New findings indicate yet another drawback to increasing our production of corn-based ethanol. In a word, it’s the fertilzer. Tons of nitrogen and phosphorous end up in lakes and rivers (this is already a big problem in Madison, where the lakes are plagued every summer by a massive phospherous fueled algae bloom), including the Mississippi, which in turn leads to a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. So we might not want to put all our alternative fuel eggs in the ethanol basket: Chris Kucharik at UW Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, one of the researchers, suggests the study “confirms our suspicion that there’s a significant tradeoff to the expanded production of ethanol from corn grain.
Office of Strategic Communication