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Thursday, June 22, 2006

Ethanol Kinda Blows

Pollution:
Ethanol blended fuels burn 20% cleaner. Which is good. However the real coup is that it removes the need for the additive MTBE. MTBE pollutes ground water, kills fish, corrodes fuel lines, makes fuel production more expensive, and reduces fuel efficiency. It was mandated as a way to decrease air pollution (which it kinda does); but was clearly a mistake.
1 point for Ethanol

Cost:
Ethanol adds 20 cents to the production cost of blended gasoline. The government gives a 51 cent a gallon tax break so that means a theoretical price reduction at the pump of 31 cents. Sound good. Oh except in order to meet the growing demand, corn production will need to ramp up even further. Corn subsidies will grow, and we will be taxes accordingly. So Its probably a wash cost wise. Well, that is unless you live in the corn belt and then its a boon. But I'm sure that the congressmen from those states aren't going to be influenced by all that money and will make the best decision for all Americans.
It's a tie - Still one point for Ethanol.

Fuel Supply Independence:
In my opinion not pissing off fuel producing countries is an excellent way to stabilize fuel supplies; but that being said, fuel source independence is nice. Since Ethanol is corn, and US policy is rigged for corn then its not a bad idea. Well not a bad idea until a massive crop disease hits corn and our entire fuel demand hits the open market again. Mitigating that; in the future ethanol might be replaced with cellulosic ethanol with can be made from a variety of things (read: non-volatile fuel market) such as sweet potatoes, switch grass and pineapple tops). Brazil is pretty much converted over to domestically produced ethanol. That probably helps out their trade balance immensely. Brazil deserves a whole post by itself.
So I'll call it 1/2 a point for a total of 1.5

Fuel Efficiency:
Uh oh! Ethanol will reduce fuel efficiency. An auto getting 20mpg will get 14.2mpg with an blended fuel. And that makes it more expensive per mile and increases the total pollution.
Minus two points for a total of -.5

So I guess ethanol isn't totally despicable. But why bother when biodesil our pure used vegetable oil is so cheap and easy? Here is a list new cars that can run on biodiesel. A dollar says that they are competitive with a similar class of hybrid on fuel efficiency and cheaper to buy. Not ot mention manlier.

Fun Ethanol Fact: the Model T could run on any mixture of gasoline or ethanol.

Factual information for this post is largely plagiarized from the Wall Street Journal. Which I recommend instead of watching the news.

Labels: economics, opinion, politics, science