Moonshine mirage: ethanol and independence.BRAZILIANS HAVE reduced their dependence on imported oil by increasing production of sugar cane-based ethanol. American politicians and activists argue that the U.S. should emulate em·u·late tr.v. em·u·lat·ed, em·u·lat·ing, em·u·lates 1. To strive to equal or excel, especially through imitation: an older pupil whose accomplishments and style I emulated. 2. this "energy independence miracle." But would increasing ethanol production make much of a difference in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. ? If it were to produce more ethanol using current technology, the U.S. would need to grow vastly more corn and use huge swaths of land in the process. The U.S. already produces about 4.5 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol--the same amount Brazil produces. It meets only about 3 percent of U.S. transport fuel needs. (One bushel bushel: see English units of measurement. of corn yields about 3 gallons of ethanol.) The country's entire corn crop could produce 35 billion gallons of ethanol, an amount equal to about one-fifth of the gasoline gasoline or petrol, light, volatile mixture of hydrocarbons for use in the internal-combustion engine and as an organic solvent, obtained primarily by fractional distillation and "cracking" of petroleum, but also obtained from natural gas, by Americans burn each year, leaving none for food and only residues for animal feed. Growing another 12 billion bushels would require plowing up an additional area double the size of Illinois. Faced with these limits, biotechnologists are trying to find alternatives to corn and sugar cane cane, walking stick cane, walking stick. Probably used first as a weapon, it gradually took on the symbolism of strength and power and eventually authority and social prestige. as ethanol sources. In his 2006 State of the Union address “State of the Union” redirects here. For other uses, see State of the Union (disambiguation). The State of the Union is an annual address in which the President of the United States reports on the status of the country, normally to a joint session of Congress (the President George W. Bush suggested that switch grass might be a good source of cellulosic cel·lu·lose n. A complex carbohydrate, (C6H10O5)n, that is composed of glucose units, forms the main constituent of the cell wall in most plants, and is important in the manufacture of numerous products, biomass to produce ethanol. But the U.S. Departments of Energy and Agriculture estimate it would take I billion tons of dry biomass to produce enough ethanol to replace one-third of U.S. demand for transport fuels. That would mean harvesting 100 million acres of land for fuel, an area about the size of California. If it required no energy inputs to produce, ethanol might replace about one-third of the oil the U.S. imports annually. The amount of energy required to produce a gallon of ethanol is contested, but let's make the heroic assumption that the process produces twice as much energy as it uses. Ethanol could then replace one-sixth of the oil the U.S. imports each year. That's not nothing, but it's not "energy independence," and it's not much of a miracle either. |
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