Real Science - Ethanol is a loser

Currently the environmental extremists in Tallahassee and Washington and other places have pretty much forced us to use ethanol as a fuel to be "green". Promoting ethanol as "green" fuel is based on bad science. In most vehicles ethanol is a loser.

Most modern cars are manufactured so that they can run on up to 15% ethanol without hurting the car. That doesn't mean that they are designed to efficiently use ethanol as a fuel, just that they are designed so that if ethanol enriched gasoline is used it won't hurt the car. Ethanol as a fuel poses problems that the government and environmentalists fail to acknowledge.

In most cars ethanol enriched gasoline decrease efficiency by a greater percentage than the ethanol in the fuel. Using typical 10% ethanol enriched gasoline will result in greater than 10% decrease in fuel efficiency. This results in zero gasoline saved plus the burning of ethanol creating more pollution not less. Here's what Dr Mark Jacobson of Stanford University said based on the results of his study. “Ethanol is being promoted as a clean and renewable fuel that will reduce global warming and air pollution, but our results show that a high blend of ethanol poses an equal or greater risk to public health than gasoline, which already causes significant health damage.”

I'm a professional chemist and a car/motorcycle nut. I have always kept track of my vehicles' efficiencies. My everyday transportation is a 2007 Suzuki DL650 motorcycle for economic and personal reasons. Prior to the mandated ethanol in our fuel it averaged 60mpg and did quite well on regular grade gasoline. Now with the addition of 10% ethanol to the fuel, it runs poorly on regular and now requires premium to prevent detonation, and only gets 53 mpg. I had 12% better millage with cheaper fuel before ethanol was introduced into the fuel. My pickup, other motorcycles saw similar decreases in fuel economy. The 1992 Geo Metro I recycled as cheap transportation for my college boy had its fuel mileage drop from a wonderful 44mpg to 38mpg. It gets 16% better fuel efficiency without ethanol.

Before ethanol was added to our fuel in order to drive the Metro 1000 miles it consumed 22.7 gallons of fuel (22.7 gallons of gasoline + zero gallons ethanol). Now with 10% ethanol enriched gasoline to drive the same 1000 miles it uses 26.3 gallons of fuel (22.7 gallons of gasoline + 2.6 gallons of ethanol). That's just plain sick, not only do I use just as much gasoline, but I also burn 2.6 additional gallons of ehtanol, and the ethanol creates additional pollutants that the gasoline doesn't. To top it off the Metro needed higher grade fuel to run right. Where's the savings? Unless everybody purchases a new vehicle designed specifically to run on ethanol, things are worse.

In addition, to create a gallon of ethanol, it takes the equivalent approximately .9 gallons of gas in the form of fossil fuels like coal/diesel/pesticides/fertilizers/etc. used in ethanol production. So the total fuel used to Drive 1000 miles in my metro since ethanol has been added is actually 26.8 gallons of fuel (22.7 gasoline + 2.6 ethanol + 2.3 fossil fuels used to create the ethanol).

California Environmental Protection Agency has evidently concluded that corn ethanol will not help the state implement Executive Order S-1-07, the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Jan. 18, 2007, mandating a 10 percent reduction in the carbon intensity of the state's fuels by 2020.

The science is clear, ethanol as motor fuel is a loser. Now what makes this worse is the fact that using a food source for motor fuel has resulted in a significant increase in the cost of feeding ourselves.

A Congressional Budget Office study concluded that 10 to 15 percent of the increase in food prices from April 2007 to April 2008 is attributable to the increasing demand for corn to produce ethanol, contributing adversely to the problem of world hunger.

So let's add up what ethanol as motor fuel really does:

Decreases vehicle efficiency, and uses more total carbon based fuels than it saves

Creates pollutants that increase public health risk

Creates increased food prices, and decreases available land for healthier crops

Why do we let our leaders create laws that increase our fuel costs, increase our food costs, increase our health risks, increase our taxes (subsidies for ethanol production come from tax dollars), and not hold them accountable. Let your elected officials in Florida and Washington knows that you don't want ethanol it's a proven loser.