Subject: Roles Of Biofuels Should Not Be Diminished.
Dear Editor,
After reading your article, where you are challenging the feasibility of the ethanol industry, I felt it necessary to respond. Although I respect your opinion, I tend to disagree with the following statements in your article. I consider my civil to provide a voice to those, who believe that ethanol and the biofuel’s industry in general decrease the man made carbon footprint and also reduce the United States dependence on foreign oil supplies.
Stating that net energy balance in production of ethanol is only slightly positive. Why are we worried so much about “slightly positive balance” of energy output when producing ethanol, when most of the existing energy industries, such as coal based electricity generation companies and even gasoline combustion in the vehicles result in clearly negative energy balance?
Ethanol does not reduce the dependence on foreign oil and as an industry is not economically viable. With soaring gas prices, American families have to spend $4 per gallon for standard grade gasoline, the addition of biofuels to our fuel supply is one of the only things keeping prices from increasing further. This is the only way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and save our families from financial difficulties.
Not to mention that ethanol is a substantial part of American economy that provides people with jobs and means of living. For every billion gallons of ethanol produced, 10,000 -- 20,000 jobs are created in all sectors of the economy from production workers, to truck drivers to servers and cooks in rural restaurants.
As far as receiving subsidies from government and special tax legislation – I would like to remind that the petroleum industry receives billions of dollars in tax breaks each year from the federal government.
Ethanol production contributes to food crisis. Those who connect biofuel production to the food crisis, should realize that ethanol production is by far not the major contributor to the increasing food prices. Global climate change is a major reason, and in order to offset the greenhouse gas emissions we need to increase renewable fuels production.
Ethanol production is actually helping the food chain by developing more supplies of corn, animal feed products, and U.S. corn exports are at record levels.
And finally, the last argument of the article I would like to address was:
Ethanol producers themselves contribute to greenhouse gas emission during their production, transportation and consumption cycles. On that I would like to reply: during the growth cycle of biomass, carbon dioxide is being absorbed by fuel crops and no net emission is being produced. Moreover, new ethanol plants, like the ones located in South Dakota, designed and operated by Poet Energy, have carbon capturing technology that allows them to collect carbon dioxide and sell it as fertilizer. This technology needs to be extended to other plants throughout the US.
With that being said, I would like to conclude that there are still many steps we need to take towards achieving energy security, but it is not the time to displace ethanol based on its imperfections. Our role as a society is not to reject the U.S. federal policy, but ensure its success, from which will benefit our nation’s economy, energy security and environment.
Magazine Reader
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