Narrator: This is Science Today. A new report by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has concluded that the use of ethanol from corn as a gasoline additive will do more harm than good to the environment. Geoengineering professor Tad Patzek, who led the study, says that using ethanol as a gasoline additive is like burning the same amount of fuel twice to drive a car once.

Patzek: You burn as much fossil fuel to obtain ethanol as you then can get from burning it for the second time, and therefore to the extent that a car burns ethanol from corn, you actually double the emissions.

Narrator: Patzek's findings come at a critical time in the United States. An energy bill has been passed that will double the amount of ethanol to be used as a gas additive to 5 billion gallons a year by 2012.

Patzek: Remember by that adding additives, or oxygenates into gasoline, we are complicating the system. And in fact, adding ethanol is the ultimate complexity, because we are running away in the opposite direction.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.