Rarely a day goes by without the media bringing attention to the myriad of problems afflicting the planet. The ever-rising cost of gasoline, global warming, peak oil – these issues can seem hopeless. However, there has been a strong move towards finding alternative sources of energy, and at the forefront of this movement, ethanol seems to be a product that people are putting much of their hopes into. So is ethanol the fix-all solution that some would advocate it to be?

Ethanol’s main attraction comes from the fact that it burns cleaner than petroleum oil, and that it is more cost and fuel-efficient. With the state of current vehicles constantly expelling carbon monoxide gases into the atmosphere, using ethanol as a fuel would be a significant step towards cutting down carbon monoxide emissions and curbing the greenhouse gas effect. Ethanol is also a renewable energy resource, an important factor considering our high dependence on petroleum, being non-renewable, which is entering into a stage of scarcity, or peak-oil, driving the price of gasoline up. Furthermore, the production of ethanol may have a hand in easing the global economic crisis. The financial worth of ethanol producing crops will drive up the prices of vegetation such as corn, so farmers can enjoy a significant profit. These same crops need to processed, meaning there will be an increased need for factories and labor. So with all of these benefits, why isn’t everybody driving around in their ethanol fuelled cars just yet?

Unfortunately, the production of ethanol has many negative points working against it in its potential role as the next major source of fuel. The most pressing, it would seem, is the fact that creating ethanol is thought to consume more energy than its overall output. The amount of crops needed to fuel a car for only one day could go a long way towards feeding a person for considerably longer. Furthermore, although ethanol is being advocated as environmentally friendly, the amount of farmland needed to sate the global thirst for fuel is staggering. This need for fuel means that more farmlands must be created, resulting in considerable deforestation. There would also be less of an incentive for farmers to grow other crops, when ethanol-producing harvest would fetch more of a price, or even using vegetation, such as corn, for food products instead of as fuel. The result would be over-inflated prices on all food products, an expense that could further damage populations already dealing economic distress. The cons of ethanol seem dismal indeed, so should we just throw away the idea of ethanol as a potential solution to such problems?

The answer, as in with most things, seems to be moderation and compromise. There will never be a magical product that will accommodate the global appetite for its fuel dependent lifestyle. Ethanol can go a long way towards taking the strain off of the environment by being implementing in ethanol-gasoline, or ethanol-electric cars, but because of the environmental strain, as well as its potential role in driving food prices up, ethanol will never be an all encompassing, long-term solution. Ethanol will surely have an important role in the future, but for any progress to happen, the first step appears to be limiting global dependence on fuel. A tricky endeavor indeed.