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Railfanning With High Gas Prices -- SMART START--What it is and what it does.
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Here is today's question and answer. This deals with what modelcar was talking about yesterday. [^] <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />Doesn't producing ethanol on a large scale use a great deal of energy? <br /> <br /> <br />Yes. Some ethanol skeptics have even argued that the process involved in growing grain and then transforming it into ethanol requires more energy from fossil fuels than ethanol generates. In other words, they say the whole movement is a farce. <br /> <br />There's no absolute consensus in the scientific community, but that argument is losing strength. Michael Wang, a scientist at the Energy Dept.-funded Argonne National Laboratory for Transportation Research, says "The energy used for each unit of ethanol produced has been reduced by about half [since 1980]." Now, Wang says, the delivery of 1 million Briti***hermal units (BTUs) of ethanol uses 0.74 million BTUs of fossil fuels. (That does not include the solar energy -- the sun shining -- used in growing corn.) By contrast, he finds that the delivery of 1 million BTUs of gasoline requires 1.23 million BTU of fossil fuels. <br /> <br />Producing ethanol could get more efficient soon as new technologies help farmers get more corn per acre of land and allow ethanol producers to get more of the fuel from the same amount of corn. The companies developing new corn technologies include chemical giant Dupont and Monsanto, which sells genetically modified seeds as well as chemicals for protecting crops. <br /> <br /> <br />
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