The Energy Future of Liquid Fuel

Why Corn Ethanol Is a Fuel’s Errand

Robert U. Ayres & Edward H. Ayres

America’s dilemma is that it must achieve huge fuel reductions in the next two decades while continuing to get by with a motor vehicle-dominated transport system that is inherently inefficient, even at its best.

A good starting point is the one that has advanced most rapidly during the past few years in parts of the United States—the partial substitution of ethanol (ethyl alcohol) for gasoline. Gas stations sell an unobtrusive mixture of the two fuels, in which the ethanol fraction is rather small. This mixture makes some sense from the retailer’s standpoint because ethanol contains less energy (exergy) per gallon than gasoline, so consumers ...

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