Reduced Petroleum Imports and Costs
One rationale given for extensive ethanol production in the U.S. is its benefit to energy security, by shifting the need for some foreign-produced oil to domestically produced energy sources. Production of ethanol requires significant energy, but current U.S. production derives most of that energy from coal, natural gas and other sources, rather than oil. Because 66% of oil consumed in the U.S. is imported, compared to a net surplus of coal and just 16% of natural gas (2006 figures), the displacement of oil-based fuels to ethanol produces a net shift from foreign to domestic U.S. energy sources.
According to a 2008 analysis by Iowa State University, the growth in US ethanol production has caused retail gasoline prices to be US $0.29 to US $0.40 per gallon lower than would otherwise have been the case.
Read more about this topic: Ethanol Fuel
Famous quotes containing the words reduced, imports and/or costs:
“There surely is a being who presides over the universe; and who, with infinite wisdom and power, has reduced the jarring elements into just order and proportion. Let speculative reasoners dispute, how far this beneficent being extends his care, and whether he prolongs our existence beyond the grave, in order to bestow on virtue its just reward, and render it fully triumphant.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“French rhetorical models are too narrow for the English tradition. Most pernicious of French imports is the notion that there is no person behind a text. Is there anything more affected, aggressive, and relentlessly concrete than a Parisan intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the universe.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“When over Catholics the ocean rolls,
They must wait several weeks before a mass
Takes off one peck of purgatorial coals,
Because, till people know what’s come to pass,
They won’t lay out their money on the dead—
It costs three francs for every mass that’s said.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)