| | WHY ALCOHOL FUEL?
THE TWO-MINUTE SUMMARY |  | | - Almost every country can become energy-independent.Anywhere that has sunlight and land can produce alcohol from plants.Brazil, the fifth largest country in the world imports no oil, sincehalf its cars run on alcohol fuel made from sugarcane, grown on 1% ofits land.
- We can reverse global warming. Since alcoholis made from plants, its production takes carbon dioxide out of theair, sequestering it, with the result that it reverses the greenhouseeffect (while potentially vastly improving the soil). Recent studiesshow that in a permaculturally designed mixed-crop alcohol fuelproduction system, the amount of greenhouse gases removed from theatmosphere by plants—and then exuded by plant roots into the soil assugar—can be 13 times what is emitted by processing the crops andburning the alcohol in our cars.
- We can revitalize the economy instead ofsuffering through Peak Oil. Oil is running out, and what we replace itwith will make a big difference in our environment and economy. Alcoholfuel production and use is clean and environmentally sustainable, andwill revitalize families, farms, towns, cities, industries, as well asthe environment. A national switch to alcohol fuel would provide manymillions of new permanent jobs.
- No new technological breakthroughs are needed. We can make alcohol fuel out of what we have,where we are. Alcohol fuel can efficiently be made out of many things,from waste products like stale donuts, grass clippings, food processingwaste-even ocean kelp. Many crops produce many times more alcohol peracre than corn, using arid, marshy, or even marginal land in additionto farmland. Just our lawn clippings could replace a third of theautofuel we get from the Mideast.
- Unlike hydrogen fuel cells, we can easily use alcohol fuel in the vehicles we already own.Unmodified cars can run on 50% alcohol, and converting to 100% alcoholor flexible fueling (both alcohol and gas) costs only a few hundreddollars. Most auto companies already sell new dual-fuel vehicles.
- Alcohol is a superior fuel to gasoline! It's105 octane, burns much cooler with less vibration, is less flammable incase of accident, is 98% pollution-free, has lower evaporativeemissions, and deposits no carbon in the engine or oil, resulting in atripling of engine life. Specialized alcohol engines can get at least22% better mileage than gasoline or diesel.
- It's not just for gasoline cars. We can also easily use alcohol fuel to power diesel engines,trains, aircraft, small utility engines, generators to makeelectricity, heaters for our homes—and it can even be used to cook ourfood.
- Alcohol has a proud history. Gasoline is arefinery's toxic waste; alcohol fuel is liquid sunshine. Henry Ford'searly cars were all flex-fuel. It wasn't until gasoline magnate John D.Rockefeller funded Prohibition that alcohol fuel companies were drivenout of business.
- The byproducts of alcohol production are clean,instead of being oil refinery waste, and are worth more than thealcohol itself. In fact, they can make petrochemical fertilizers andherbicides obsolete. The alcohol production process concentrates andmakes more digestible all protein and non-starch nutrients in the crop.It's so nutritious that when used as animal feed, it produces more meator milk than the corn it comes from. That's right, fermentation of cornincreases the food supply and lowers the cost of food.
- Locally produced ethanol supercharges regional economies.Instead of fuel expenditures draining capital away to foreign bankaccounts, each gallon of alcohol produces local income that gets recirculated many times. Every dollar of tax credit for alcohol generates up to $6 in new tax revenues from the increased local business.
- Alcohol production brings many new small-scale business opportunities.There is huge potential for profitable local, integrated, small-scalebusinesses that produce alcohol and related byproducts, whereas whengas was cheap, alcohol plants had to be huge to make a profit.
- Scale matters—most of the widely publicized potential problemswith ethanol are a function of scale. Once production plants get beyonda certain size and are too far away from the crops that supply them,closing the ecological loop becomes problematic. Smaller-scaleoperations can more efficiently use a wide variety of crops than huge specialized one-crop plants, and diversification of crops would largely eliminate the problems of monoculture.
- The byproducts of small-scale alcohol plants can be used in profitable, energy-efficient, and environmentally positiveways. For instance, spent mash (the liquid left over afterdistillation) contains all the nutrients the next fuel crop needs andcan return it back to the soil if the fields are close to theoperation. Big-scale plants, because they bring in crops from up to 45miles away, can't do this, so they have to evaporate all the water andsell the resulting byproduct as low-price animal feed,which accountsfor half the energy used in the plant.
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