"In the United States, ethanol is the primary biofuel in use. U.S. ethanol production now makes up about 3 percent of U.S. annual gasoline usage."
That was written in July 2006 based on 2005 figures. But US ethanol production increased by 60% since 2005 so the figure is derived from that.
I don’t see a farm related spike for planting or harvesting nor for the increase in the production of ethanol.
No you wouldn't because:
1) The fluctuation in gasoline usage can vary much more than 4.8 percent in a few months and the increase due to ethanol production occurred over years.
2) A higher demand in one sector that drives up the price is going to reduce demand in another sector that is more dicrectionary. (people use their RVs less when prices are high)
The biodiesel folks believe they can provide enough biodiesel for farm use...
Great. Grow crops to make fuel to use to grow crops to make more fuel. Great for the farm lobby.
...and with coal to diesel plants starting up
Why not just use the coal to make diesel fuel instead of using coal to make fuel to make corn to make fuel? Is this trip really necessary?
I don’t see much need to worry about the so called need to import oil to create ethanol.
Of course not. We will run out of farmland long before that.
No way will we run out of farmland, There is 30 million
acres in CRP crap and twice that much unused,
That adds up to as many acres as whole corn crop.
And we aren’t raising food to exclusively make fuel,
there are other products worth more than ethanol.
It is a kind of by-product, just like milk has
butterfat removed for other dairy items, and the
meat on cattle isn’t the only thing used.
Biodiesel developement will help.So when
system is built up so biodiesel takes over 2%
of energy needs, equivalent to fuel farms,then
farmers raise soybeans, processors take out the
biodiesel to raise all crops, that still leaves
soybean meal and products for food, as well as the
other crops all raised, including corn.Sounds great
and dummies hollering about using oil to raise crops
won’t have a holler. Now will the percentage of
energy, biodiesel and ethanol has replaced help
drop price. Not really it’s only moderated prices,
as it still goes back to the fact, that present high
prices are caused by speculating money.Ed
I don’t think you are reading it right. No where in the article does it talks about inputs to make ethanol.
Look at this excerpt from the Energy Information Administration.
**In 2005, total U.S. ethanol production was 3.9 billion gallons, or 2.9 percent of the total gasoline pool.**
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/analysispaper/biomass.html
They are talking about the percent of ethanol in the total gasoline supply not how much gasoline is used to make ethanol.
As I said before they don’t use gasoline to make any sizable amount of ethanol.