WRITING

Integrated Writing Task

Read the passage. You have three minutes.

Ethanol fuel, made from various types of plants, has been touted as the answer to our country’s dependency on foreign oil and all the accompanying economic and environmental problems. Most cars currently on the road can run on a mix of 90% gasoline and 10% ethanol, and indeed this type of mix is sold in many places. Ethanol can be produced from sugarcane, potatoes, corn, and other plant material, but corn is the most popular material being used in the country.

Using corn-based ethanol as automobile fuel is not the answer to our oil-dependency problems that many would have us believe. In the first place, it is not particularly efficient. Considering the resources it takes to grow the corn, as well as to turn the corn into ethanol, the energy result is negative. It takes about 130,000 BTUs to make one gallon of ethanol, which in turn only produces about 75,000 BTUs to move your car, It also costs almost twice as much money to produce a gallon of ethanol as it does a gallon of gasoline. Then there is the environmental damage caused by the production of corn. Soil erosion and depletion of groundwater sources for irrigation are serious problems.

To say that converting to ethanol would solve our dependency on foreign oil is a false dream. It would take well over 97% of the land in the United States to grow enough corn to produce fuel for all the cars currently being driven in this country. In addition, land that is used to grow corn for ethanol is land that is not being used to grow food. Clearly, ethanol fuel is not the answer to our transportation problems.