Study gives mixed review of ethanol

Environmental benefit questioned

A new study claims to settle a decades-long dispute over the use of ethanol as a motor fuel, saying it can reduce dependence on foreign oil but does not yet provide significant environmental benefits.

The study, by University of California-Berkeley researchers and published in the journal Science, says earlier studies were wrong to claim ethanol is an ineffective fuel because it takes too much petroleum to produce.
But it also said that ethanol made from corn — as is nearly all ethanol available today — would reduce greenhouse gas emissions only marginally.

“The longstanding debate over whether ethanol is good or bad on an energy basis . . . we believe that 20-year-old argument is now solved,” said one of the study’s authors, Dan Kammen, a professor at UC-Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy.

“You can get more energy out,” he added. “What we don’t know is, is that good for the planet?”

Contra Costa Times