What are the benefits of requiring ethanol in gasoline?

Question

I have found plenty of disads--higher corn and feed prices for animals and consumers, higher gas prices, damage to car engines that aren't built to run at higher temperatures. The production of ethanol is cost inefficent--it uses more energy to make than it produces, and I imagine (don't know for sure but it seems likely) that all the extra work to produce it probably causes as much pollution as is saved by having it put in fuel.
Couldn't there have been a better way?

Answer 1

Yeah, plenty of disadvantages.... Too easy to find those! I heard an interesting blurb on NPR (National Public Radio) about the history of ethanol. I am also going to include a link to NPR and a panel talking about advantages and disadvantages. Check out www.npr.org and type Ethanol in the search box, and you'll find a lot of interesting info about it.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7806281

Here's another link about it http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7426827

Two advantages to ethanol are that it is cleaner burning that gasoline and it does reduce our dependance on oil. Corn farmers are also thrilled, because the price of corn has increased a lot. To them, that is an advantage, although to me, I cringe. Check out the npr sites, they are so interesting!

Answer 2

no count if it truly is beneficial or no longer, to produce ethanol you will possibly desire to sparkling land (flora and fauna be damned), fertilize it, spray it with herbacides and pesticides, and divert water to irrigate it. do no longer you think of clearing woods and grassland to strengthen ethanol is damaging? properly, then eastern Kansas isn't interior the corn belt. as a count of fact is that fields that had long gone fallow on account that farming bust of the Nineteen Sixties (a sturdy subject, btw) at the instant are being tilled. an entire flow to ethanol might positioned the completed great plains under the plow. Arable land is the international's top-rated organic source. it truly is greater useful than the ethanol it might produce.

Answer 3

The only at least somewhat valid reason for using ethanol in gasoline is to reduce tailpipe pollution. It takes the energy of a gallon of ethanol (85,000 BTU, as opposed to 120,000 BTU for gasoline) to make a gallon of ethanol, so fuels such as E85 do nothing except fatten the wallets of corn growers -- at your expense.
Postscript: because of the energy considerations, it does NOTHING to reduce oil use.

Answer 4

The ONLY benefit is that it reduces our dependance on oil, which is a non-renewable resource. ( we might use it all up eventually) more importantly, it reduces our dependance on FOREIGN oil. That is more of a political concern than anything else.

Answer 5

Yes but a little is good to remove moisture from your fuel system.

Answer 6

Higher prices for farmers :-)