Green Daily

Last week, the US announced that it will fail to meet its ethanol mandate in 2022. And while it kinda sucks to fail at something, there is a silver lining: corn-based E85 and cellulosic E85 are the two worst alternative fuels. According to a study conducted by the Royal Society of Chemistry, our ambivalence and ineptitude when it comes to meeting our ethanol mandate may have saved us from an even bigger mistake (actually meeting them). Don't you love it when that happens?

As they say, haste makes waste, and few could accuse the US of being hasty when it comes to abandoning fossil fuels. The study put ethanol up against other -- perhaps slightly less available -- forms of renewable energy like "solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology." In comparison of 11 impacts categories, both forms of E85 were given the lowest marks. First place was secured by an EV charged by wind power. I kinda wish they had analyzed gasoline to give us a reference point.

According to the RSC, we could theoretically "replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73,000–144,000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II."

[via AutoBlogGreen]