Who is buying votes with ethanol?They are running under the same policies that were set back in the early 80's. Every penny you and I spent in taxes to support ethanol is saved at the gas pump in cheaper gas. Now here are my figures to produce one hector of corn as fuel related. I sent these figures to Dr Pimental at Cornell and he had no disbute with these figures. I had to put my figures per hector not acres cause that is the unit of measure he was using. And he is from the US where we use acres. I have no way to break out the fuel costs for electricity,seed, fertilizer,and pesticides, so I will include the total cost as all fuel related. Fert. $250 Seed $180 Pest. $134 Fuel used to tend to the corn $45 Drying costs and electricity. $52 Fuel to deliver corn to the plant 50 miles away. $18 Total to get the corn to the ethanol plant. $679 per hector. Now if you take that figure and divide it by $3.00 ( cost of fuel for me in December when I put these figures together) you get 227 gallons of fuel to produce one hector. My corn average yield for the last 3 years is 437 bushels per hector. The national average is 375 per hector. So we will use the national figure. That 375 bushel will make 1012 gallons of ethanol. And 10 gallons of corn oil that can be refined into biodiesel. I used 227 gallons to produce 1022 gallons. Leaving 735 for heating and refining. The cost to cook and refine those 735 gallons is $320. At $3.00 a gallon that leaves with about 625 gallons to sell. Trucking 500 miles to the gas station, from ethanol plant about 8 gallon per hector. So we have a net return of 617 gallons per hector.
So it took 405 gallons of energy to produce 1022.
So I was wrong when I said 55% increase earlier. It is closer to 155%. Lets see your facts. Gary
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