CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

Corn Ethanol is becoming the Iraq war of energy policy. A policy based on lies, that initially won supporters political advantage, is highly destructive to the US, and ultimately destructive to its supporters when the costly truth becomes widely known.

In 2007, 115 US plants produced 7 billion gallons of Corn Ethanol - the energy equivalent of 132 million barrels of oil using about 15% of corn production. While this sounds large, it is tiny in the context of the US economy. This is equal to only 1.6% of the energy from from oil in 2007 used in the US. But the situation is worse than this because it takes 1 unit of fossil fuel to produce 1.3 units of corn ethanol. The net energy produced was only 0.5% of the energy from from oil - while consuming 15% of the US corn crop!

Vast sums of taxpayer and consumer dollars are funding an ineffective solution to the real problems of global warming and energy independence. While the country does not sufficiently fund what can be real solutions.

The Federal corn ethanol policy is extremely costly to working people in the US and the world’s poor (through higher food prices). The ethanol equivalent of a gallon of gasoline costs far more than a gallon of gasoline. Fueling your car with corn ethanol makes the world grain shortage worse and increases food prices to the world’s poor. 15 gallons of ethanol in your gas tank uses enough corn to feed one person for a year. Higher grain prices, from corn ethanol subsidies, have a big impact on grain feed beef, chicken, milk, and egg prices for hard working Americans.

(Click to read entire commentary)