Podcast: Argonne researcher debunks some ethanol myths

In this podcast, Paul Cernik, a farmer from Colon and member of the Nebraska Corn Growers Association, talks about a few ethanol myths addressed recently by a researcher at Argonne National Laboratory.

The first myth he addressed covers the ethanol energy balance...that myth that ethanol requires more energy to make than it yields. While this has been debunked many times, some still believe it’s true.

The Argonne researcher said ethanol is most certainly positive on the energy front for two key reasons. First, corn production efficiency has increased dramatically, with farmers now growing 160 bushels per acre today versus the 95 grown in 1980 (and yields continue to increase).

Second, ethanol production has become more energy-efficient. Most corn used in ethanol production goes through a dry milling process that uses far less energy than the wet milling process used before. The combination of more corn per acre coupled with a reduction of energy input to process ethanol, results in a very favorable energy balance.

The researcher addressed a couple of other myths, most of which should simply go away but unfortunately live on thanks to ethanol naysayers and internet searches.

"This is why we must continue to work to tell the truth about ethanol and the benefits it has for everything from economic development to reducing our dependence on foreign oil," Cernik said.

"Ethanol is making a real contribution to our energy needs while reducing our dependence on imported petroleum. And that’s no myth. It’s a fact," he said.


Nebraska Corn Board intern Lance Atwater recently completed a series of blog posts where he took time to bust five myths that continue to be repeated by the anti-ethanol crowd. Specifically, Atwater noted that ethanol does not take more energy to produce than it yields, that ethanol production does not reduce our food supply, that gasoline does indeed produce more greenhouse gases than ethanol, that ethanol requires less water to produce now than it did several years ago and that although cars using ethanol do get less fuel mileage, it is recovered by the lower cost of ethanol.

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