Corn Ethanol Criticism

Corn is turned into ethanol, and is then blended with gasoline. The US consumes ~14B gallons of ethanol per year. It’s a net negative because it’s carbon and water intensive and farmers advocate for more ethanol than is necessary as a subsidy via government mandate.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec

"Despite often-heard claims to the contrary, ethanol has nothing to do with reducing CO2; it’s just a form of farm subsidy. If you’re using first-class land for biofuels, then you’re competing with the growing of food. And so you’re actually spiking food prices by moving energy production into agriculture."

Well remember that 40% of the U.S. corn crop is used to produce ethanol. Ethanol use can be eliminated (electric cars and getting rid of the ethanol subsidies...). Land and climate good enough for corn is good enough for other crops.

Because the process from growing corn to distilling ethanol requires more energy than it produces. That energy has to come from somewhere, i.e. fossil fuels. It would be cleaner to just burn the fossil fuels than to run the energy through the Rube Goldberg machine of farm subsidies and ethanol.

The corn lobby is very powerful. Nobody else thinks ethanol is a good idea, especially from corn (one of the worst crops you could use). The carbon inputs to make the ethanol are around the same as if you just burned petroleum in the first place. Once you burn the ethanol as well, it's much worse than just gasoline. It also encourages expansion of farm land into virgin land and increases food prices. Not to mention it is horrible for engines, especially in older vehicles.Hilariously, gas

how much energy and food do we waste by requiring ethanol in gas?

Ethanol is a bad counterexample. Most ethanol comes from corn, and most energy in corn comes from fossil methane, used to synthesize ammonia fertilizer.

I've heard that ethanol production actually uses more fuel than it produces, so you'd be better off just not producing it and using the fuel directly.On the other hand, it allows oil companies to pretend they're doing something about climate change (without changing any of their infrastructure) and it gives farmers more money, so you'd have to take on the oil lobby AND the farming lobby to get rid of it.

ethanol produces more emissions than regular gas. the only thing ethanol is good for is as a farming subsidy.

Sure there are. One example: stop subsidizing corn for ethanol. The fuel used to plant, fertilize. harvest, transport and process the corn exceeds the fuel produced.