Would drilling more Alaskan oil cut prices?

If all 50 states governments introduced a law to establish ethanol producing plants, and then mandated blended fuel, would this eventually stabilize the cost of energy and reduce our dependence on overseas oil?
R. L., -- Springfield, Mass.

Probably not. There are already lots of federal incentives to produce ethanol, and new plants are already coming on line.  As a result, production has increased to about 4.5 billion gallons a year, doubling in the past five years. Some 97 ethanol plants have already been built in 21 states — at least 33 are under construction with a capacity of 1.9 billion gallons a year.

That sounds like a lot. But Americans burn through about 385 million gallons of gasoline every day. When that new planned capacity comes online, ethanol will make up less than 5 percent of all the motor fuel used in the U.S.

So why not make more ethanol? Clearly, you’d have to expand production dramatically — and make a whole lot more corn, the raw material used to make ethanol — to begin to put a serious dent in America’s thirst for gasoline. The increased demand for corn could drive up food prices. (In Brazil, demand for ethanol made from sugar cane has periodically forced sugar prices higher.)

And while it’s true that ethanol reduces some forms of pollution from burning gasoline, ethanol plants are creating some pretty nasty environmental impacts of their own. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warned in 2002 that ethanol plants are releasing carbon monoxide, methanol and some carcinogens at levels "many times greater" than expected. (Note: An earlier edition reported that the warning came earlier this year.)

Then there are the critics who argue that making ethanol is a major waste of energy because it takes more energy to make a gallon of ethanol than you get out of it when you burn it. Though these studies are controversial, it would clearly take a huge amount of energy to make enough ethanol to replace gasoline. Where will that energy come from?

That’s why research into alternative ways of making ethanol — and other biofuels — is so important. The ability to expand ethanol production cleanly and efficiently would go a long way to easing our dependence on oil — imported or otherwise. But we’ve got a ways to go before we can rely on ethanol to get us there. 

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