It just keeps growing
The EPA has followed up its ruling allowing E15 ethanol blends (15% ethanol, 85% gasoline) to be pumped to vehicles built for the 2007 model-year and later, now allowing the corn juice-enhanced gasoline to be distributed to any vehicle built after 2001.
Let’s hope we escape this nonsense in Canada.
Yay, more dissolved fuel pumps and corroded fuel rails. Repair shops should be happy.
And because of the ethanol blends in California, my gas mileage has fallen from 24mpg to 18mpg.
15% less genuine gasoline, 30% less CO2 per gallon, but 33% more fuel is required to travel the same distance.
What does that do for the environment?
Do any environmentalists care?
And of course, the crops used as feedstock for fermentation (chiefly corn) require large amounts of land, water, and fertilizers/pesticides. Then there’s the amount of energy required to operate the machinery that tends the crop, most of which is powered by gasoline or diesel engines. And guess where the base materials for many of the fertilizers and pesticides come from? That’s right, petroleum.
No problem for us, we drive a turbo diesel VW. 46 to 50 miles per gallon, depending on conditions, and no ethanol to dissolve or corrode innards. Car has adequately snappy acceleration as well.
@Person: love the moniker.
I just wish people would stop burning food as fuel. How could they not have made this connection? (Problem is if they actually did, I suppose.)
Do corn farmers run straight ethanol because it’s such a wonderful fuel?
What this is all about is the enormous tax subsidies given to producers of bio-fuel. This is another huge crime done behind the rubric of “green”.
The huge corporate farm complexes and grain processors make far more money from a bushel of corn sold for bio-fuel mfg. than they do with a non-tax subsidy use, such as feed corn. THIS is the main reason that the cost of meat have risen so much in the last few years in the US. More and more corn is diverted from feed grains for livestock, where there’s no tax subsidy, to bio-fuel production, where there is a huge subsidy.
This doesn’t have a damn thing to do with “air pollution” or “CO2 reduction” or any of the other buzzwords put out to bamboozle the uninformed masses. It’s about making a lot more money per bushel, thanks to a corrupt relationship with a corrupt, malevolent agency of government, the EPA.
Here is one of the principle culprits behind this madness.
Incredible how brainwashed a lot of people have become. A neighbor of mine asked a friend whether she was using gasoline in her vehicle but she insisted she was being ‘green’ in only filling up with ethanol.
He said that, “Uh, so you’ve got a gas-powered car and not a diesel, right?” to which she rather angrily replied that she was environmentally conscious and responsible, so chose to burn only ethanol, which she understood was a totally clean fuel.
He said he didn’t have the heart to explain, but I think he was afraid she’d run him over.
The Ethanol boondoggle never ends is right. Not everybody that should be is wearing a straight jacket.
@ Philanthropist, farmers run diesel in their equipment.
I hate the idea of subsidies as much as anyone. But if you consider the cost of US military and naval protection for the middle east oil supplies. Is that not a subsidy to the cost of a gallon of gas or diesel?
Its become as lunatic as putting C02 in the ground, for a myth called Global warming.
Our politicians are either marks for Eco-crooks or have become partners with the spoilers themselves.
Using our money for white elephants that have not & will not work. You can’t eat gas.
JMO
Farmer Bill
I agree. Maybe we should develop our own supplies of crude.
I noticed a coupla decades back that any exhaust, other than stainless steel, is biodegradable from ethanol.
Farmer Bill
[……….US military and naval protection for the middle east oil supplies……….]
That is leftist koolaid. The USA gets about 16% of their petroleum from the ME. Some ME oil flows to Europe, but most is shipped to India and China.
One of the bizarre details of global petroleum distribution is that due to insufficient refinery capacity, Iran imports most of it’s refined gasoline from Venezuela…..
Iran could build refineries instead of nuclear weapon stuff. Irans refineries could be easilly shut down with one half-a**ed air-raid and park everything.
It’s why I avoid Husky and Mohawk gas stations like the plague.
Revnant, the reason it’s politically popular is that it drives up the price of corn. This plays big with the farm lobbies
Farmer Bill, that’s a reasonable argument. Remember though that most of the Persian Gulf oil doesn’t go to the US. So if it’s a subsidy, it’s the US subsidizing all the other importing nations as well.
“It’s why I avoid Husky and Mohawk gas stations like the plague.”
First: where do Canadians get their refined fuels from?
Second: are you really sure that what you put in your vehicle is “ethanol free”?
I used to work on domestic oil tankers, back in the 70’s. We routinely filled up at SUNOCO or Imperial or Texaco or Shell or Golden Eagle and sold it as, well whatever you thought it was labelled on the pump.
You think that things have changed? Nothing stopping oil comapnies selling you what Mohawk or Huskey sells, if they don’t want to tell you about it.
E15 is quite corrosive on the fuel systems of vehicles designed to run on gasoline. If you put it in a car older than 2002 model year, you’ll have big problems really soon.
It eats plastic and rubber, and it is really hard on aluminum. It also attracts water, so it will eat a hole in your gas tank if you leave it sit. E10 is bad enough, but E15 is a killer.
Farmer Bill: “Is that not a subsidy to the cost of a gallon of gas or diesel?”
So what? Ethanol -can’t- be produced economically, the only reason it exists at all is the subsidy.
Allowing for argument’s sake that there might be subsidy on other fuels, it doesn’t alter the fact that it costs more BTUs to make a gallon of ethanol than you can get by burning it. They burn a gallon and a half of diesel to plant, fertilize, harvest, ship and distill a gallon of corn alcohol, tell me how that is even faintly sensible.
As to the US military, they protect Israel and Canada too. What’s that a subsidy on?
BTU content in regular pump gas per US gallon: 124,800.
BTU content in ethanol per US gallon: 78,000
Just do the math!
What nonsense.
Small engines (snowblowers etc) – let alone grain augers – do NOT do well AT ALL on any Ethanol. Now we must go to the “Supremo” 91/93? Give it a break.
Despite government assurance/insurance, One really must check the Owner’s Manual for if you have a car needing 91 – make sure the supplier hasn’t also slipped in a tad of 10% ethanol.
The USA is shooting itself in the Obama/regulators foot as many Snowbirds with their non-diesel “RIGS” are going to end up with big repair bills.
I smell law suits???
It’s ironic but not surprising that government interference in support of ethanol has the following effects:
Dissuading the development of butanol and biodiesel which are better liquid fuels than ethanol and thus providing a disincentive to engineer machines which are optimized for these other fuels.
Supporting the first generation biofuels which use cropland at the expense of second generation ones which use coastal desert saltwater farms, wasteland algea farms, aquatic macroalgea harvesting and waste biomass.
Having a valuable chemical like ethanol judged on the criteria of a liquid fuel for vehicles and thus diminishing the importance of advances in reducing the cost of industrial ethanol production.
person @12:32- don’t forget to add conditioner every time you fill up as the diesel we buy today is so low in sulphur that you are going to have a major repair bill if you don’t use it. Nothing is more expensive to repair than a diesel. Isn’t diesel more expensive than gas?
Canada will not escape this nonsense we are already in the clutches of it. Harper mandated ethanol fuel content and has given out a great deal in subsidies.
While a lot of locals as well as the corporation at which I work make tons of dough from ethanol, it doesn’t run well in high performance vehicles. A word to coastal denizens, when in ag states, do NOT get low on gas out in the hinterlands. We’re talking 85 octane ethanol at country pumps. I run mid-range ethanol in the Wrangler to keep the octane up to a decent level. Otherwise it’s typically 87.