A Tipsy Proposition

In my work I notice and see a lot about efforts to increase the amount of renewable fuel in our nation's transportation energy supply. Ethanol is one of the fuels of interest. Tonight, I crunched a few numbers on it...

A few years ago the US had about 1 billion acres cultivated. It's dropped a bit since then but not by much, so I'll ignore the difference. Average yield of all US acres planted in corn in 2001 was 160 bushels. Each bushel could yield around 2.75 gal of ethanol. So if all of the US farmland was planted in corn, achieved the average yield, and was used to produce ethanol, we would have 440 billion gallons of ethanol. In energy content this is roughly equivalent to about 6.4 billion barrels of oil.

US daily oil consumption this year was estimated to be around 21 million barrels, so all that hooch is only enough for 300 days of energy use. However, rather than discarding this strategy as inadequate, it is important to consider other factors which could reduce US energy consumption to match the reduced supply.

For instance, Pooka pointed out to me a 300 day a year energy source would dovetail nicely with the suggestion of a recently elected Erie County Ohio Democratic party official, which could independently reduce overall energy consumption...