Anti-Ethanol Study Roasted

Colorado experts doubt authors' methods :
By Gargi Chakrabarty -- Rocky Mountain News -- July 19, 2005

Colorado experts on Monday debunked a new study that says alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel burn more energy than they produce.
The study, by researchers at Cornell University and the University of California-Berkeley, said 29 percent more fossil energy, such as oil or natural gas, is required to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of energy the process produces.

The study also said it takes 27 percent more energy to turn soybeans into biodiesel fuel and more than double the energy produced is needed to do the same with sunflower plants.
'Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation's energy security, its agriculture, the economy or the environment,' said the study by Cornell's David Pimentel and Berkeley's Tad Patzek. They conclude the country would be better off investing in solar, wind and hydrogen energy.
Those results raise important issues for Colorado, where investors are pumping millions of dollars into two new ethanol plants in Weld County and a new biodiesel refinery in Monte Vista...

Pimentel and Patzek included in the study such factors as the energy used in producing the crop, costs that were not used in other studies that supported ethanol production.
The study also omitted $3 billion in state and federal government subsidies that go toward ethanol production in the United States each year, payments that mask the true costs"...