Latest Study On The Inefficiencies Of Ethanol

From The 6-14-03 Rocky Mountain News

June 14, 2003

    Thanks to Congress, it looks as though we'll all be forced to buy more expensive - and less efficient - fuel for our vehicles through the next decade or longer.

In April, the House approved the Energy Policy Act which would nearly double, to 5 billion gallons, the amount of ethanol that must be added annually to gasoline by 2015.

The Senate, in all likelihood, will accept the same figure when it finally passes its version of the bill, except its target year is 2012. The Senate provided a hint of things to come when a week ago it rejected an amendment that would have given the states the right to opt out of ethanol requirements. (At least our senators, Ben Campbell and Wayne Allard, voted for the amendment.) The Environmental Protection Agency will determine how much goes where across the land.

Whatever benefit ethanol provides to the air has largely disappeared because computers increasingly control fuel injection. The ethanol mandate is little more than a political power play by the corn growers and the ethanol industry.

Think of this mandate as a sort of Eat Your Spinach Act for cars. Any time a product's use has to be required by law you know there must be something wrong with it. If there weren't, the market would embrace it without the whip.

The latest study of the inefficiencies of ethanol was just released by Tad W. Patzek, professor of geoengineering at the University of California at Berkeley. The paper demonstrates that you must burn one gallon of gasoline equivalent in fossil fuels to produce one gallon of gasoline equivalent as ethanol from corn. Or, as Patzek puts it, "We are burning the same amount of fuel twice to drive a car once."

Those who argue that ethanol provides a net energy gain instead of a loss don't take into account the amount of energy stored in corn, Patzek explains. "To grow the corn you've used up soil and water. We must also account for the disposal of waste water polluted by nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers."

Ethanol is made even more expensive because it is too corrosive to ship by pipeline. It must travel by train or truck and be blended with gasoline at regional terminals.

Ethanol has a 34 percent lower heating value than gasoline and tends to mix with any water collected at the bottom of the tank. Thus 1.5 gallons of ethanol are required to replace the energy in one gallon of gasoline.

Interestingly, some legislators who vigorously oppose any increase in the federal gasoline tax favor the use of ethanol. But ethanol drives up the price of a gallon of gas just as surely.

Ethanol prospers because of the farm and agribusiness lobby. In Washington as in Denver, lobbyists for special interests have more influence than the consumer, who has no lobbyist. The subsidy amounts to 53 cents per gallon.

Frankly, we'd rather take our chances with the vagaries of the worldwide oil market.

**From RockyMountainNews.Com 6-14-03

http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/11/1546406.php

CAPP supports a Smog Check inspection & repair audit, gasoline oxygen cap and elimination of dual fuel CAFÉ credit to cut car impact over 50% in 1 year.

* A Smog Check audit would cut toxic car impact in 1/2 in 1 year

* An oxygenate waiver would stop a $10 billion refinery welfare program coming from the fed gas tax reduction of $0.52 per gal of ethanol used

* About 1/3 of the gasoline used by new cars nationwide is allowed by the "renewable fuel" CAFE credit.   

CAPP contact: Charlie Peters / (510) 537-1796 / cappcharlie@earthlink.net