution is to give control over forests to the local people. This community or model forest concept has proved to be sustainable in many parts of the world. India recently passed a bill returning the bulk of its forests back to local communities for management, she said.

However, economic interests pushing deforestation in countries like Brazil and Indonesia are so powerful, there may eventually be little natural forest left. "Governments are beginning to realize that their natural forests have enormous value left standing," Lovera said. "A moratorium or ban on deforestation is the only way to stop this."

This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ - International Federation of Environmental Journalists.

© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service

Source: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/...