Matching For More: The Defour Group's Dean Drake's Plan Involves Match Blending Mid-Level Blends

by Melissa Anderson (Ethanol Producer Magazine) The Defour Group's Dean Drake, a former GM public policy analyst, says liquid fuels have a shared future with electric vehicles if ethanol blending methods, engine technology and policy can align. His plan involves match blending mid-level blends.

Drake, however, says we should step back and consider our options. He offers an alternative future where ICE vehicles persist much longer, and more abundantly than predicted, with higher-ethanol blends matched with octane-optimized engines offering as much, or more, carbon reduction as EVs. His plan isn’t simple or easy; it requires an unprecedented degree of alignment among the biofuels, petroleum and automotive industries that, to date, has been elusive. And Drake has seen windows of opportunity like this close quickly before.

Early Opportunities Lost
Drake, a former GM public policy analyst and founder of the Michigan-based consulting firm Defour Group LLC, says that, in addition to high-level, inter-industry cooperation, proactive policy development is a must.

“I was part of a company that believed the best way for the auto companies to survive and prosper was not to just blindly fight regulations but develop regulations that helped the company adapt to the future,” he says, explaining that his work in the ’80s and ’90s with GM placed him at the forefront of policy and regulations including cap-and-trade and concepts that would eventually be incorporated into the Renewable Fuel Standard.

Drake helped organize GM’s global warming summit 32 years ago, and he believes the world would be in a better position today if action would have been taken then.

He founded Defour Group with some retired GM coworkers and climate summit collaborators. Together they worked with ethanol interests studying the economics and environmental benefits of high octane, low carbon mid-level ethanol blend fuels. Now, with his focus on biofuels and climate change front and center, he sees EVs emerging as the next big evolution in automotive transportation, and he gets it.

“The electric vehicle just has a lot of inherent advantages,” he says. “It has no tailpipe emissions and people keep forgetting the importance of local toxic pollutants. One of the things you’re doing is putting pollution out in a single smokestack away from the cities instead of in front of someone’s windows.”

But EVs aren’t perfect. The transition will require trillions of dollars of new infrastructure spending, and sources of electricity are varied, ranging from fossil fuels to eco-centered wind and solar, which is intermittent. Electric vehicles are only practical for light-duty applications—long-haul EV trucking is still not viable—and only half of the vehicles in the world are currently light-duty, urban-based cars and trucks. EV range is improving but still limited at 60 to 300 miles between charges, and batteries are heavy and dubious from an environmental and human rights perspective.

Furthermore, it is predicted that more than 50% of all cars and trucks on the road will still be ICE vehicles in 2050, meaning practical solutions to reducing the carbon intensity of liquid transportation fuels today, and over the next 30 years, are needed.

Drake believes ethanol is the answer. “Biofuels are really the greatest alternative for the rest of the fleet that cannot be electrified, and that’s probably half the fleet or more,” he says. “Ethanol is the best contender.”

Drake believes mid-level ethanol blends like E30 are a perfect fit if the fuels and automotive industries come together and treat the engines and ethanol blends like an integrated system to optimize vehicle efficiency and lower emissions. Higher compression engines would benefit the most from these higher blends, he says, explaining that current automakers could quickly recalibrate existing engine setups to benefit from higher ethanol blends in a matter of a few years.

He says that while adding more ethanol to regular gasoline (splash blending) will reduce the resulting fuels’ carbon intensity, match blending the fuel (adding ethanol to a gasoline specifically blended for use with higher ethanol blends) at the “sweet spot” of 20 to 30 percent ethanol, could produce a low-carbon fuel that also lowers local toxic emissions by reducing aromatics. New vehicles optimized to run on this fuel could have the lifetime environmental impact of electric vehicles. And vehicles on the road today could also use the higher ethanol blends.

Based on modeling done by the Defour Group, he says only E20 and E30 could meet a 95 RON octane standard when additional ethanol is added to regular blend stock. While splash blended E30 can achieve decreased aromatic levels by as much as 29%, Drake says match blended E30 optimized for low aromatic content can achieve a 70% decrease.

He says establishing octane and aromatic standards for fuel now is the key to allowing ethanol to fulfill its true potential and, ultimately, enable liquid fuels to achieve low-carbon parity with EVs.

“We often project the carbon reduction of an optimized vehicle on E30 but don’t talk about how current vehicles are benefitting from ethanol displacing aromatics and reducing vehicle emissions in urban areas today,” he (Steve Vander Griend, fuel and engine technology manager with Urban Air Initiative) says. “EPA models don’t credit ethanol for this reduction, further complicating the ability to truly compare the carbon intensity of EVs and ethanol.”

Reflecting on Drake’s presentation and his own concerns about EPA modeling, Vander Griend says, “I believe we can show how a clean, high-octane fuel can reduce as much carbon per year as a high rate of adoption for EV’s over the next 25 to 30 years. I do think that, besides getting a good regulatory pathway implemented, we need to have a means of correcting EPA’s models and maybe have EPA use a little common sense. There are plenty of pro-EV folks at EPA, but some of the past rulemakings by EPA clearly show petroleum gets the benefits while ethanol is devalued.”

Drake says, for now, one of the most effective ways for consumers and the ethanol industry to counter the influence of Big Oil and flawed EPA rulemaking is to support retailers with blender pumps offering mid-level ethanol blends today, like NuVu Fuels in Ionia, Michigan, which also has two EV charging stations on site. “We can already see what the future might look like,” he says. “It could be a lot like that neighborhood station back home in Ionia, with higher ethanol blends and EV charging all in one place.” READ MORE