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More to Help the Environment

Even the cleanest fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide when it burns. A build up of this gas in the atmosphere may cause a phenomenon called the “greenhouse effect.” Ethanol produced from Processor Preferred^® High Fermentable Corn can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help the environment.

• When ethanol from corn grain is used as fuel, greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 10-50% relative to gasoline^1,2.
• The American Lung Association credits ethanol-blended fuel with reducing smog-forming emissions in Metropolitan Chicago by 25% since 1990.
• The Department of Energy states that ethanol-blended fuels reduced CO₂-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions by 7.8 million tons in 2005. That’s equivalent to removing over 1 million automobiles from the road.
• No-tillage or reduced-tillage farming, a practice enabled by Roundup Ready^® crops, significantly improves the environmental profile of corn-based ethanol².

Ethanol Fun Facts

• Henry Ford’s first automobile, the Quadricycle, was produced in the late 1880s and designed to run on pure (fuel-grade) ethanol.
• Ethanol was first used to fuel a car at the Indy 500 in 1927 (Leon Duray was the first driver to utilize ethanol).
• Today, one acre of corn can produce more than 420 gallons of ethanol (Based on 150bu/A yield and 2.8 gal. ethanol/bu). In the future, it is estimated that one acre of corn will produce over 1,000 gallons of ethanol.
• According to the USDA, ethanol contains 67% more energy than it takes to produce it.
• In 2006, U.S. ethanol displaced about 170 million barrels of imported oil, valued at 11 billion dollars.

1. Source: Farrell, AE, Plevin RJ, Turner BT, Jones AD, O’Hare H, Kammen DM (2006), Science 311: 506-508
2. Sources: Adler PR, Del Grosso SJ, Partonc WJ (2006) 17:675-691. Kim S., Dale B.E. (2005) 28:475-489