Advanced BioFuels USA

by Marc J. Rauch (The Auto Channel) The April announcement by Joe Biden that E15 would be allowed to be sold year-round set off a frenzied spate of new attacks on the good fuel…the clean fuel…the 100% domestically produced fuel: ETHANOL.

TV and radio stations all over the country have been abuzz with contrived urgency concerning this decision as if the topic has never been discussed before. I can’t say that I’m completely unhappy about this because these incidents have a silver lining: They open the door to present true information about ethanol and its benefits. The negative information works to bring the importance of alternative fuels back into the public eye for the opportunity to present honest, positive information.

For example, a news story from the “I-Team” at WGME, the CBS-affiliate in Portland, Maine, posed the question: “Is E15 ethanol fuel safe to use in every vehicle?”

To answer the question, the I-Team’s crack investigators used a 12-year old statement from the Environmental Protection Agency about which vehicles can safely use E15. The EPA said that it’s safe to use E15 in all flex fuel vehicles, and all vehicles manufactured since 2001, but that motorcycles and small engine equipment should not use E15.

When the video of this story was posted on WGME’s Facebook page it drew a swarm of local busy-bodies and know-it-alls to add their two cents. Proving that two cents is now worth far, far less than it was when the adage was first coined, the neighborly curbside advice was pure bovine scat. Having been alerted to the WGME Facebook post, I watched the video, read the comments, and then added some of my million-dollar advice (excuse my immodesty).

In response to my accurate counsel that all vehicles and internal combustion engines, regardless of size and age, could safely use E15 and higher blends, one yenta named Beth O’Connor replied to my ethanol advocacy by asking:

“Why reinvent the wheel (just stick with gasoline)?”

I chuckled to myself, and wrote back to her:

“Since alcohol fuels were the original fuels used in internal combustion engines, how is using cleaner, safer, healthier, less expensive ethanol reinventing the wheel?”

For those who may not be aware of it, Samuel Morey, the acknowledged inventor of the first internal combustion engine (1826) used an alcohol-based fuel. He did this nearly two hundred years ago…. 

…

The cherry on the top of the cake is the fact that ethanol-gasoline blends were widely marketed throughout Great Britain for several decades beginning in the 1920s. The primary oil companies selling the E15 – E30 blends were industry giants Standard Oil (Esso) and Cities Service (Citgo). The argument that older and classic carbureted vehicles can’t use E15 or higher blends are proven false because they could have, and probably did use higher ethanol-gasoline blends at different times without any issues.

…

Then I sent Beth O’Connor the following:

…

“You have the impudence to say that you are “quite pleased the work I did expanded the availability of E-0 in Maine.” E0 … ethanol-free gasoline … is poison, 100% poison. You are murdering the people of Maine. That’s what you are proud of?

“Beth, I’m going to tell you straight up that E10 isn’t perfect, E15 isn’t perfect, even E85 is not perfect They have big, big problems. You know what those problems are? I’ll tell you if you promise NOT to keep it a secret: E10 has about 90% gasoline in it. E15 has about 85% gasoline in it. And even E85 has anywhere from about 17% to 49% gasoline in it! You can clean open skin cuts with ethanol. You can drink and gargle with ethanol. You can clean sensitive electronic equipment with ethanol. You can preserve food with ethanol. If you tried this with gasoline you’d be dead and have gummed-up electronic equipment.

…

Houston’s FOX-affiliate KRIV aired a story similar to the Maine TV station story. In this case, the question was “Will lifting the E15 gasoline ban really save you money”? It was posed by their consumer reporter Heather Sullivan on a two-part segment called Sullivan’s Smart Sense.

…

The filling station that they are at in the video is a Murphy USA station. This Murphy station does not sell E0. I went online and looked for stations in the Houston area that do sell E0. I found one called Fuel Wise. The price right now for regular 87 octane E0 is $4.89 per gallon. Therefore, the price difference between Fuel Wise’s E0 and Murphy’s E10 is $1.26 per gallon. This means that the E10 is a 26% savings versus the cost of E0. If E10 loses 4% mpg compared to E0 then there is still a net savings of a little more than 20% per gallon. Since the E15 is a nickel cheaper than E10 it means the cost difference between E15 and E0 is $1.31, a 27% savings.

There’s more to the story: E15 is not an 87 octane fuel, it’s 88 octane. So a comparison of the price of E15 to the price of regular 87 octane E0 is not exactly even. We have to look at the cost of a higher octane E0, for example a mid-range 89 octane E0.

Unfortunately, the Fuel Wise station I called doesn’t sell a mid-octane E0, but from previous experience, I estimate that the price of 89 octane E0 could be about 40 cents more than the 87 octane. If we split the amount, we can add 20 cents to the price of the E0 to make the comparison with E15 fairer. This increases the saving between E15 and a comparable E0 to $1.51 per gallon, a 30% savings. Based on this price vs. mpg comparison, if you lose 5% mpg by using E15, you still have a net gain of 25%. Since the physical effort of pumping E15 into your fuel tank is no greater than the effort expended to pump in E10 or E0, it means that lifting the ban on E15 does save you even more money than E10 already saves you. The question posed by Heather Sullivan has now been answered: E15 will save consumers even more money than E10!  READ MORE

Commentary: The ethanol boondoggle (The Ellsworth American)