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Hybrid Vehicles Hybrid Vehicles - Archived Discussions Will ethanol E85 catch on in the US? Will we Live Green and Go Yellow? 
2104 messages, Last post on Oct 27, 2006 at 5:34 AM
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Replying to: seniorjose (May 23, 2006 2:57 pm) Its more like double that. And while I can't say for where you are E85 is only like 35-40 cents cheaper than regular unleaded. So it still costs more to go the same distance with E85, not to mention having to stop for fuel more often. Ethanol is not the solution nor is it part of the solution, it would be just to much for us to produce the ethanol we would need.
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Replying to: snakeweasel (May 24, 2006 4:55 am) Not only a poor solution it is a disaster in the making. Too bad our government is so disjointed that one department cannot communicate problems that another is causing. Mississippi Dead Zone Recent reports indicate that the large region of low oxygen water often referred to as the 'Dead Zone' has spread across nearly 5,800 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico again in what appears to be an annual event. NASA satellites monitor the health of the oceans and spots the conditions that lead to a dead zone. Enhanced phytoplankton blooms can create dead zones. Dead zones are areas of water so devoid of oxygen that sea life cannot live there. If phytoplankton productivity is enhanced by fertilizers or other nutrients, more organic matter is produced at the surface of the ocean. The organic matter sinks to the bottom, where bacteria break it down and release carbon dioxide. Bacteria thrive off excessive organic matter and absorb oxygen, the same oxygen that fish, crabs and other sea creatures rely on for life. NASA Dead Zone I hope the people in the Midwest feel good about the fisheries they are destroying each time they fill up their vehicle with E85 poison.
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Replying to: gagrice (May 24, 2006 5:12 am) Wow, yea, so you would feel so much better buying gas and funding Usama and his bombs?
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Replying to: gem069 (May 24, 2006 6:27 pm) The sooner we suck up all that Middle East oil the better. Then they have no stroke. In the mean time find GOOD energy alternatives. Not ones that will cause us greater harm down the road. The current ethanol program is poorly conceived and executed.
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Replying to: gagrice (May 24, 2006 7:11 pm) The problem with that is we seem to be sucking up everyone's oil as fast as we can. So as time goes by the country/region with the greatest reserves will have an ever increasing share of what's left. If that region is the Middle East our current path is only giving them more leverage. Again, I agree that ethanol is an ill conceived, destined to fail, corporate welfare type plan. Its defenders commonly state that its no worse than other plans and subsidies that exist. IMO, a pretty weak defense.
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Replying to: tpe (May 25, 2006 3:11 am) |
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Replying to: gagrice (May 23, 2006 3:16 pm) Ethanol production in the midwest is viable, the farmers will be happy and marginal land, like in Minnesota and other northern tier states can help farmers up there. There is a local Quaker Oats plant that is only about 5 miles from here -- they use corn oil. The General Foods huge plant has waiting railroad cars, at about 500, to move the corn oil needed for use. Trains constantly move out full corn oil tanker cars at all hours of the day or night. I personally think the the largest environmental boondoggle of all time was damming up the Columbia river to make a few super-agriculture companies rich using cheap help! If that should change, then we will see the great mother of exodus' ANWR is right now being opened, by Presidential order, so solutions ARE getting promulgated. The junior senator from NYS has switched her opinion to the pro-Ethanol crowd. There are NO USA auto rules that force any auto to use Ethanol, except for those states that want to get rid of MTBF. We have the current 10% Ethanol/Gasoline blend for a cheaper price of about 10 cents a gallon and E85, 85% Ethanol/15 percent gasoline blend for a cheaper price of of less than $2.00 a gallon. Another Ethanol source: The price of sugar is very, very low compared where it should be...ask the Fanjul sugar cane company in Belle Glade, Florida. Sugar Cane is one heck of an air polluter, burning sugar cane "ashes" settles on most autos and homes some 50-60 miles away from the actual burning...but it has to be done. Asking for more sugar at higher prices will expand use for Ethanol. Another Ethanol source: An alternate Ethanol source is sugar beets. Sugar beets were NOT allowed to be grown because of sugar price supports...now if they open that up, sugar beets will readily be grown in any state that has decent (non-dessert_arable land. We started to grow sugar beets on my dad's farm in upstate NY, but the good old FDR dumbocrats couldn't tolerate small farmers unhooking themselves from the teats of the gov't mindless pig (circa 1960). Another Ethanol source: Many NYS farmers were also driven out of business because of the inane wheat allotments...when the wheat grown in NYS was "hard" highest quality baker's wheat, not the "soft" type of wheat grown in our extreme northern tier of states and Canada. I understand wheat or oats straw can also be used in the Ethanol process. Fuel for Ethanol plants: Drive through Pennsylvania after our last gas crisis of the 70s when we were really starting to use hard coal for heating...All od a sudden a tremendous amount of mines were being bought up be oil companies, Gulf, Mobile and Exxon...I guess to squeeze the market so that there would be no coal to ship to eastern markets. Force the opening of closed mines will make coal-firing another Ethanol option. Using Ethanol MAY or MAY NOT be a temporary solution for the next two decades, but if it were outlawed tomorrow, there would be NO impact on USA autos. I am at a a loss for words that Ethanol may be harmful to the environment as you state...the experimental Ethanol (moonshine) experiments were done over a 200 year time frame. What Brazil got "stuck" with, unusable autos, has NO bearing on what we in the United States are doing. ADM is one of the largest farm-oriented companies that is helping to bring fresh new ideas to the farmer's marketplace. If they screw up..will it affect Ethanol? NOT! I have seen both sides of the coin, farmer's and PC development in business. The truth lies in all phases of our USA capitalistic society working together...not driving the familiar wedge of "US vs Them". I lived in Upstate NYS as a farmer (23 years), Philadelphia city as a computer repairman (6 years), Boynton Beach, Florida (25 years), Cedar Rapids (See der rabbits), Iowa (4 years) and various other places. Kellog Corn Flakes price rise kills Ethanol... what? |
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Replying to: seniorjose (May 26, 2006 8:40 am) You need to read the 2005 Energy bill. It mandates that all unleaded gas be treated with at least 7% Ethanol. MTBE is no longer allowed as an oxygenator. It is a carcinogenic substance that has seeped into the water sources in about 1500 US cities. Last year, investors say, Congress gave ethanol its biggest boost yet. A provision in the omnibus Energy Policy Act requires Exxon Mobil Corp. and other refiners to almost double their biofuel use by 2012, guaranteeing ethanol distillers a market for the first time. Congress last engineered an ethanol boom in the 1970s, and most producers went bust a few years later. The Carter administration, facing oil prices of $13 a barrel, the equivalent of $40 today after factoring in inflation, supported a new ethanol tax break for refiners in 1978. For each gallon of ethanol they mixed into gasoline, refiners received a 40 cent reduction in the federal excise tax on gasoline. That helped stimulate a 10-fold increase in the number of producers to a record 163 by the end of 1984. When oil prices crashed, falling to $11 a barrel in 1986 from $37 in 1981, the price of ethanol was no longer competitive with gasoline, and demand plummeted. More than half of the ethanol distillers went out of business. ``Even with a subsidy, nothing was enough to prevent the high rate of market change,'' a U.S. Energy Department history of the era says. For the past eight years, ethanol has cost an average of 49 cents a gallon more than gasoline, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Last year, even with oil reaching a then record $70.85 a barrel, it cost refiners $1.61 to make a gallon of gasoline -- less than the $1.80 it cost to buy a gallon of ethanol. Exxon Mobil, the world's biggest oil company, has no interest in making ethanol, a fuel dependent on government assistance, Chairman Rex Tillerson says. ``Pull the subsidies off and see how much ethanol gets made or used,'' Tillerson, 54, says. Bloomberg on Ethanol |
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Replying to: seniorjose (May 26, 2006 8:40 am) You of all people should know what happens when the government sticks their nose into farm business. I think sugar beets would probably be better than corn. I have no problem with making ethanol from low polluting bio sources. Corn and sugar cane the two prominent sources are both bad for the environment. The distillerys being built for corn are not going to be converted to biomass such as switchgrass. The newest corn stills are using coal to fire them as it is about 1/6th the cost of natural gas fired plants. Last: CA being forced to use ethanol is costing us about $3.30 per gallon. We are one of the 28 states that have been polluted by the last EPA mandate, the now banned MTBE. |
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Replying to: seniorjose (May 26, 2006 8:40 am) You continuously overlook all the inputs that go into growing corn and processing the ethanol. Corn is, by far, the most environmentally destructive crop in this country. It consumers gargantuan amounts of water, something that is becoming in short supply throughout the country, especially the Midwest and West. There have been numerous enterprise stories done on the pollution that ethanol plants create, both the air and water. This is not breaking news. In fact, environmental standards may be weakened for ethanol plants I find it incredible that ethanol backers conveniently discard well-known truisms. Subsidy-driven overproduction of corn drains our groundwater supplies, pollutes that same water with nitrate fertilizer and erodes our topsoil faster than any other crop. The making of corn ethanol requires huge volumes of water, too. Many corn ethanol plants are switching from natural gas to coal to power the stuff. Tell me that coal doesn't pollute! And, of course, ethanol in gas reduces mileage. And oh, by the way, E-10 is selling for four cents higher than regular unleaded in parts of Nebraska. So I'm supposed to buy more expensive fuel, that gets decreased mileage, whose fuelstuff wrecks our environment? Nobody's defending oil, but the renewability of ethanol is a myth -- until corn is dropped out of the equation.
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