Divergent Opinions on Ethanol as a Motor Fuel

    Alex Scott has an article in the November 5 issue of Chemical and Engineering News on ethanol production. It will be recalled that ethanol is being used as an additive to gasoline under a Congressional mandate. I have been arguing for some time that Congress should eliminate this mandate, because there's an ample world supply of petroleum for gasoline and the supply is becoming more available.
    The article primarily discusses use of enzymes to hydrolyze cellulose to sugars, which are converted to ethanol by fermentation. The process is being pushed by two European firms, and they predict that within the next 3 to 5 years they will be 15 to 20 new plants using the technology. Each plant will have a capacity of 15,000,000 to 40,000,000 gallons of ethanol per year. Presumably, most of these plans would be in Western Europe, which delights me.
    We live in a competitive world and if the Europeans desire to saddle themselves with a high cost energy source, this can only be favorable to the US.
    Most people know British Petroleum (BP), which is an international energy company. It is notorious for its Gulf Oil Spill. It had planned to build a $300 million ethanol from cellulose plant in Florida but has now canceled that plan. BP made a huge technical blunder in the Gulf Oil Spill, but it certainly knows the energy business and obviously recognizes the futility of continuing with ethanol.