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Ethanol
08/20/2002
Listen in RealAudio 
Interest in using ethanol for fuel is growing again as the country tries to reduce its
dependence on fossil fuel imports.
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook's weekly segment on global
climate change.
Curt Nickisch reports today, energy independence is just one benefit of using ethanol.
Inside a steel-framed building, where corn growers unload their crop for processing
into ethanol, President Bush told a crowd of mostly farmers the fuel additive is a big
part of the nation's energy mix.
President Bush: It's good public policy for America, it's good for our air, it's good for our
economy, and it's good for our national security.
All that goodness comes from fermenting the sugars in a kernel of corn. The end
product, ethanol, helps gasoline burn more efficiently according to the executive
director for the Coalition for Ethanol, Trevor Guthmiller.
TG: It adds oxygen to that gasoline. So, when a ten percent ethanol blend, which is
kind of the standard blend that you can use in any car, is used it will help that gasoline
burn about 30 percent cleaner, than with straight gasoline without ethanol.
But ethanol isn't an entirely renewable fuel. Tractors tending corn fields burn fossil
fuels and natural gas goes into the production of fertilizer, but Guthmiller says much of
the energy stored in corn comes from the sun. So, burning ethanol winds up supplying
at least a third more energy than that of the fossil fuels put into it.
TG: We aren't growing any more oil in this world, but we can grow more corn as long
as that process produces more energy than it takes to make the product.
Guthmiller says that translates into fewer greenhouse gas emissions from a car's
exhaust pipe. In Sioux Falls, this is Curt Nickisch.
Our global climate change series is underwritten by the New England Science Center
Collaborative and the Roy A. Hunt Foundation.
Today's Links
More on Ethanol
http://www.afdc.doe.gov/altfuel/ethanol.html
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