America Was Wrong About Ethanol - Study Shows

Living in the corn belt, the way I remember (take that for what it's worth) it wasn't marketed to us as Green, it was marketed as "open new markets to sell your corn".

I'm glad you are shedding light on this again. Actually, these facts were known decades ago. Lobbies and special interests are a powerful thing.

I’m a little late to the comments, but my comment is that not all of the negative things were mentioned. 1 very big negative is the amount of water needed to grow Corn. The irrigation needed lowered the water table greatly, that water took many years to be deposited in the underground. It’s gone. Kansas has started limiting the amount of water that can be pumped, it’s a little late but it will take many years to rebuild the water table. I’m old so I’ll never live to see any difference. Thank you for your video. Thank you Sir

In Brazil, engines are "flex", meaning that they offer the flexibility to burn 100% gasoline or 100% ethanol, and also any mix in between. Most people drive on 100% ethanol, just because it is cheaper overall. In the early days of the technology, these engines were pretty bad when burning 100% ethanol, in particular when the engine was cold. However, nowadays, with sophisticated electronic injection systems, you don't feel much difference, even when the engine is cold. The technology dates back to 1970's, in response to the oil crisis which put Brazil on its knees. Being a vast country with a lot of sun, Brazil implemented a large scale program of producing ethanol from sugar cane.

Petrol Heads and College Professors have been talking about this since the early 2000's. What we all agreed on was that the 10% ethanol requirement was pushed through congress by the corn lobby to grow and sell more corn with the help of government subsides. Also, the 1st state to vote in the US primaries is Iowa and that state is a huge corn grower. Politicians promised to vote the 10% requirement into to law to get the Iowa vote and help their chances at the wining the presidential nomination.

1990s that’s right in the 1990s Popular Science wrote a magazine article explaining how Ethanol didn’t make sense because its energy intensive. Crazy that 30 years later we still can’t figure that out.

The funniest part of this whole ethanol affair is that before 1920 a huge portion of internal combustion engines ran on ethanol. Ethanol was cheaper and more ubiquitous than gas which made it the preferred fuel. It was, however, heavily taxed in certain countries, including the US before 1906, which did make it more expensive than gas. Ford's Model T ran on ethanol by default (though it could be adjusted to run on gasoline as well). Especially all performance/race engines ran on various alcohols, due to their huge octane rating. And one of the major reasons for prohibition was lobbying by oil/gasoline companies, Standard Oil in particular. It was very effective indeed.

I know this is an older video but iv'e got to say as a UK citizen I really like the style of this video, quick start, straight into the subject matter no heavy guitar riffs at the beginning no 'in video' ads for PCB manufacturers or VPN suppliers etc...love it, and i'll subscribe just for that, and of course for the very well presented subject...

The corn lobby is insanely powerful. 10 years ago, I wrote a paper for an undergraduate economics class. TL,DR corn subsidies pay companies to jam high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) into our processed food. HFCS causes significantly more obesity than cane sugar. We are using our tax dollars to make people fat. My professor suggested that I should write a different paper, because no politician will ever cancel corn subsidies.

Switchgrass ethanol has been known for years, the corn standard continues and will likely continue because it is a MASSIVE government hand out to Archer Daniels Midland, the basically sole producer of corn ethanol in the US. Given the current geopolitical situation the RFS should be suspended entirely so the farmland currently devoted to ethanol production can be used to produce food instead as the two largest grain producers in Europe are currently at war with each other.

One more thing. The feed value of the corn in animal rations, which remains after fermentation, was ignored and is a vital component of the ethanol equation. Suggesting agricultural lands could be returned to non agricultural uses would lead to a sharp increase in food prices and have a ripple effect on global hunger. Converting agricultural lands to subdivisions, parking lots and malls represents a far greater threat to life and quality of life and is a permanent loss of land that could be used for food production.

The reason this happened despite it being both financially and environmentally terrible is because of corn subsidies. In America we pay farmers to grow corn and sometimes we pay them NOT to grow corn, to keep the market “steady.” The problem comes from the fact that without subsidies, nobody in their right mind would be making ethanol, they’d be losing so much money because of the logistics involved. 1 gallon of ethanol might need 1/2 gallon of diesel fuel to produce and transport it, it might need 3lbs of compressed natural gas to brew the corn (making beer essentially) the amount of electricity in making a gallon of ethanol is probably enough to drive an electric car 100 miles. It’s just another terrible idea from the bureaucratic system here in USA. Yay!

I was directly involved in the effort to avoid the EtOH mandates on the oil and gas side. We specifically told all members of Congress we could make cleaner burning fuel without EtOH. We showed them we could do it. We said they could set whatever fuel standard they wanted as for how clean it needed to burn, and we could develop a fuel to meet it. But that is not what they wanted to hear. Most Congressmen refused to even speak to us about it. It was the period of time where I gave up on the US Government as a whole and realized it had nothing to do with actually helping anyone. The only language that spoke was money and whoever was willing to give more of it wins.

I'm sure there's not a lot of stock footage out there for corn based ethanol, but you did a great job creating your own! 😂

I couldn't stop laughing at the corn cob being thrown around in the video.

YAY! I've been a ineffectual proponent of switchgrass since the early 2000s. It's awesome to see this topic presented. Please now make a video showing alcohol production from switch grass vs from corn, especially showing the amount of leftover waste produced by both (just make two piles of the leftover biomass).

I work near an auto repair shop and consider this: all the emissions equipment costs mega money to repair and cannot be recycled. No only that, but the damage and unnecessary service, tags, licenses, paperwork, gov employees, the energy from the buildings, electricity, CO2 tied to what the goverment spends enforcing the codes to get to that 20% is more than they could ever hope to offset.

I studied in Energy Engineering, and this was something that I have been explaining to people for years that a lot of this stuff can be greenwashed and isn't necessarily as good as someone might think it is. The corn growers were subsidized which made it profitable to do so, but it increased food prices by reducing food crop space, the greenhouse gas reduction also depends on how detailed the scope is, but it also might not consider pollution due to fertilizers in land, water, and especially land use change effects. I think one of the most efficient ones was sugar at the time, but it also caused some places to have rainforest deforestation due to its profitability. The last I heard someone was developing algae for biofuel as well.

The link for Cynthia Giles article (next generation compiliance) doesn't seem to work anymore. I'm looking for part 4 specifically and can't find it. Does anyone have a working link or a pdf they could share?

I like that my car is just a little drunk