[sustran] Re: How much land does a car "eat" for a year?

[Zvi Leve]

Chu Wa,

I am familiar with a blog article which analyses the production of Ethanol
from Corn and evaluates whether it is Renewable or
Sustainable<http://conversationsdesalon.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html>.
The article does a global energy-balance analysis using the following
assumptions: the number of metric tons of corn harvested per hectare is
9,400, a metric ton of corn produces 4,000 liters of ethanol, and that
flex-fuel vehicles typically get about 20-30% fewer miles per liter when
fueled with ethanol. Make your assumptions about vehicle KM's and fuel
consumption per year and you can figure out how much land would be necessary
per car.

The author's conclude that producing ethanol from corn is neither renewable
nor sustainable: [my emphasis] "*it would take all the corn in the country
to displace about 3.5% of our gasoline consumption *– only slightly more
than we could displace by making sure drivers' tires were inflated
properly!"

As Lee likes to say "Bio-fuels are for fools!"

Sounds like an excellent project. Plan to do something similar for my kids
when they are a bit older.

Zvi



On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 12:05 PM, chuwa <chuwasg at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Sorry if this subject sounds funny.
>
> The long question is:
> How much land is need to produce enough bio-fuel for a typical car for a
> year?
>
> This a a question I asked my boys to trigger them to search for an answer.
> I don't have the answer and I would really appreciate if anyone can point me
> to useful pages which may contain the answer (for primary /secondary student
> level).
>
> After they found the answer, the next question will be:
> If this piece of land is used to grow food (e.g. rice), how many people can
> it provide for a year?
>
> With thanks,
>
> Chu Wa
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