But, and as my wife would say, it is a very big but, the price per gallon of ethanol is not better than the price of gasoline except by volume: ethanol contains about 30% less energy than gasoline and the price per gallon is thus misleading. Adjusting for this yields the figure below, which shows that ethanol in gasoline equivalent gallons is rarely cheaper than gasoline, typically 5% of the time.
While many are aware that oil price forecasts have been notoriously erroneous, few pay as much attention to demand projections. In theory, demand is easy to forecast: regress demand against income growth and prices, dataseries of which can be downloaded in seconds. Unfortunately, while future income/GDP is relatively foreseeable over the long-term, prices are less so.
The figure below shows historical EIA gasoline demand forecasts at various times and clearly those from the 2000s were far too optimistic, undoubtedly because price expectations proved too conservative. Somehow the NEM s model isn’t capable of predicting the collapse of the Venezuelan oil industry, the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and the Arab Spring, all of which led to the high oil prices seen from 2004-2014. Tsk, tsk.But the problem is that Congress used those forecasts—given that they are the state of the art—in setting the ethanol mandate which, as a result, required blending levels beyond what was assumed.
Anyone taking into account the environmental impact of producing the batteries that power E.V's? It all looks so clean in the end but there are oil & coal powered factories pumping out massive amounts of batteries & the chemicals & heavy metals within them? Whole 'nother thing!
'Americans should stop giving their money to American corn farmers and start giving more to Saudi oil princes because the ethanol/gasoline economics are a wash'. - same energy as this article
also food off the market to make it