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Are there ANY potential disadvantages from sugar cane ethanol?

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Are there ANY potential disadvantages from sugar cane ethanol?

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Answer Yes, many. The best thing that can be said for sugar cane ethanol is that it is, at present, the best method of producing a biofuel. The energy output versus input looks very good and is better than competing crops. However, as with all biofuels, they only make environmental sense when production is at a very low level. As soon as you try to ramp up volumes, environmental damage and damage to the local economy results. Ethanol production was originally started in Brazil to use sugar cane when world sugar prices were very low due to EU protectionism (sugar beet subsidies) and similar restrictions elsewhere. This was a good idea. When you want to increase volumes, you must either take land from other crops (often local subsistence ones) by driving the poor off the land or cut down virgin forest to plant cane (an environmental disaster) Wherever we try to increase biofuels :oilseed rape (canola) in the EU) or corn in the US, we take food production land. The subsidy makes it worthw

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