You can grow whatever grain or naturally occuring substance you want, but unless you have a continuous harvest, you won’t stand a chance in keeping up with demand.

Corn, wheat, rice, switch grass… None of them can be grown over night. Then throw in weather patterns and the effects on crop yields, and you’re left to speculation as to how much of a dent you can put in our dependence on foreign oil.

-Grant

And don’t you guys realize you can make thanol from more than just corn and grains? Switch grass and other fiberous, naturally occuring substances will fuel the ethanol fire for many years to come.

Ethanol is a funny subject in that the government is out to make the public think that ethanol is the end-all-be-all to our energy problems. It’s good for the environment, it’s good for the farmer, and it’s easy to make people think it will solve our energy dependency.

Once the general public realizes that ethanol has the following effects, we’ll start to look at ethanol as a stepping stone again, as it was in the first place:

1. it’s less efficient than gasoline
2. it’s more costly to produce
3. it’s no cheaper to buy at the pump (an effect of 1 and 2 above)
4. we’ll pay for it through our dinner plate if we rely on it as an energy alternative.

As they say, you can’t have your cake and eat it too!

-Grant

Not many people look at it from this perspective. Ethanol is seen by the general public as a “save all”, but really it could only be a temporary solution at best.