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Steamer61 t1_ja9uoz4 wrote

It's pretty obvious that government agencies are being pushed to make things "green". This is the result, it looks green at a glance so it's a win, right? Much like the ethanol in gas, it sounds great but it doesn't do anything to combat CO2 emissions and may actually make them worse.

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hsnoil t1_jaato17 wrote

More like being forced to make compromises. If you want A you have to agree with B. Because burning plastics isn't green, even the EPA admits it does nothing if you burn plastic. The problem was the rules were vague enough stating making fuel from "waste". Usually that means from waste food and etc. And waste would also include plastic, so they have to change the rules to deny them. But these loopholes aren't by accident, so good luck getting them changed.

Ethanol is cleaner than burning gasoline, it wasn't at first but it is these days assuming you aren't cutting down a new forest for it. That said, being better is marginal, especially when talking about making it from corn. It's like at best 1.5X improvement, but you can get 500X more energy out of that corn field if it was solar charging an electric car.

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