Ethanol: Bush Plan a Total Failure - This is What Happens When the Government Dictates the Solution

There is no doubt that the U.S. needs to reduce its dependence on oil and particularly on imported oil. A posting of Monday August 10, 2009 recounted the total failure of the Energy Department, set up under Carter, to reduce petroleum imports. The government MANDATE TO USE ETHANOL mixed with gasoline, in order to cut carbon-dioxide emissions, has turned out to be another government fiasco, both technically and economically. This was started in 2005 under Bush as part of the global warming scare and was reinforced under Bush with increased government economic incentives in 2007 and 2008. Biofuels like ethanol made by processing edible products like corn (the U.S.), soybeans and sugar are relatively easy to make, but there is not enough farmland to make fuel without raising the cost of feedstock for animals which, in turn, has raised the price of food. Also, once the total emissions for growing, harvesting and processing of corn to ethanol are counted then there is little, if any, reduction in emissions. The total emissions might even be increased if new land has to be cleared and plant life destroyed to grow the corn.
The government's role should be one of supporting research and development into alternative fuels and energy sources, not dictating the solution. In the case of biofuels, the potential for a major gain is in the processing of cellulose based products, obviously not edible, such as grasslands, wood chips, cornstalks and more. There is an enormous quantity of such products worldwide and the successful processing of cellulose based products into ethanol could replace 50 percent or more of the gasoline used in this country. The problem at present is that it is much more difficult to breakdown the cellulose structure than to breakdown the non-cellulose structures of edible products. Methods for breaking down cellulose waste are being researched using chemicals, high temperatures and living organisms but an economical solution is not in hand. The Bush administration, under pressure from environmentalists, panicked and dictated the answer instead of letting private enterprise find a viable solution and, as is usually the case with government solutions, it was the wrong solution.