Ethanol

When the government announced it would promote the production of ethanol from corn a new industry was born. The government would not only subsidize the product but would demand by law that a given amount be added to gasoline. This meant that the government would guarantee a profit to those in the business and also guarantee a customer. As corn ethanol plants came on line it soon became evident that operating costs were higher than the original projections and many plants lost money and closed. There were two main problems which could have easily been predicted but were glossed over in the excitement of new jobs. Some say the excitement was from taking business away from the oil companies and giving it to farm co-ops. The first problem was competing with food corn which raised the price of many food items and the second was the final distillation process where the ethanol was separated from the water. The next push was to produce ethanol from corn cobs instead of corn and this removed the problem of competing with food but the distillation cost remained. Here is a quote from the first operational non-corn ethanol plant. By utilizing residual biomass solids from the ethanol conversion process, the plant generates 21 megawatts (MW) of electricity – enough to power itself and provide 4-5 megawatts of renewable power to the local Stevens County community. Most of the power used by the plant is to distill the final product. This is needed because ethanol is soluble in water but if microbes were developed to produce a hydrocarbon the final distillation would not be needed since hydrocarbons are not soluble and would just float to the top and be skimmed off. In any event ethanol or hydrocarbons are not as efficient as just using natural gas which is abundant without processing. In addition natural gas emits less carbon dioxide than ethanol or hydrocarbons and allows the engine to run cleaner and more efficiently. Of course it is the big oil companies which control the natural gas business.