Ethanol Fuel by Country 2024

Ethanol is an alternative fuel made of corn that is often part of the makeup of gasoline. In the US, most gasoline contains up to 10% ethanol, although there are higher blends. Even though ethanol lowers the efficiency of gasoline, reducing miles per gallon by about 3%, it is a renewable source that decreases the country's reliance on oil.

The United States produces 876 thousand barrels of ethanol a day and consumes 838 thousand barrels. This makes sense as the car is such a prevalent form of transportation in the United States. This is due, in part, to the size of the country. Some cities, such as New York City, are tightly packed and have excellent, or at least famous, public transportation, but most of the US is spread out into rural areas, making many forms of public transportation difficult and expensive to build and manage.

Because of the lack of public transportation in many parts of the US, residents rely on cars for their transportation needs. The last four decades have marked increasing concern over dependence on foreign-produced oils, so supplementing fuel with ethanol can help insulate the country from the pressure of other countries withholding oil supplies.

The only country that comes even close to producing the amount of ethanol as the United States is Brazil, and it produces 403 thousand barrels of ethanol a day. This is less than half the daily production of the US. Like the US, Brazil also uses a significant amount of the ethanol it produces: 359 thousand barrels per day.

Some countries, such as France, Columbia, and Guatemala, follow suit, producing slightly more ethanol than they consume. Others, like China and India, both produce the exact amount they use daily. However, many countries rely on imports for their ethanol needs. For example, the United Kingdom produces 4.3 thousand barrels a day but consumes 17 thousand barrels a day and Italy produces less than a thousand barrels a day but consumes over 8 thousand barrels.