Dehydrating Our New Energy Elixer

While I have covered this issue before in my post "Is Water Ethanol's Achilles' heel?", I am still surprised how ethanol is still treated as an energy elixer of earthy proportions. In October the National Academy of Sciences published a report titled "Water Implications of Biofuel Production in the United States".

The report basically states that if the projected increases in the use of corn for ethanol production occur, the harm to water quality could be considerable, and water supply problems at the regional and local levels could also escalate. The report also identified opportunities for new agricultural techniques and technologies to help minimize effects of biofuel production on water resources.

Did you know that corn has the greatest application rates of both fertilizer and pesticides per acre than any other crop?

A good summary of this report was posted yesterday on the blog "The Oil Drum".