EPA & 15% Ethanol

Yes that is exactly part of it, and we need to tell adm to FO. Aren't there more of us then them. The other part is corn versus other ethanol. This needs to be removed as well as the tariff on imported ethanol. Both of these are give away to big corn, and make ethanol more carbon, land, and water intensive.

The third part is increasing the mandate, until those first two parts are done it will only cause more damage. Afterwards we need to analyse if this will cause damage to existing cars. If it won't and actually helps reduce imported oil which the current situation does not, I wouldu be for it. With the subsidy, increasing the mandate is just a growth of big bad government making us pay for things that hurt us.

 

Seems like I read that a part of the House budget bill was a repeal of the E15 requirement. Was I dreaming? Of course, even if that's true, it has to get through the Senate and then be signed by Obama.

 

Good point you bring up. If this country can other non-food plants to make ethanol, that who help with loweing food prices (IE: lessen the demand for corn). Switchgrass, algae farms could help out. Also if water absorption standards can be implementated on ethanol that would be a big plus for consumers. Seems there is a lot of bad / negative info being kept from the public on ethanol.

DBCassidy

 

This is because these small engines have rubber parts not designed for ethanol. Putting ethanol in an old engine not designed for it will eat the gaskets, hoses, and other rubber parts. It's not that the ethanol is inherently a bad fuel, but it is being used in places where it was never intended to be used. Many boats with GRP gas tanks have suffered from this same problem, which is why marine gas is often exempted from ethanol requirements.

Tom

 

Definitely. It takes about 3/4 of a gallon equivalent of fossil fuels to get a gallon of corn based ethanol. If you include alternative use of land, it may actually increase ghg. The sugar cane based alcohol from brazil uses 1/7 the energy to produce and it requires much less land. Yields in the continental us for sugar cane are much lower but there is a pilot program in Louisiana. Hawaii should be as good as brazil, but they don't use very much fuel. We have a tariff on Brazilian ethanol. Switch grass shows great promise as it will grow on bad land, but there are still a few problems with large scale ethanol production. Algae is a different thing but can produce oil that can be cracked to make diesel easily and gasoline with some more energy.

Remove the subsidy and tariff and most of the problems go away unless you are a corporate corn farmer or a politician trying to get votes from corn states.

I'm not sure if cars are designed for e15, and would like to hear from the manufacturers. I'm not sure where the problems lie with water contamination, but it not not happen to most of the gasoline. Alcohol or gas with alcohol esposed to damp air will absorb moisture. They just need to keep it away from the air, and I believe there are already requirements for this for gasoline after mixing. Brazil runs with E20 at a minimum, and it seems they have solved these problems.

 

Look more closely at that sticker. I think it says "this pump MAY contain up to XX% ethanol" That's a good thing.......not all supplier need to add the 10% that it says on the pump.........thus the reason for the MAY.

 

One more negative about ethanol made from corn: Corn is a pesticide-intensive crop, and makes a huge contribution to the large dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico below the Mississippi River. (Google it.)

 

Brazil can make ethanol with not positive energy out of the whole process, and do so economically. Of course there are reasons they can do this:

1. If you bulldoze rainforest, sugarcane will grow very well there with very little fertilizer or irrigation.
2. They have cheap labor to harvest the cane.
3. They have basically no environmental laws to add costs.

 

Just to clear up some misconceptions, I am not saying sugar cane is ideal, it just is much better than corn for the purposes of ethanol based biofuel.

The cane requires less fertilizer and pesticides to grow which reduces that part of a chemical footprint. Brazil only uses 1.5% of land to produce all the ethanol they produce for biofuels both domestically and for export.

They have mechanized the harvest so it has not created as many jobs as were promised. The climate does allow them to produce twice as much cane per acre, and thus alcohol than we can from cane grown in Louisiana. The cane produced in the continental US should still produce twice as many gallons per acre as corn based alcohol. Swichgrass if they overcome some of the problems should produced much more alcohol per acre than domestic cane.

Anotheradvantage over the US corn ethanol industry is that the stalks of the sugar cane are used to produce electricity and to process the ethanol. Corn needs an additional step and more energy to harvest and convert. That along with lower levels of fertilizer make the Brazilian model use about 11% energy to produce verusus 75% for us corn ethanol. The corn monoculture pesticides and fertilizer carry environmental risks. If you add the fossil fuel used to produce the corn with the environmental damage of the farming and the factory meat fed with the left over corn product, I find net environmental damage caused by corn ethanol. The University of Minnesota found the same thing, the mandate is bad for the environment. The Minnesota producers of ethanol also routinely violate epa rules that made that study have ethanol come out worse than if it were produced from well run businesses. The Brazilian cattle ranches seem to chop down a much larger portion of the rain forests than alcohol, but every little bit hurts.

 

The CAFE numbers are actually helped because, in effect, the ethanol doesn't count as "oil" use. That's why all the Chevy Tahoe's and GMC Yukon's are flexfuel. In addition, the EPA rating tests are performed with 100% gasoline.
The Volt also helps CAFE due to the 93 MPG rating in all electric mode. Each 10% ethanol lowers milage by about 3-4% because ethanol is 34.8 oxygen which doesn't contribute any energy. Check out the E85 MPG and annual fuel cost calculations on fueleconomy.gov for more details.

 

The CAFE numbers are actually helped because, in effect, the ethanol doesn't count as "oil" use. That's why all the Chevy Tahoe's and GMC Yukon's are flexfuel. In addition, the EPA rating tests are performed with 100% gasoline.
The Volt also helps CAFE due to the 93 MPG rating in all electric mode. Each 10% ethanol lowers milage by about 3-4% because ethanol is 34.8 % oxygen which doesn't contribute any energy. Check out the E85 MPG and annual fuel cost calculations on fueleconomy.gov for more details.