this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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Burning ethanol still produces CO2? Ethanol is less energy dense than the fossil fuels in gasoline/petrol. How does this translate into fuel? This is the 3rd story today with claims that either don't make sense or I'm not getting.
It's possible to produce a more energy dense fuel from corn, but the quantities you can produce are small compared with current total liquid fuel use. Long distance air travel is tough to electrify, so this is a plausible use of the limited biofuels we can produce.
In practice, the airlines and airplane manufacturers are using this possibility as a means of avoiding action
Burning ethanol does make CO2. But it releases CO2 that was pulled out of the atmosphere by the plant the ethanol was made from.
But the net CO2 is actually worse than just using fossil fuels, because of the use of fossil fuels to grow the amount of corn needed to make that much ethanol, and refine it.
That's not because of burning the ethanol itself, though.