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By Scott Doggett, Contributing Editor


Of the many presentations given at a Toyota sustainable-mobility seminar in La Jolla, California, earlier this month the one by Jan F. Kreider (right) was particularly compelling.


Kreider, who founded the University of Colorado's Joint Center for Energy Management and has authored a dozen books on energy-related topics, many focusing on life-cycle analyses of automobiles and transportation fuels, addressed the subject of low-carbon fuels.


The presentation was as detailed as it was compelling. At the risk of spooking some readers with a large amount of text, I'd like to take you through some of the more salient points of Kreider's speech without paying too much attention to word count.


With ethanol in the news these days as the industry seeks renewal or extension of certain tax incentives and tariffs related to the fuel, Kreider chose to give the 50 or so journalists in attendance a good look at ethanol's dark side.


The major problems with ethanol, he said, are that it takes a lot of water, it takes a lot of land, and it actually uses more petroleum in the big life-cycle picture to make ethanol compared to just using the petroleum as gasoline directly.


Kreider said that when politicians and others initially backed corn ethanol, they just looked at burning the stuff in the car - and it seemed like a good idea.



But as you can see from the map on the left (click to enlarge), a deeper look at the fuel was discouraging. The map shows where you would be growing corn to make ethanol.


"If you put all of the agricultural land in the U.S. into growing corn for ethanol, you would only meet about half of the energy requirements for light vehicles in the U.S.," he noted.


Additionally, corn ethanol is water-intensive. To get all of the ethanol needed to meet half of the energy requirement for light vehicles in the U.S., there'd have to be a few Mississippi Rivers' worth of water dedicated to it - and the U.S. doesn't have anywhere near that much water to spare.
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Tags: Alternative Fuels, Biofuels, Coal, Diesel, Emissions, Energy Companies, Ethanol, Fuel Cell, Fuel Economy, Hybrid, Hydrogen, Natural Gas, Oil, Plug-ins and Electric, Toyota, Alternative Fuels, Biofuels, CNG, CO2, Coal, Diesel, Ethanol, EV, Fuel Cell, Fuel Efficiency, Jan. F. Kreid

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And the Winner Is? The Low-Carbon (and Not-So-Low-Carbon) Automotive Fuels was originally published by Green Car Advisor. Read the full story by clicking here.