No, not for drinking but for putting in your gas tank. The carbon intensity of corn ethanol is 24% higher than gasoline. It also increases corn food prices by 30%, soybeans and wheat by 20%.
Environmental outcomes of the US Renewable Fuel Standard
Lark et al.
www.pnas.org/content/119/9/e2101084119
DB2
Ethanol from corn always was a stupid idea and a bad form of subsidy.
Ethanol from corn always was a stupid idea and a bad form of subsidy.
Atmospheric dust levels are rising in the Great Plains
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201013124158.htm
The trend of rising dust parallels expansion of cropland and seasonal crop cycles, suggesting that farming practices are exposing more soil to wind erosion…
Around the 2000s, the growth in demand for biofuels spurred renewed expansion of farmland to produce the needed crops. In an echo of the 1920s, this expansion replaced stable grasslands with vulnerable soil. Over five years, from 2006 to 2011, 2046 square miles (530,000 hectares) of grassland in five Midwestern states became farmland – an area a little smaller than Delaware…
All together, the data cover years from 1988 to 2018. Dust, they found, is increasing in the atmosphere over the whole of the Great Plains by as much as 5% per year.
DB2
Not to mention all the labor hours spent on cleaning fuel systems contaminated by the water that ethanol attracts.
But the first Presidential selection process is in Iowa, so the pandering to corn farmers will continue.
Steve
Even though there is a popular meme of “follow the science”, it rarely comes down to it. If we were serious about ethanol, switch grass would be the answer.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/grass-makes-bette…
JLC