The benefits are clear. Ethanol provides energy security. The United States currently imports more than 50 percent of its domestic petroleum consumption - and about 80 percent of the world's proven oil reserves are in the perennially unstable Middle East. Plus, the planet has only a finite supply of fossil fuels. But ethanol is a home-grown resource made from readily replaceable agricultural feedstocks such as corn.
Ethanol offers substantial environmental benefits.
Ethanol contains 35 percent oxygen, which makes gasoline burn more cleanly. That's why the Clean Air Act requires the use of oxygenated gasoline to improve air quality in the nation's most polluted cities. But unlike the petroleum-based oxygenate MTBE, which is fouling drinking water supplies from Maine to California and posing substantial public health risks, ethanol is nontoxic and biodegradable. Ethanol is affordable and abundant. And ethanol supplies are the most plentiful in 20 years.