For more ethanol myths dispelled, visit the Ethanol Resource Center section of this website and click on the "informational brochures" tab.
Myths About Ethanol
Ethanol is a fast-changing industry, and a lot of old information – as well as misleading rumors – have been spread over the past few years. Here are the top myths about ethanol, and a few of the facts to set them straight.
Food vs. Fuel
Food prices have gone up over the past few years – just as they have throughout history. Recently though, big food has attempted to blame ethanol for those increases. The facts speak differently. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, for every dollar consumers spend on food, less than 20 cents goes towards the actual cost of food. Over 80 cents goes to other costs including marketing, packaging and transportation.
Further, the World Bank — who published a research paper several years ago claiming biofuels were to blame for rising food prices — reversed its position recently with a new study entitled "Placing the 2006/08 Commodity Price Boom into Perspective." The study's authors found that "the effect of biofuels on food prices has not been as large as originally thought, but that the use of commodities by financial investors (the so-called 'financialization of commodities') may have been partly responsible for the 2007/08 spike." Read this report — and others like it — in our Research & Reports center.
Read our Mythbusters: The Truth about Ethanol brochure.
Look up Food vs. Fuel related Press Releases.
Search our Research and Reports for more Food vs. Fuel information.
Indirect Land Use Change
Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) is an untested and heavily disputed theory that assumes corn used for ethanol will displace other crops, like soybeans, and in turn, cause farmers in other countries to cut down rainforests to grow soybeans and fill the demand. Estimates vary drastically depending on the assumptions of the researchers. Some are based on false or out-of-date assumptions. More dependable recent studies have shown no indirect land use change in other countries due to U.S. ethanol production. They have shown that corn-based ethanol production is far better for the environment than oil.
Water Use
Water is an essential ingredient in ethanol production. It currently takes about 3 gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol. That number is rapidly decreasing with environmental efforts and developments in technology. To put ethanol’s water use into perspective, it takes about 41.5 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of oil and 280 gallons of water to produce one Sunday newspaper.
