page_title: Ethanol fuel
section_title: Carbon dioxide
hierarchical_section_title: Ethanol fuel / Environment / Carbon dioxide
caption_attribution_description: Excel Graph showing the Carbon Intensity of US Corn Bioethanol. Derived from information found in the UK crown copyright document.[1]
context_page_description: Ethanol fuel is ethyl alcohol, the same type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, used as fuel. It is most often used as a motor fuel, mainly as a biofuel additive for gasoline. The first production car running entirely on ethanol was the Fiat 147, introduced in 1978 in Brazil by Fiat. Ethanol is commonly made from biomass such as corn or sugarcane. World ethanol production for transport fuel tripled between 2000 and 2007 from 17×10⁹ liters to more than 52×10⁹ liters. From 2007 to 2008, the share of ethanol in global gasoline type fuel use increased from 3.7% to 5.4%. In 2011 worldwide ethanol fuel production reached 8.46×10¹⁰ liters with the United States of America and Brazil being the top producers, accounting for 62.2% and 25% of global production, respectively. US ethanol production reached 57.54×10⁹ liters in 2017–04.
  Ethanol fuel has a "gasoline gallon equivalency" value of 1.5, i.e. to replace the energy of 1 volume of gasoline, 1.5 times the volume of ethanol is needed.
  Ethanol-blended fuel is widely used in Brazil, the United States, and Europe.
context_section_description: The calculation of exactly how much carbon dioxide is produced in the manufacture of bioethanol is a complex and inexact process, and is highly dependent on the method by which the ethanol is produced and the assumptions made in the calculation. A calculation should include:
  The cost of growing the feedstock
  The cost of transporting the feedstock to the factory
  The cost of processing the feedstock into bioethanol
  Such a calculation may or may not consider the following effects:
  The cost of the change in land use of the area where the fuel feedstock is grown.
  The cost of transportation of the bioethanol from the factory to its point of use
  The efficiency of the bioethanol compared with standard gasoline
  The amount of carbon dioxide produced at the tail pipe.
  The benefits due to the production of useful bi-products, such as cattle feed or electricity.
  The graph on the right shows figures calculated by the UK government for the purposes of the Renewable transport fuel obligation.
  The January 2006 Science article from UC Berkeley's ERG, estimated reduction from corn ethanol in GHG to be 13% after reviewing a large number of studies. In a correction to that article released shortly after publication, they reduce the estimated value to 7.4%. A National Geographic Magazine overview article (2007) puts the figures at 22% less CO₂ emissions in production and use for corn ethanol compared to gasoline and a 56% reduction for cane ethanol. Carmaker Ford reports a 70% reduction in CO₂ emissions with bioethanol compared to petrol for one of their flexible-fuel vehicles.
  An additional complication is that production requires tilling new soil which produces a one-off release of GHG that it can take decades or centuries of production reductions in GHG emissions to equalize. As an example, converting grass lands to corn production for ethanol takes about a century of annual savings to make up for the GHG released from the initial tilling.
caption: UK government calculation of carbon intensity of corn bioethanol grown in the US and burnt in the UK.[74]
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