WHAT ETHANOL CAN'T DO: The more we read about corn based ethanol, the more sceptical of it...nay, the more openly opposed to it... we become. We are, however, wise enough to know that the farm community, the ethanol industry itself, the public and the nation'* politicians love the notion of ethanol so much and believe in it so vehemently that it is a reality and it shall remain a reality until long, long into the future. We shall have to see all sorts of bankruptcies amongst the old and new ethanol producing organisation scattered about the country before this rush to "ethanol-ize" the country runs its course and ends in tears.

There are any number of reasons why we find ethanol production comical, not the least of which is that it would be enormously unprofitable now were it not for the fact that the farm lobby has been able to extricate all sorts of expensive price support mechanisms from the Congress. We'll not go into that this morning, leaving that to another time in the future. What we do find worthy of note today is the inherent losses of energy created as we move to make alcohol from corn. Simply put, and rounding to the nearest numbers for the sake of simplicity, we note that in producing 10 gallons of ethanol we need to expend the rough equivalent of 7 gallons of gasoline. That on the surface would look like a fine swap. The problem is that those same ten gallons of ethanol produce approximately 85,000 BTU'* of energy, while the 7 gallons of gasoline produce 125,000 BTUs! Thus the ten gallons of ethanol contain the same energy equivalent of only 6.75 gallons of gasoline. So if we follow this logic through (and if the numbers are correct... and we believe them to be so from a number of different sources we've accumulated over time), approximately 10.4 gallons of gasoline will end producing sufficient quantities of ethanol to deliver as much energy as... now follow this, please.... 10gallons of gasoline!

What is sad is that the figures we are using here are relatively optimistic. The figures could be, and probably shall be, much worse. Indeed, as we ran through the data over the past weekend (and given that we are travelling today we do not have access to the data, for it is back in our office), we noted that the figures did not include "costs" for the fuel used in the actual farming of the corn involved. Further, nothing was given to the petroleum needed to create the fertilise required, the pesticides nor the herbicides used. If those inputs are taken into consideration, the net loss of energy might be shockingly large. Will this matter? No, it will not. The Ethanol parade is in full regalia; the trumpets are trumpeting; the drums are drumming and the majorettes are smiling prettily as Congress, farmers and the American public is in love with the misbegotten belief that the US can grow its way out of energy dependence. Never ever underestimate the power of an ill-advised and ill-conceived notion to become blithely accepted by a gullible nation. It is our duty to understand the shortcomings of ethanol as it is presently presented, and to further understand that the US is going to push ahead with more and larger ethanol plants, requiring more and more corn to "fuel" them, at the expense of America'* livestock producers but to the benefit of America'* corn producers.

Ethonal has almost half the BTU output as gasoline for the same volume. From a performance perspective, a fuel that has less thermal energy that is more difficult to light and slower burning isn't a thrilling alternative.