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March 13, 2008

Walter Williams Addresses the Biofuel Boondoggle

Walter Williams lists a few of the reasons we need to pull the plug on the biofuel boondoggle immediately:

• Because corrosive water cannot be removed from it, ethanol cannot be moved by pipeline, but only by more expensive and energy-intensive methods, like truck.
• Ethanol is 20–30% less efficient than gasoline.
• It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce enough ethanol to fill an SUV's tank.
• It takes 1,700 gallons of water to make one gallon of ethanol.
• It takes over a gallon of gasoline to produce a gallon of ethanol.

If ethanol made sense, the free market would produce it. Since it's insane, government subsidies are required:

That's why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there's a double tax — one in the form of ethanol subsidies and another in the form of handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005 alone.

Maybe our government is not so much pernicious and corrupt as well-meaning but incompetent. But…

If Congress and President Bush say we need less reliance on oil and greater use of renewable fuels, then why would Congress impose a stiff tariff, 54 cents a gallon, on ethanol from Brazil?

Ethanol is also driving up food prices worldwide. But on the positive side, it's helping politicians rake in donations from the companies that make it.

On a tip from Oiao.

Posted by Van Helsing at March 13, 2008 5:21 PM

Comments

Posted by: Devil's Advocate at March 13, 2008 6:24 PM

Posted by: forest at March 13, 2008 7:38 PM

Posted by: Doug at March 13, 2008 7:41 PM

Posted by: proof at March 14, 2008 4:33 PM