May 11, 2010
(Hoosier Ag) Corn Ethanol Benefits from Study Revisions
Revisions to a Purdue University economic analysis on land use changes and resulting CO2 emissions due to US corn ethanol production are friendlier than the 2009 report. Wally Tyner from Purdue is the lead author and said they have prepared a pretty heavy revamp of the original report.
Tyner says that’s “because the original work was sort of first cut, and we needed to take a more thorough, careful look with new data, new modeling approaches and model parameters.”
The research objective was to estimate land use changes associated with US corn ethanol production and to then use those estimations to calculate Greenhouse Gas Emissions from corn ethanol production. The new analysis predicts emissions related to land-use change at a third lower than previously reported. The GHG emissions number from ethanol in proportion to gasoline was cut by about 10 percent, according to Tyner.
Tyner explained ...
