"ED" wrote in message
news
Brazil has no petrolium resources and relied on sugar cane
to produce ethenol. I believe they were/are 100%
independent from oil imports..

We should be doing more in this country--not with corn
but with sugar beets....and oil seeds..


Be careful what you wish for. On all bio fuels I have seen touted so far,
it seems to be a proposition where it takes more energy put in to the
production of the fuel than you get out of the fuel when you use it.

Think for a moment about how many gallons of oil you get per acre of farm
land, the cost of pumping water to irrigate the crop and the energy required
to run the tractors, truck and process the produce.

Brazil has a whole lot of bio-mass to ferment into alcohol, and they have
very little demand.

Conversely, in the US we are burning a whole lot of natural gas to generate
electricity. Motor vehicles can use natural gas with very little
modification, yet few use this fuel because of the price and availability.

If we were to build some more nuclear power plants, we could free up the
supply of natural gas, and get cheaper and cleaner electricity. Political
pressures from scare mongers have thwarted this however. As a result of
this stupidity, we generate about half of our electricity by burning coal
and therefore dump thousands of tons of radioactive pollution into the
atmosphere from burning the coal.

Cheap electricity would also allow for cheap hydrogen to be produced.
Hydrogen could also be used as a motor fuel with zero smog, or carbon
emissions.


--
Roger Shoaf
If you are not part of the solution, you are not dissolved in the solvent.