IMO D
a) Electric power- out of scope
b) good information but need not be an assumption
c) heating homes- out of scope
d) This is the answer. if gasoline consumption is increasing at a higher rate than oil or ethanol production then it will hurt the conclusion.
e) This is good contender but it does not hurt the conclusion as choice d does.

what is the OA?

OA is D.

Negation will tell the weakness in E.

My answer is E.
This is because negating E will mean that Ethanol consumption would be greater than gasoline consumption. In such a case the plan wouldn't be successful.

Negating D has no effect on the conclusion. If gasoline consumption is increased at a higher rate than oil then it can be replaced by ethanol.

Yes the correct answer is D. There are no doubts on that. The conclusion is talking about meeting the domestic needs by reducing its dependence on the foreign oil and producing gasoline through ethanol. That is why option A gets cancelled out as it is comparing which one is the better option between ethanol and electricity. Hence the correct answer comes out to be D.

A good assumption question.

Option E talks about efficiency and the conclusion is about meeting the requirements of a city or a country. A big difference between the two options.

Hope this helps.

Can someone explain why B is incorrect?

Thanks guys..i had confused production with consumption.

ShreeCS - Option B is incorrect because it talks about the production of ethanol being more than that of oil...lets use the least extreme negation method to rule out between option B and D -

1) LEN of option B - Production of ethanol is NOT NECESSARILY increasing more quickly than that of oil
-> This implies that it could be increasing at a rate equal to that of oil, in which case the demand could still be met, and hence the conclusion reached -> Not good for us.

2) Gasoline consumption IS increasing at a higher rate than that of production of oil and eathanol -> The conclusion would make no sense -> and this is what we want in the LEN. Hence, we have a winner. Option E.

Hope this helps!

We could have avoided applying LEN to every answer choice, had we concentrated on the scope of argument first.

B: Out of scope as the conclusion doesn't care about the rate of production.

E: Efficiency is what is desired in the conclusion but decrease in dependence.

Looking at the right answer D, we can very guess that consumption can directly impact the availability of energy resources hence, we should cross check this option.