Chinese business argues against corn ethanol scam

I've been meaning to post this for a few days, but have been slacking since Ace was on f'n fire for a while.

Apparently, Chinese business is showing a lot more intelligence and common sense than the US congress which keeps flogging that same dead retarded 3-legged horse.

China's biggest membership association of private petroleum enterprises has made a proposal to the National Reform and Development Committee (NRDC), the country's top economic planner, to halt the corn-to-ethanol project of producing alcoholic gasoline, the Beijing Times reports...

...The PFCGCC said that to enjoy the subsidy of 1880 Yuan per ton of alcoholic gasoline for vehicles and the tax-exemption policy for the corn-to-ethanol project, some plants in China began a wave of buying corn, causing the severe shortage of corn for animal feed and the rapid increase of corn prices.

"In the first half year of this year, China imported 78 million tons of corn, mainly due to the higher domestic corn price than overseas. In July, the average corn price in northeast China was 1845 Yuan per ton, rising by 15.7% year on year" said Zhang Jianbo, a market analyst with Distribution Productivity Promotion Center of China Commerce...

The bottom line is corn ethanol makes no economic sense, never did, and when the total environmental impact end-to-end from dirt farm to tailpipe is considered, its even worse than ordinary gasoline. Its always been a lose/lose proposition all the way around, and many of the environmental groups have started to cool on their enthusiasm for it as the real cost/impacts manifested themselves.

posted by Purp at 02:17 PM

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