Blighted harvest: The American corn ethanol disaster:
Basic chemistry dictates that gallon for gallon, burning ethanol produces only 2/3 as much energy as burning gasoline. In recent years, Americans have become accustomed to E15 “gasohol” (15% ethanol) at the pumps. Due to government regulations, it’s now extremely rare to find a gas station with ethanol-free gasoline in the US.
This means that the efficiency of E15, measured in miles per gallon, can never exceed 95% of the efficiency of regular gasoline. In actuality, it tends to be far lower. For most cars, ethanol mixes are detrimental to fuel efficiency. For example, the EPA tested 2006 flex-fuel models and determined that with E85 there was an average MPG reduction of 26%. Vehicles advertised as 30 MPG for regular gasoline typically get 22.2 MPG with E85 at the pump.
Person I’m thinking of as I blog this: Michael Silence. He’s been a big promotor of local sources of ethanol-free gasoline.
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I’ve been thumping this tub for some time myself, and Mr. Cassil has it mostly right. He neglects to mention that while cane ethanol is much more efficient than corn, there’s a hefty tariff against importing it into this country. Crony capitalism? Ask Bob Dole, the senator from ADM.
Also when you fill an 18 gallon tank with fuel, 2.7 gallons of that are ethanol, which means you use 6938 gallons of water to get that fuel rather than the 2500 (2478 but that’s roundoff error) which is the amount per gallon.
One more feature is that when your mileage goes down 26%, you need to burn more fuel and hence deliver 35% more pollutants to go the same distance. Wheezing yet?
The DOE was originally created to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. A moderately careful analysis of the ethanol program would probably reveal that it’s having exactly the opposite effect.