Solar vs Ethanol
Posted by Big Gav
Energy Bulletin has just published two articles on renewable energies - the first, Thermodynamics of the Corn-Ethanol Biofuel cycle, says that ethanol production from corn is basically useless and declares that solar is far more efficient and cost effective.
The second, Worldwide capacity of solar thermal energy greatly underestimated, says that solar is already a major energy source world-wide and still has considerable potential.
Not everyone agrees with this view of ethanol though - this article "Is ethanol energy-efficient ?" quotes the US Department of Agriculture and says that "ethanol contains 34% more energy than is used to grow and harvest the corn and distill it into ethanol". No doubt there is a fair amount of politics involved, so its hard to be sure exactly where the truth of it is.
Posts
