Essay By Luke DiTomas

Here is an excerpt from an essay by college student Luke DiTomas at The Ohio State University:

"Due to budget constraints, the government is only able to contribute a mere $150 million to the research and development of ethanol based fuels, which is hardly enough to revolutionize a multibillion-dollar energy market. Private sector investors, Virgin Group's Richard Branson, and technology guru Vinod Khosla have made substantial contributions because they see the possibility of an ethanol boom similar to the one in Brazil. Our government had set these goals of reducing the amount of imported oil, but isn’t providing nearly enough funding in order to reach these goals. The government must re-think their budgeting restraint on this because a revolution of this magnitude would have a much larger affect on our economy than just decreasing our need of oil. Struggling U.S. auto manufactures have a competitive advantage over foreign auto makers on flex-fuel vehicles. Foreign auto makers are skeptical on ethanol vehicles due to the large amounts of water and land needed to produce the necessary amount of corn. This is the spark that U.S. auto companies need to regain their dominance in the U.S. auto industry. The results of this would be seen in other industries as well. The distribution side of this would need substantial growth to meet the demands of the new fuel. The demand of corn, wheat and plant stalks would increase, which would only mean more growth in the agricultural industry. The growth of all these industries would mean a lower unemployment rate due to increases in workers needed to meet the requirements, and a larger GDP due to the expansion of multiple industries within the country."