The folly of E15 anti-hydrocarbon policie
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EPA’s E-15 ethanol plan is bad for our pocketbooks, environment and energy policy
Guest post by Paul Driessen
The Obama Administration’s anti-hydrocarbon ideology and “renewable” energy mythology continues to subsidize crony capitalists and the politicians they help keep in office – on the backs of American taxpayers, ratepayers and motorists. The latest chapter in the sorry ethanol saga is a perfect example.
Bowing to pressure from ADM, Cargill, Growth Energy and other Big Ethanol lobbyists, Lisa Jackson’s Environmental Protection Agency has decided to allow ethanol manufacturers to register as suppliers of E15 gasoline. E15 contains 15% ethanol, rather than currently mandated 10% blends.
The next lobbying effort will focus on getting E15 registered as a fuel in individual states and persuading oil companies to offer it at service stations. But according to the Associated Press and Washington Post, Team Obama already plans to provide taxpayer-financed grants, loans and loan guarantees to “help station owners install 10,000 blender pumps over the next five years” and promote the use of biofuels.
Pummeled by Obama policies that have helped send regular gasoline prices skyrocketing from $1.85 a gallon when he took office to $4.00 today – many motorists will welcome any perceived “bargain gas.” E15 will likely reduce their obvious pump pain by several cents a gallon, thus persuading people to fill up their cars, trucks and maybe even boats, lawnmowers and other equipment with the new blends.
That would be a huge mistake.
E15 gasoline will be cheaper because we already paid for it with decades of taxpayer subsidies that the Congressional Budget Office says cost taxpayers $1.78 every time a gallon of ethanol replaced a gallon of gasoline. Ethanol blends get fewer miles per tank than gasoline. More ethanol means even worse mileage. People may save at the pump, but cost per mile will increase, as will car maintenance and repair costs.
Ethanol collects water, which can cause engine stalls. It corrodes plastic, rubber and soft metal parts. Pre-2001 car engines, parts and systems may not be able to handle E15, which could also increase emissions and adversely affect engine, fuel pump and sensor durability. Older cars and motorcycles mistakenly (or for price or convenience) fueled with E15 could conk out on congested highways or in the middle of nowhere, boat engines could die miles from land or in the face of a thunderstorm, and snowmobiles could sputter to a stop in a frigid wilderness.
Homeowners and yard care professionals have voiced concerns that E15’s corrosive qualities could damage their gasoline-powered equipment. Because it burns hotter than gasoline, high ethanol gasoline engines could burn users or cause lawnmowers, chainsaws, trimmers, blowers and other outdoor power equipment to start inadvertently or catch fire, they worry.
As several trade associations have noted in a lawsuit, the Clean Air Act says EPA may grant a waiver for a new fuel additive or fuel blend only if it has demonstrated that the new fuel will not damage the emissions control devices of “any” engine in the existing inventory. E15 has not yet met this requirement. EPA should not have moved forward on E15 and should not have ignored studies that indicate serious potential problems with this high-ethanol fuel blend.
Largely because of corn-based ethanol, US corn prices shot up from an annual average of $1.96 per bushel in 2005 to $6.01 in 2011. This year we will make ethanol from 5 billion bushels of corn grown on an area the size of Iowa. E15 fuels will worsen the problem, especially if corn crops fall below expectations.
Ethanol mandates mean more revenues and profits for corn growers and ethanol makers. However, skyrocketing corn prices mean beef, pork, poultry, egg and fish producers pay more for corn-based feed; grocery manufacturers pay more for corn, meat, fish and corn syrup; and families see prices soar for almost everything on their dinner table.
Farmers like pork producer Jim A were hammered hard. Over a 20-year period, Jim became a part owner in a Texas operation and planned to buy out the other shareholders. But when corn and ethanol subsidies went into effect, the cost of feed corn shot from $2.80 per bushel in 2005 to “over $7.00” a bushel in 2008. “We went from treading water and making payments, to losing $100,000 a month,” he told me.
His farm was threatened with foreclosure and the ominous prospect of having to make up the difference in a short sale. After “never missing a single payment to anybody” in his life, he almost lost everything. Fortunately, at the eleventh hour, a large pork producer leased the property, the bank refinanced his loans and Jim arranged a five-year lease. But thanks to ethanol he almost lost everything he’d ever worked for.
Even worse, the price of tortillas and tamales also skyrocketed, leaving countless poor Latin American families even more destitute. Soaring corn and wheat prices have also made it far harder for the USAID and World Food Organization to feed the world’s malnourished, destitute children.
Simply put, corn ethanol is wasteful and immoral. And yet E15 advocates want to go even further.
“For 40 years we have been addicted to foreign oil,” says Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis. “Our nation needs E15 to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, keep gas prices down at the pump, and end the extreme fluctuations in gas prices caused by our reliance on fuel from unstable parts of the world.”
That’s nonsense. America is blessed with centuries of untapped petroleum resources that antediluvian Deep Ecologists, ideology-driven politicians and EPA officials, and subsidy-obsessed renewable energy lobbyists seem intent on keeping locked up, regardless of the negative consequences.
These oil and gas deposits cannot be developed overnight. However, 40 years is not overnight. Yet that’s how long America has kept Alaska’s ANWR coastal plain, most of our Outer Continental Shelf, and most of our western states’ public lands and resources off limits to leasing, exploration and drilling.
If we had started the process twenty, ten or even five years ago, we’d have enough oil flowing to slash imports and cut world crude and US pump prices significantly. If President Obama had approved the Keystone XL pipeline, within two years over 800,000 barrels of Canadian, Montana and North Dakota crude would be flowing daily to Texas refineries – with similar effects on imports and prices.
Developing these resources would also generate hundreds of thousands of jobs – and billions of dollars in lease bonuses and rents, production royalties, and corporate and personal taxes.
America’s surging natural gas production has already driven that fuel’s price from $8 to barely $2.00 per thousand cubic feet (or million Btus). That alone will persuade auto makers to build nat-gas-powered cars and trucks (and consumers to buy them), without massive new subsidy programs as advocated by T. Boone Pickens and assorted politicians. Natural gas can even be converted into ethanol (and diesel).
It will happen, unless Congress interferes – or EPA tries to regulate horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) into oblivion, and send natural gas prices back into the stratosphere.
Right now, we are burning our own – and the world’s – food, to fuel cars and trucks. And to grow corn, convert it into 14 billion gallons of ethanol, and ship it by truck or train, we are consuming one-third of America’s entire corn crop – and using millions of pounds of insecticides, billions of pounds of fertilizer, vast amounts of energy (all petroleum-based), and trillions of gallons of water.
Just imagine how those numbers will soar, if E15 is adopted nationwide – or if Big Ethanol’s big dream becomes reality, and motorists begin to burn “cheap” corn-based E85 in flex-fuel vehicles.
Will President Obama, Democrats and extreme environmentalists ever end their hatred of hydrocarbons, and their obsession with biofuels – and start embracing reliable, affordable energy that actually works?
__________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.cfact.org) and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
Related articles
- U.S. approves 20 firms to make ethanol for E15 (reuters.com)
- EPA moves closer to approval of 15 pct ethanol gas (kansascity.com)
- EPA gives E15 go-ahead despite objections, approves production applications (green.autoblog.com)
Well, there goes my food costs again. Of course food and ‘energy’ are not part of the CPI, and for very good (and obvious) reasons. Good, at least in the government’s view that is.
We have the most stupid government of all time. It is official.
It never ceases to amaze me that whatever the green lobby is in favor of is exactly 180 degrees off the right course of action to take. You have to give it to them if only for absolute consistency. Simple sounding solutions to complex issues have great appeal to Populists and they are always wrong.
I for one will avoid this like the plague. It cost $500 to repair our lawnmower (multiple trips to the repair shop and its a commercial grade mower) due to gasoline with 10% ethanol fouling the carburetor. Also, maybe some 2001 and forward cars can handle 15%, but some, like mine, are rated only for 10%. After the lawnmower experience, I will steer clear of this.
I don’t say it often enough, but thank you Anthony for all you do. You are my go-to website for all kinds of info and I learn something new everyday.
Not good – my 2011 vehicle warns specifically not to use greater than 10% ethanol fuel.
From the manual:
Gasoline containing alcohol and methanol Gasohol, a mixture of gasoline and ethanol (also known as grain alcohol), and gasoline or gasohol containing methanol (also known as wood alcohol) are being marketed along with or instead of leaded or unleaded gasoline. Do not use gasohol containing more than 10% ethanol, and do not use gasoline or gasohol containing any methanol. Either of these fuels may cause drivability problems and damage to the fuel system.
Discontinue using gasohol of any kind if drivability problems occur.
Vehicle damage or drivability problems may not be covered by the manufacturer’s warranty if they result from the use of:
1. Gasohol containing more than 10% ethanol.
2. Gasoline or gasohol containing methanol.
3. Leaded fuel or leaded gasohol
Wonder where that “2001” date in the warning comes from?
This has some relationship to the Tip I posted about the draft National Sustainable Agriculture Standard. http://www.sustainableagstandard.org/ . Just a quick glance thru this will show that it is a strait jacket for farmers and others in the food chain. Obama made it known that he would push his agenda thru regulatory measures, and he wasn’t kidding.
Stupidty at its finest…
The Obama EPA is going to burn up older cars and kill them on pourpose.. one more move to kill the ability of normal people to survie and be far from the cities. this will force most ameroicans into cites where they will not need personal transportation..
one more noch in the UN Agenda 21 process…
About half of the united States is private land. Even though the Administration restricts
the use of its half, the private sector can get us to 100%, or even to the point of exporting
crude oil, by say 2020. This is because of horizontal drilling and fracking, now really moving
in areas of oil-enriched shale. You know the story on natural gas, the same story. We are
about to export LNG, liquified natural gas. The same story, but 5-7 years earlier.
Oh sure, the EPA needs a LOT of pressure to implement crap like this. /sarc
And it’s not crony capitalism, it’s just plain cronyism. Never ceases to amaze me that capitalism is constantly blamed for policies and programs that are not capitalism. Oh well, that’s what leftist POS do.
E15 should be good for the economy, well good if you manufacture gasoline powered outdoor equipment to replace all of the equipment that will barely run on the new fuel
The idea that you will be sold a “mystery mix” with an unknown (“up to x%”!!) dilution of gasoline with alcohol is astonishing. How about milk with “somewhere between 0 and 3.5% MF?
Why even bother to check the accuracy of the pump volume in this case.
Paul, two missing points…
…when energy prices go up…everything goes up, including rent
Corn for ethanol does not even have the restrictions as feed corn, much less corn for human consumption….that means more pesticides, more fertilizer, more heribcides, and more water…corn is a high water demand crop
While finishing Don’t Sell Your Coat, I worked at a rowing center in Austin. For the record, I taught private rowing lessons, coached high school rowers, started a stand-up paddleboard program, and was one of several managers that ran the place. Keeping our fleet of coaches’ launches functioning was a sometimes monumental challenge, simply because of the water entering the fuel system due to ethanol. There’s nothing like pulling an outboard cord 70 or 100 times on the river during a windy afternoon to make one loathe ethanol. Additives help, but they’re a fair-sized pain.
Besides being a boondoggle based on bad science, one that enriches a few at the expense of the many, E15 will continue to erode the ability of water sport professionals at marinas, rowing centers like the one where I worked, camps and other locations go completely berserk with frustration. (Along with all the users of motors on dry land whose lives will needlessly be made more difficult.) Apart from that, it’s awesome.
VACornell says:
“…the private sector can get us to 100%, or even to the point of exporting crude oil, by say 2020. This is because of horizontal drilling and fracking, now really moving in areas of oil-enriched shale. You know the story on natural gas, the same story. We are about to export LNG, liquified natural gas. The same story, but 5-7 years earlier.”
Obama just signed an Executive Order [which bypasses Congress] mandating a committee to “study” fracking. There is absolutely no doubt that his new committee will move to restrict horizontal drilling. Every action taken by this president is intended to make the U.S. more dependent on foreign oil, and cause the price of energy, as Obama promises, to “necessarily skyrocket”.
Horizontal drilling causes no environmental problems. The shale deposits are far below the water table, and new regulations requiring concrete seals virtually eliminate the possibility of gas leakage.
Remember that gasoline was $1.87 nationally the day Obama took office. There is no reason other than eco-politics that it cannot return to that price level. We have an upcoming election that will offer a stark contrast between the eco-lunacy of this administration, and having grown-ups run things for a change.
ONE single tank of E-85 a year ago cost me an entire replacement of a fuel system in my classic ’78 Ski Nautique to the tune of 3 grand!!!!! grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.!!! Let’s double down and go for the rest of the motor next!!!!
ps and a $800 4 barrel carburetor!
Did they not confirm mad cow in California?
Actually I like E10 in the winter time and sometimes go out of my way to buy it. During the winter the highs where I live are sometimes below -20C and the alcohol in the fuel keeps the fuel lines and the carb from freezing up.
Putting a good quality gas preservative into fuel for lawn equipment etc helps to prevent the seals in the carb etc from being eaten away. My lawn tractor was purchased new in about 2006 and needed a new carb the next year, just after the warranty expired, needless to say I was not very happy. Since then I have not had a problem.
DaveW
That should read “E15 will continue to erode the ability of water sport professionals at marinas, rowing centers like the one where I worked, camps and other locations to do their jobs. It will also lead many of them to go completely berserk with frustration.”
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/speech-on-peak-oil-and-us-energy-policy.html?m=0
This discusses why the US must not use up domestic petroleum resources. Scroll down to “Energy Policy”, approximately mid-way through the article.
Roger Sowell
Hmm… how about that.
For the sake of argument, based on the 12 mo smoothed vehicle miles traveled data from RITA, August 2011 saw about 245,208,159,175 miles traveled in the US.
Again, for the sake of argument, lets say that those vehicles average 25 mpg. At the US average tax rate of 48.5 cents per gallon, Federal State and Local governments collected about $4,757,038,288. Provided it was pure gasoline.
At a thermal efficiency of 96.6%, E10 requires us to burn an additional 343,046,398 gallons of fuel, for an additional tax revenue of $166,377,502. Effectively at 24.16 mpg.
With E15, the increase in tax revenue is $96,748,345 over the E10, bringing the subsidized fuel boondoggle to $263,125,848 in taxes over regular gas. With that 25 mpg now only about 23.7 mpg.
… yeah. Clean air my ass.
why couldn’t they come up with a replacement for MTBE?
“Even worse, the price of tortillas and tamales also skyrocketed, leaving countless poor Latin American families even more destitute”
The environmentalists could not be happier—starving to death is soooo natural. We were on the road to having no starvation on Earth, except in evil dictatorship countries, until ethanol raised the cost of all food stuffs, particularly corn, which put pressure on rice and grains prices.
Let’s see. Who supports this? Oh, our Undocumented Worker-in-Chief!
Perhaps this is a backward step to kick starting the economy, a massive repair bill to every company, man and woman who owns a car, truck or gas engine whatever.It’s time to upgrade my automotive skill’s for the next big thing. Obuma you a genius– NOT!
Burn whiskey, not dinosaurs!
Reblogged this on TaJnB | TheAverageJoeNewsBlogg.
This should prove once and for all that there is no such animal as an energy policy in this country. There is only energy politics and an assortment of pretend half-hearted mandates, grants, and subsidy deals. Standing back and looking at the big mess shows that we are diverting motor fuel dollars to fund the urban planner political ecosystem and high speed rail. Renewable energy grants and loans were going far and wide without thought to the viable low cost leaders and their business plans. CNG-fueled vehicles coming new off the assembly line would make sense for individual cost minimizing decisions by consumers and small business but we have DOE and White House tactics of looking busy and sound bites instead of anything approaching strategy and least cost, least emission paths. You can tell Obama is just playing stand off games with various interest groups on nuclear, CNG, energy independence proponents, and many others. That in itself is another sign of energy political gamesmanship in place of policy. Looking through their distorted eyes at the White House, there are only large organized voter blocks in place of science, rationality, or least cost decision making by households and business sectors. That is a huge difference in perspective and helps explain outcomes for the mish mash of taxpayer-funded programs and mandates on consumers.
Man!
Am I ever glad I converted to a flex-fuel diesel (yes, it will burn and has burned veggie-oil without modifications) mechanical-injection vehicle back in 2010. Mercedes Benz probably never envisioned there product running on veggie oil back in 1981, but I assure you they will.
The mower is electric; just make sure to NEVER blow the breaker (to the outlet) while the motor is under full load though (the full-wave diode bridge rectifier will __not__ withstand the ‘spike’ from the ‘load dump’ output from the motor as the magnetic field in the rotor collapses in that condition … ask me how I know first-hand about this!)
Now, the weed-eater, she’s still gasoline powered, but, I have seen advertised pre-mixed (oil and gas at the proper ratio) non-alcohol-containing weed-eater ‘fuel’ available for her …
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Please, can we get a Cliff’s Notes version (think: Willis E.-type elevator speech)?
BTW, given what we now envision to hold in the ground, this is policy can and is doing more harm than good economically. For a modern civilization, energy is the ‘key’ to moving forward, to making ‘progress’ as the archaic saying would go.
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While using corn to make ethanol or ethanol to fuel machines is stupid, the whole corn-ageddon argument seem weak to me. The fact that food price crises always hit when oil prices are high seems far easier to explain by the fact that oil is used to harvest, refine, prepare and transport food. Wheat and rice and barley rise too. And since global pork production is continuing to expand it might be a tad unfair for pork producers to blame all their problems on ethanol.
Drop the fuel mandates, yes, and drop fines against foreign ethanol and let the bio-ethanol/biomass industries transfer to smarter sources and to more lucrative markets like replacing petrochemicals as sources for expensive chemical feedstocks. Then use the fossil fuels *as* fuels. We don’t need to throw out an industry just because government is interfering with it and we don’t need to give it sole blame it for problems which it has little impact on compared to other players.
For many years, various studies of the economics and efficiency of ethanol production have indicated it takes more than 1 gallon of gasoline to produce 1.5 gallons of ethanol from corn. The 1.5 gallons of ethanol is the energy equivlentof 1 gallon of gasoline. If these conclusions are still valid today, it means ethanol production doesn’t save us anything interms of foreign oil consumption. In fact, it costs us more, or at least fails to save us much at all.
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Biofuels/U.S.-Ethanol-Policy-Contradicting-Every-Principle-of-Sound-Economics.html
Other problems with biofuels (2006 paper).
http://www.pnas.org/content/103/30/11206.abstract
Opportunity cost in land use.
http://gas2.org/2012/03/19/food-as-fuel-by-the-numbers/
Brazil’s production of ethanol works because sugarcane ethanol is more efficiently produced.
http://www.economist.com/node/21542431
Switch grass may be an alternative.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=grass-makes-better-ethanol-than-corn
Butanol may be a better alternative, but it has problems too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biobutanol
Oregon State analysis of biofuel economics
http://arec.oregonstate.edu/sites/default/files/faculty/perry/qadocument5.pdf
From the other side, their counter-argument.
http://www.ethanol.org/pdf/contentmgmt/Issue_Brief_Ethanols_Energy_Balance.pdf
It seems to me because we can’t grow enough corn to replace gasoline, and because it makes food more expensive, we need to abandon the corn ethanol experiment, except as it has been practiced in Kentucky.
http://www.knobcreek.com/lpa
As GeoLurking pointed out above, this is a double whammy, because the more alcohol in it, the more gallons I have to buy. My 2001 Jeep Cherokee gets 4 or 5 miles fewer per gallon when using gas with ethanol in it. I first discovered that by accident when gassing up part of the time with premium at a little mom & pop station. When we go to Oklahoma these days, I try to be as empty as possible on crossing the border so I can fill up with fine pure gasoline. Wish there were some place closer, I would drive farther to get alcohol-free gas.
Never should have banned MTBE, the best fuel additive that man could invent. Further, it is made from methanol and butane, two sources that come from gas, not oil (methane to methanol, and butane from natural gas liquids).
I drove a Z-4 for a few years and when they banned MTBE and was forced to use an ethanol blend I definitely noticed a drop in fuel mileage
In Australia we have 95 octane 5% Ethanol and 98 octane 10% (E5 and E10 respectively). Standard unleaded at 91 octane and the E5 run almost the same, but since the octane is higher in E5, I can advance the timing a bit to offset any reduced horsepower. But E10 – in every single motor I’ve run it gets roughly 10% REDUCED mileage – regardless the bullsh*t they advertise for 98 octane “fuels”, such as cleaner, more power etc. Note this also goes for 98 octane fuels WITHOUT ethanol. Notably, none of my motors were specially configured for higher octane.
I could only imagine the disadvantage of E15 if I ever saw it. There are lots of “octane boosters” on the performance market misleading people. Don’t people understand that higher octane fuels burn slower and create less power for the same engine? This is why LPG at around 110 octane gets low performance. The only reason light aircraft avgas is 130 octane is to reduce the possibility of freezing at altitude (I think- correct me if I’m wrong).
As we can see though, ethanol and its subsidies, is better saved for the bar..
To Tom Rude,
I think she was just visiting California to push E15.
Boy….do the folks who posted above need an education.
1. Ever heard of DDG’s? DDG is the by product of corn distilation. IT is a MUCH better feed than corn. The conversion factor, which means weight gain when fed, is higher.
2. The price of corn and the price of groceries. Ahem…..that corn flakes box has a whole 4.7 cents……..yes cents of corn in it. You could double the price of corn and that box would contain a whole 10 cents worth of corn. Did you know that the BOX costs more than the corn IN the box?
3. Ethanol. IF you live in a northern climate, you will love ethanol. NO more calls from the wife that the car froze up.
4. I have used ethanol for 20 years. I have never had an engine failure in those 20 years. IN fact, I never had fuel injector problems as the ethanol keeps them clean.
5. Please do research. It costs over 5.00 to raise a bushel of corn. Thank goodness for the ehtanol market. IF we didn’t have one, we would have unemplyment running over 10% in the USA for starters. And I guarantee you your food would be a WHOLE lot more expensive. $3.00 corn means no more farmers. The few that would survive would be CERTAIN to make a profit.
I won’t even get into how much per gallon it saves and the effect it has on average retail prices of gasoline.
Why do you think gas is cheaper now than diesel? Even tho diesel is cheaper to make??????
Folks…….please read.
Disclaimer. I am a farmer, but I no longer grow corn. I grew corn for 30 years, and the current price structure is not profitable over time.
Also….a quick question. Since when has wheat been made into ethanol? The op-ed writer somehow got that product in there as well.
OH ya…..I also drive my vehicles till the engine stops. 300,000 miles plus on the last 3.
Tell me again how I am suppose to be having so much trouble???????
How the hell else can they get farmers to vote for them. It is crass politics and absolutely nothing else.
I drive a 2001 Jeep. It isn’t supposed to burn ethanol. Same with the newer ones.
Corn-to-ethanol refineries should be required to burn their product to produce all their energy requirements: electricity, steam, heat, and all transportation for corn and the ethanol. At the farm, also.
Then they can sell what’s left over. (there won’t be any to sell)
Oil refineries have no problem doing this and did so for decades.
@_Jim: sorry, I’m on a smart phone so am asking you to take the time to read the one paragraph identified above. The shortest version is our domestic oil is a strategic resource. It is unwise to waste it.
“rammed through” instead of “rammed though” ?
EPA mandated low-sulfur requirements for diesel as a motor fuel?
The increased cost happened just a year or two back due to new requirements:
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/fuels/dieselfuels/index.htm
http://www.clean-diesel.org/highway.html
“All highway diesel must be ULSD 12/01/10”
Sulfur was reduced from 500 ppm to about 15 parts per million (ppm).
Yes, indeed, please ‘read’.
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EPA should not have moved forward on E15 and should not have ignored studies that indicate serious potential problems with this high-ethanol fuel blend.
Never make the assumption that the EPA is anything other than a revenue gathering machine. I dealt with EPA and DEP bureaucrats for five years, and the only connection any of them had with “science” was the Batchelor of Science header on their Business Administration diplomas.
I’m having trouble with this one … it looks like a variation of the “Broken Window Fallacy” in the way of paying subsidies and redirecting resources (which might otherwise be used for growing foodstuffs, and this includes fuel and fertilizer required for the ‘fuel’ crop) under direction/force of arbitrary law e.g. gasohol fuel mandates (but I can’t be sure, it’s late and I’m tired).
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My apologies.
I was so incensed at the blatant screwing of the US economy, that I misspoke.
I stated:
“…With E15, the increase in tax revenue is $96,748,345 over the E10, bringing the subsidized fuel boondoggle to $263,125,848 in taxes over regular gas. With that 25 mpg now only about 23.7 mpg.…”
This is accurate… what I left off was that using those numbers, the total revenue from gas taxes will climb to $5,020,164,136 for Federal State and Local government, as opposed to the $4,923,415,790 that is currently collected.
per month
Farm subsidies combined with the EPA. What could possibly go wrong?
Conoco service stations do not sell fuel with Ethanol in it.That is why I now avoid all stations that is not a Conoco station.
So, just because it hasn’t happened to you, that means it never happens?
I’ve burned up two 2-cycle motors using the mandated ethanol blend gas. One was a 200 horsepower boat engine. The cost to rebuild was greater than the total value of the boat. I had to sell it for parts
I’ve rebuilt both of my chainsaws several times and I’ve had to put in new gaskets into the carb each year… That is, till I found out 3 years ago that I couldn’t use ethanol blend gas in them. I only rebuilt my weedwacker twice, but then I’m not real thrilled about wacking weeds.
You tell us that it’s great to use ethanol blend gas in the winter? Ethanol absorbs moisture right from the air. When it absorbs enough water it separates out from the gasoline and sits underneath the gasoline. The colder the temperature, the easier hydrated ethanol will separate out. No engine likes to run on ethanol and water, well people might like to, but reciprocating engines don’t. Got any paper filters filtering your gas line? The alcohol water mix will swell the fibers and slow down your fuel flow, even if you manage to get real gas flowing again. If the temperature is cold enough, the ethanol water mix forms a slurry from the water freezing (very small ice crystals). The trouble is, the ice crystals can get filtered and clog the filter. http://bluewaterboatservices.com/ethanol.
Alcohol provides an octane boost to gasoline. When the alcohol phase separates out, the remaining gasoline does not have the octane rating your engine needs anymore. Keep running it and you’re looking at engine damage from the incorrect detonation of the gasoline (knocking).
A farmer for over 30 years huh? Every farmer I’ve known usually has their own gas storage tank installed so they can fill their equipment without dragging five gallon plastic tanks around. Ethanol blended gas, mostly because of it’s tendency to phase separate and otherwise oxidize has a very short shelf life. 90 days max. thirty years ago, you could order your storage tank filled and used that same gas all year. Not so with ethanol blends. http://www.fuel-testers.com/expiration_of_ethanol_gas.html.
From: http://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/ID/ID-339.pdf. So yes, you will need more E10 gas to go the same distance as plain gas.
So what you’re saying is that you think it’s terrific that we pay more per gallon of gas and that we also pay taxes so that we can also pay the subsidies for using the ethanol.
My GMC truck manual (2000 Sierra) advises me to avoid ethanol blended gas if possible. If not possible than to make sure I never use gas with more than 10% alcohol. My current boat engine also advise me to never use gas with any alcohol in it. And as I found out, none of my yard equipment is supposed to use ethanol blended gas. If you’ve never had a problem, you really need to thank your supreme being for being so nice to you.
It hard to conclude other than these loons intend to destroy our existing system one piece at a time.