Could ethanol and other alternative resources also help fuel an economic recovery?

Question

With threats of inflation, and sluggish growth, the "alternative energy" industry could be the next frontier for businesses to research and prosper from. This could help stablize our economy and pull us out of a nearing economic slump. Any thoughts???

Answer 1

One thing the ethanol plants can do is provide economic development for rural areas. They spend like $60 Million per plant and they employ about 40 people. Usually they are placed in small towns so they are a boom tfor that.

For the whole nation they don't make any different. Only acouple billion worth of investments in a very large economy.

Answer 2

Actually, the economy is growing at a nice clip and shows no sign of nearing a slump. It is far from "sluggish." Jobs and individual prosperity are lagging behind, however. Perhaps that's what you were thinking of.

I am hopeful that there will be some kind of green revolution, but in order for that to occur in the near future, alternative energy must entail massive efficiency gains, which was the case with information technology in the 1990s. Then perhaps alternative energies would spur the economy onward and upward a bit.

Even in that happy scenario, it's anybody's guess as to the effect of alternative energy on the average American. Will jobs be created? Will energy costs go down? Will we be healthier?

Answer 3

Ethanol is a tiny fraction of energy consumption. Even if every farm in the U.S. were used to produce corn (which would be very stupid) ethanol would still be a tiny fraction of energy consumption.

There is no way that this tiny industry can stabilize a giant economy like the U.S.

Answer 4

Highly doubtful. Alternative energy already had a golden age back in early 1980s. Then oil prices fell, and the whole industry disintegrated...

Answer 5

If one is serious about improving the environment and promoting national security, there is a simple rational solution. And that is to allow economic freedom in energy production.

Opening up the North Slope of Alaska, the whole state of Alaska, indeed, the whole territory of the United States, including the continental shelf, to oil and gas exploration and production, abolishing the restrictions on the strip mining of coal, and allowing the construction of new atomic power plants, would sharply increase the supply of petroleum while reducing the demand for it. (This last would occur because of the greater availability and lower price of the alternatives afforded by natural gas, coal, and atomic power.)

The connection to national security should be obvious. Namely, the resulting dramatically lower price of oil would cause a corresponding dramatic reduction in the oil revenues of the Arab governments that finance terrorism. The money available to finance terrorism would thus be radically reduced.

The improvement in the environment that would result is obscured by the fact that people have lost sight of what the environment means. It is not nature in and of itself, apart from its connection to human life and well-being. Rather, it is the surroundings of man, his external material world, deriving its value from its contribution to his life and well-being. When the chemical elements that constitute the petroleum deposits of the North Slope of Alaska, or anywhere else, are removed from their original location, and appropriately broken down and combined with other chemical elements, brought from elsewhere, and then brought to human beings throughout the United States and around the world in the form of gasoline, the relationship between those chemical elements and human life and well-being is improved. In the ground they did nothing to serve man’s life. As gasoline, they allow human beings to move their persons and goods quickly and easily from one location of their choice to another.

Indeed, judged from the perspective of physics and chemistry, all of production and economic activity has as its essential purpose the improvement of man’s environment. For it consists precisely of the systematic change in the location and combination of the chemical elements in ways that make them stand in a more useful relationship to man’s life and well-being. It is the adaptation of man’s environment to man, hence, its improvement.

This last represents such a radically different perspective on the environment than has become prevalent in the last few decades that most readers will require much more discussion before being convinced of it, or even being willing to consider it, than I can possibly provide in the space of this brief article. The adoption of a policy of economic freedom for energy production depends on confronting and overcoming the doctrine of nature’s intrinsic value and its role in the environmental movement.

Answer 6

The only thing that will do that is a budget surplus to reduce the debt.