Biofuels

Bart Hall (barth@ncatfyv.uark.edu)
Tue, 20 Feb 1996 07:01:25 -0600 (CST)

I remember reading a paper by Pimentel (1980s) in which he
demonstrated that it takes something like 130,000 btus to grow the
corn and manufacture one gallon of ethanol, containing 76,000 btus.

Not sure about the numbers, since I'm going from memory, but they
aren't too far off. Will dig, and if I can find the citation, will
report in greater detail.

I'm personally far from convinced that growing corn (maize) does any
good at all for the land, so people will have to persuade me that
ethanol is anything other than yet another welfare program for the
big boys in a corn-belt ag system that has so far seemed to create
more problems than it has solved.