Economic blogger par excellence Alan Reynolds has another superb column up at Townhall.com.
Here's a disturbing slice:
Ethanol already gets an indefensible tax break at the pump of 51 to 71 cents a gallon, but Congress now wants to compel everyone to add it to their tanks. But doing so would leave us with less fuel at higher prices. Why? Because there is much less energy in eight gallons of ethanol than in the seven gallons of gasoline it takes to produce it.
In his June 15 speech, President Bush said: "Ethanol comes from corn -- and we're pretty good about growing corn here in America; we've got a lot of good corn-growers. Therefore, it makes sense to promote ethanol as an alternative to foreign sources of oil. Ethanol can be mixed with gasoline to produce a clean, efficient fuel. In low concentrations, ethanol can be used in any vehicle. And with minor modifications, vehicles can run on a fuel blend that includes about 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Ethanol helps our farmers find new markets ..."
Efficient fuel? Check the official mileage estimates at www.fueleconomy.gov. A Dodge Stratus gets 20 miles to the gallon in city driving on gasoline, but that drops to 15 mpg on E85 (the 85 percent ethanol fuel) -- and highway mileage drops from 28 mpg to 20 mpg.
Dude, Alan, you're freaking me out man! I don't need no steenking ethanol in my tank!!!!
Does it pollute less? Is there less of an environemental impact in general? Does it support terrorism like oil does? These are all important questions. Sure, our wallets are important as well, but they're not the most important thing.
ReplyDeleteEconomic blogger par excellence?
ReplyDeleteAlan Reynolds stated that a barrel of oil contains 42 gallons. Yes it does, but it’s 42 gallons of OIL. That's why they call it a barrel of OIL. Actually, about 19.9 gallons of gasoline are produced from a barrel of oil. That means that about 7.2635 billion gallons of ethanol per year will replace (by volume) the gasoline produced by 1,000,000 barrels per day or 365 million barrels per year. Eight billion gallons of ethanol replaces (by volume) about 400 million barrels.
The ethanol industry statement was that the new renewable fuel standard would save 2 billion barrels of imported oil over a decade. See link for direct source:
http://www.ethanolrfa.org/leg_position.shtml
The statement also anticipates the creation of 234,840 jobs and the addition of $43 billion to US household income along with other benefits.
Regarding mileage, first, it is pretty weak to take a single data point and extrapolate it across the board and into the future. Second, it is possible to optimize vehicles for E85 so that they get equal or better fuel economy to a straight gasoline vehicle.
http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/id12.html
That comment about the loss during refinement is interesting, but I'm curious what they do with the rest. Sure, some of it is burned off, but I imagine that the byproducts are also used in vehicles in some way?
ReplyDeleteIf we use nuclear or renewable energy sources to create the ethanol, then we've taken oil out of the picture. Eventually, gas may be expensive enough that this will make economic sense.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, I wonder which will make sense first: alternative fuel, or exploiting oil shale.
See what the American Lung Association of Minnesota says about E85 at www.CleanAirChoice.org
ReplyDeleteYou've been hammered straight up here, Tlaloc. Maybe you should be a little more selective in disagreement with anything and everything posted.
ReplyDelete"Does it pollute less? Is there less of an environemental impact in general? Does it support terrorism like oil does? These are all important questions. Sure, our wallets are important as well, but they're not the most important thing."
ReplyDeleteI support Ethanol, just not dumb advocates that realy just care about this "does it support terrosim like oil does?"