EPA: ethanol crops displaces climate-friendly ones

(AP) -- The Environmental Protection Agency says that corn ethanol - as made today - wouldn't meet a congressional requirement that ethanol produce 20 percent less greenhouse gas than gasoline. But the agency said it is still more climate friendly than gasoline.

The EPA in its analysis said that even if worldwide land-use changes are taken into account, ethanol would still produce 16 percent less greenhouse gases than the gasoline it is replacing.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said Tuesday that future improvements in production technologies are expected to make ethanol and other biofuels more climate friendly so they can meet the legal requirement. The requirement for a 20 percent improvement in climate impact applies only to ethanol from future production plants and exempts fuel made at existing facilities.

(This version CORRECTS APNewsNow. corrects that ethanol fails to meet congressional mandate, but is still greener than gasoline.)

©2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

   

• Sean_W - May 05, 2009
  • Rank: 4 / 5 (1)
  I suppose there is no point in mentioning it anymore but nobody who supports ethanol as a fuel source, save for the corn industry, expects that ethanol to come from corn. Whether it is even used as a fuel in the future, ethanol is an important chemical and research into making it more cheaply is important and promising research.
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• Keno_Dan - May 06, 2009
  • Rank: 1 / 5 (3)
  There is one way to produce an abundant green ethanol crop that utilizes zero fresh water and is produced on land that would be otherwise totally unproductive. Tens of thousands of American workers would be employed full time maintaining this crop or in producing the hardware. The end product would be carbon neutral or better. The only added nutrient to the process is waste CO2 from power plants. It requires no fertilizer and grows year around. ALGAE, my friends, ALGAE, the living organism that produced the bulk of the fossil fuels extracted from the Earth....Then, we can help feed a starving world with the corn we currently produce. The Asian glaciers will disappear in the next 15 years, due to global warming we helped create, the rivers are going to dry up and hundreds of millions of people in Asia are going to starve to death...... Now, excuse me while I get back to the problem of putting man on Mars in less than 20 years...DANIEL STERLING SAMPLE SPACE DESIGNS, www.cyrus-space-system.com cinedog@netzero.net
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• Velanarris - May 06, 2009
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  All plants produce 90% of the Co2 they took in during the day, overnight.
  
  There's no such thing as carbon neutral.
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• Keno_Dan - May 25, 2009
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  "Carbon Neutral", in respect to the Earth's atmosphere, means producing energy without increasing or decreasing the amount of CO2 that already exists in the atmosphere. Algae plantations will cover vast areas of the southwestern U.S. desert in an air sealed environment, of course. Ethanol produced will be used principally to power personal transportation vehicles.Now, back to Mars www.cyrus-space-system.com Daniel Sterling Sample Space Designs cinedog@netzero.net
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