Ethanol—Better Than We Thought?

popsci.com
By Sean Captain Posted 01.29.2009 at 5:35 pm

Study shows that corn ethanol produces half the greenhouse emissions of gasoline

Common sense says that burning a plant you regrow every year is better for the atmosphere than spewing out carbon dioxide that’s been buried underground for eons. But the truth behind biofuels and petroleum often seems to defy common sense. Neither ethanol nor gasoline bubbles out of the ground ready to put in your tank. So to figure out which one does less environmental harm, you have to calculate all the energy that goes into making it.

For years, studies have shown that ethanol is no better—or even worse—for the environment than gasoline. Some studies even claimed that it takes more energy to make a gallon of ethanol than you get from burning it.

But a new federal government-sponsored study released this week says the opposite. The report, entitled Improvements in Life Cycle Energy Efficiency and Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Corn-Ethanol, claims that a gallon of ethanol produces nearly twice as much energy as it consumes, and that switching from gasoline to ethanol cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 54 percent.

Read the full story