I’ve always been a big advocate of efficiency in resource use and minimal generation of pollution because it’s not simply poor form to crap in your own bed, in the long term it is deadly, regardless of what those who would like to think otherwise say.

On the face of it, increased use of ethanol seems very promising in reducing at least some of the petroleum usage of the United States along with improving some aspects of the pollution generated by cars. Unfortunately, when you look deeper, the cost-benefit ratio is not so clear.

Oil, what we like to call the organic liquid mixture more properly termed petroleum, has many benefits that have created the worldwide economy we have now.

What is it about oil that makes it so special?

For one, it is a true energy source, very little energy is needed relative to the amount of energy gained to pump oil out of the ground, transport it, and refine it to forms more useful to us. For the case of ethanol, we have to grow the source material, whether it be cellulose from trees or sugars from corn or other plants, then we have to convert the raw materials into ethanol using any of a variety of processes that while they do not consume more energy than is contained in the product, it is certainly not as high yielding as the oil-based system.

In short, petroleum is a source of energy that has a low energy cost to convert to a useful, easily transportable form (such as gasoline among other products) whereas ethanol is a complicated method of converting the energy of sunlight into another form of energy, using water and other precursors (not to mention the energy costs associated with growing the raw materials and transporting those bulk solids to a conversion facility) to make the useful, easily transportable form of chemical energy.

I am not trying to argue against ethanol or any other alternative ways of transporting chemical energy (for that is what gasoline, ethanol, or other alternative energy sources are, ways of transporting chemical energy that is released through burning), but we must understand the energy economics of the cycle we are proposing along with the monetary economics.

Ultimately, true practical sources of energy involve either sunlight, uranium or other fissile material, fossil fuels, or in limited amounts geothermal. Other “sources” are merely converting these fundamental sources into a different form. For example, hydroelectric power, in addition to requiring dams that are not exactly environmentally friendly, is merely a way of converting the sunlight that evaporated the water that fell in the watershed as rain into electricity.

Ethanol burners, hybrids, not even fuel cell cars will avoid these fundamental energy economics, because the power has to come ultimately from somewhere. The true solution to the oncoming crisis of petroleum lies in understanding how to harness the fundamental energy sources, not short-term slogans that proclaim that ethanol or some other quick fix is the panacea.