Ethanol May Become a Part of Everyone's Driving - 1/07/08

President Bush signed a new energy bill brought forth by the democratic congress before Christmas requiring a sevenfold increase in ethanol production by 2022. 

This will increase ethanol production to 9 billion gallons this year.  The new law will increase ethanol production to 36 billion gallons a year.  Do we have enough land to grow enough crops to meet this requirement?  Will there be enough land to grow food for people? Peak food

Many fuel distributors are not sure how the new law will affect fuel stations. It still is not sure if ethanol will be mixed with all unleaded fuel.

Ethanol fuel mixtures range from 5 to 85 percent ethanol.  E85 is the term for 80 percent ethanol.  According to Clay Ingram, "The general idea is to help make fuel out of renewable resources, help keep our prices down and help reduce our dependency on foreign oil". 

Arleen Alexander, president of Petroleum and Convenience Marketers of Alabama raised concerns over vehicle maintenance.  Most auto makers say modern day internal combustion engines can run safely on E10, which is a mixture of 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline. 

While it may not hurt your engine, what about your boat?  Gasoline refineries are phasing out the use of MTBE, which is an additive that oxygenates gas and reduces emissions. They are replacing this additive with ethanol. When using ethanol as an additive in you car or truck you may never notice a difference, but in your boat you could have serious problems if your boat uses a fiberglass fuel tank.

In October 2007 the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) banned the use of ethanol and methanol fuels for use in aircrafts.  The FAA cited ethanol mixtures could cause stalling and the corrosive properties could damage rubber seals. 

Fuel economy may also be affected.  The U.S. Energy Information Administration states there is a 3 percent energy reduction in E10 fuel over 100 percent gasoline.

There is a concern for rising pollution caused by the increased production of corn to make ethanol.  Due to the demand for ethanol fuel, the American farmers are growing record amounts of corn and the Gulf of Mexico is suffering because of it.  The American farmer used millions of pounds of nitrogen based fertilizer this year to grow corn.  The run off of the nitrogen makes its way to the Mississippi River before ending up in the Gulf.  http://www.beyondfossilfuel.com/ethanol/gulf_1219.html

Some studies have determined ethanol production requires the consumption of more fossil fuels than the energy ethanol contains.  But Michael Wang, a scientist at the Energy Dept.-funded Argonne National Laboratory for Transportation Research, says "The energy used for each unit of ethanol produced has been reduced by about half [since 1980]." Now, Wang says, the delivery of 1 million British thermal units (BTUs) of ethanol uses 0.74 million BTUs of fossil fuels to manufacture. (That does not include the solar energy given off by the sun used in growing corn.) This compared to gasoline, the delivery of 1 million BTUs of gasoline requires 1.23 million BTUs of fossil fuels.

To a certain extent the ethanol market is controlled by the U.S. government, which levies a 54 cent per gallon tariff on imports from other countries.  This hinders cheap ethanol from Brazil from entering the U.S.  Brazil boosted ethanol production 40% over the past five years, from 3 billion gallons in 2002 to 4.2 billion gallons last year. Meantime, U.S. production rose 75%, from 2.8 billion gallons to 4.9 billion gallons. http://www.beyondfossilfuel.com/ethanol/brazil_0513.html

The reason for the tariffs is to foster domestic production of ethanol.  Higher prices have pressed Washington to consider repealing the tariff.  This in turn, would not make U.S. producers of ethanol like Archer Daniels Midland very happy.

Good or bad ethanol will be a part of our everyday life.

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