this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2025
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First line of the article:
Quick search for "Renewable Fuels Association"...
The ethanol industry mouthpiece, owned by people who benefit massively from the ethanol industry, says that the ethanol industry is good. Why am I not surprised. Zero credibility.
Besides, there's solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, nuclear power... all of which are cleaner (yes, even nuclear) and less wasteful than bioethanol. EV and battery technology is rapidly improving. The USA is being left in the dust by Chinese and Japanese EV makers.
Sure, they are biased but that doesn't mean the numbers are wrong or misleading. There are other sources that report similar numbers. It makes sense that ethanol producers would have the most accurate data on energy used and energy produced. Kinda like how a baker is gonna know much they bake or a retailer how much they sell. Unless you have a specific criticism with their data, attacking the source is just an ad hominem. EVs are generally better sure (at least with a clean energy source), but clean fuel is better than dirty fossil fuel.
An ad hominem fallacy involves irrelevant attacks on the character of the other party. The source of funding for a study is very relevant. Read up on the tobacco industry’s decades of lying via scientific study for more information.
Bioethanol may provide more energy to the consumer than it requires to produce according to the limited metrics laid out by the producers who are aiming to make it look as viable as possible, but off the top of my head there are still plenty of problems present.
If it still uses fossil fuels, then it is still consuming nonrenewable resources.
They ignore the cost of constant monocropping—corn growth removes nitrogen from the soil and leaves it less fertile for future generations.
They ignore the environmental cost of raising so much cattle and other farm livestock, industries propped up by the fact that there are so many financial incentives for growing corn, like bioethanol tax incentives so you don’t have to worry about grossly overproducing.
They sidestep the question of whether the land would be better used providing food for human consumption or as unimproved land that provides a home for local flora and fauna. Their whole argument is that bioethanol is better than it used to be. Not that it’s good for us.
Obviously the concept of producing three times more energy than it requires is absurd; no process involving energy transfer is even 100% efficient. The additional energy inputs are hidden: energy taken from the sun; land taken from its occupants; water taken from the surrounding regions; nutrients taken from the soil. The costs are likewise hidden: costs to the planet and costs to future generations.
So you would rather burn gasoline than biofuels even though it is worse for the environment? Because that is the alternative for most of existing vehicles on the road. It is better than gasoline, not perfect.
Yes, I agree there are better crops for biofuels than corn and some of subsidies are not well designed and applied.
My argument is that the existing ICE vehicles are still burning fuel and that it is better to burn a cleaner fuel CO2 wise than dirty fossil fuels in them.
Yes, It's called solar power, plants naturally convert the sunlight to energy like solar panels just not nearly as efficiently. Also, as I put in the original comment the energy inputs being referenced are fossil energy inputs and the energy output is a lot cleaner because it is produced by the plant from the sun. I don't get why people seem thoroughly convinced it is a bad thing to grow plants for fuel instead of burning the harmful fossil fuels that we've known for decades are the cause of global warming.
I think you must be talking about fossil fuels here because it is absurd to fearmonger about growing plants. It is the carbon released by burning fossil fuels that is full of hidden costs in the form of future climate change and a less hospitable earth. Replacing a fossil fuel with a more clean, less polluting fuel source is helping to lessen those costs.
Stop letting perfect be the enemy of good, Corn ethanol emits 46% less greenhouse gases than gasoline.
Now it’s not just the ethanol mouthpiece ignoring all of the additional issues that using huge swaths of the planet to monocrop corn causes, it’s you too! My concerns about nitrogen replenishment, destruction of plant and animal habitats, and irresponsible use of limited land were clearly outlined and you refuse to address them because you cannot quantify them. In fact, you try to exclude them as factors and still say that ethanol is better for the planet as if it is a known truth. That’s my exact problem. We can’t quantify bioethanol as being better than x times better than fossil fuels because we can’t quantify exactly how fucked we are if we don’t stop practicing large scale agriculture in this destructive fashion. Or rather, I can’t, and you can’t, and neither of us have found a relevant study, and the pro-destroy the planet for shareholder value firms have far more money to fund studies than do the anti-DTPFSV groups so there’s going to be an imbalance in studies available to be cited.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good—advocate for funding public transit even if it’s less convenient for you personally than owning two cars.
I'm not ignoring the monocrop and other environmental issues, I am instead focusing on the biggest cause of climate change, the burning of fossil fuels and the associated warming from it. Yes, monocrops and destruction of native habitats are an issue, but I can't do anything about that. I am not cutting down rainforest or logging natural forestland or burning prairieland.
I think both can be quantified to some extent. Maybe not perfectly, but well enough to figure out which is better overall. We can certainly quantify the impacts of already existing production processes like corn bioethanol, sugarcane bioethanol, and gasoline using GHG life cycle analyses. I didn't mean to say that bioethanol is always better than fossil fuel, I am sure there are some plants and production practices that could make it worse somewhere. But in the context of US corn bioethanol as produced today, it emits less greenhouse gases than gasoline per mile driven. See the links I already posted.
I would also guess that at Earth's current population and consumption levels that we need some large scale ag to ensure people don't starve (more than they already are). We can try to adapt it somewhat but it needs to be done carefully to ensure we don't cause more harm. This has happened historically in other countries when they tried to radically change their food production processes and could happen again.
Large-scale ag is harmful especially when huge amounts of natural forestry and habitats are destroyed for crops, but it is a somewhat lesser cause than the fuels being burned and their CO2. Burning fossil fuels is responsible for something like 70%+ of emissions related to climate change.
I don't own two cars, I don't really drive anywhere even. Public transit is not feasible where I am due to low population density. But when I do drive, I can fuel up with a cleaner fuel (as can anyone else in the country). Different circumstances call for different solutions, so please don't be so quick to assume that there is one universal best solution.