E85: “Water could be the Achilles heel”
A report by the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy warns that the ethanol industry’s appetite for H20 may torpedo its future. As reported by The Economist, “a typical ethanol factory producing 50m gallons of biofuels a year needs about 500 gallons of water a minute.” The mag cites opposition to plants in Missouri, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and in central Illinois based on proposed plants draining local aquifers. As we’ve reported before, Florida is amongst those states providing ethanol-justified subsidies to its corn growers. And yet… “OFFICIALS in Tampa, Florida, got a surprise recently when a local firm building the state’s first ethanol-production factory put in a request for 400,000 gallons (1.5m litres) a day of city water. The request by US Envirofuels would make the facility one of the city’s top ten water consumers overnight, and the company plans to double its size. Florida is suffering from a prolonged drought. Rivers and lakes are at record lows and residents wonder where the extra water will come from.” While the ethanol industry has halved its H20 needs in the last ten years, 50 percent of a massive amount of water to turn corn into ethanol still ain’t chicken feed. Literally. [thanks to starlightmica for the link]