Tiger Cars for Tiger Fuels: E100 Group Calls for More Ethanol-Tuned Engines

by Don Siefkes (E100 Ethanol Group/Biofuels Digest) To The Editors of the Wall Street Journal: Cellulosic ethanol has been a debacle, but not for the reasons stated in your editorial “The Cellulosic Ethanol Debacle” of December 13.

Cellulosic ethanol has not become a reality because there is no market for it. Who, in their right mind, would shell out millions of dollars for full scale plants if they can’t sell what these plants produce?

Corn ethanol is at the gasoline blend limit (14 billion gallons into 140 billion gallons of gasoline). It is next to impossible for a new supplier to break up an established supply chain such as the corn ethanol–oil company chain we currently have.

The WSJ may be correct about the Cello Energy process, but there is proven technology from other processes and suppliers that can produce cellulosic ethanol at prices below that of gasoline without interfering with our food supply.

The DOE, the NHTSA, the National Academy of Sciences, and Congress have all been focused on trying to specify the fuel when the focus needs to be on the engines that burn motor fuel.

As long as all engines in the U.S. are optimized for gasoline, cellulosic ethanol cannot grow.

...What is needed is a mandate that 50% of all light duty vehicles sold in the U.S. be E100 flex/fuel with the engines optimized for ethanol, not gasoline. These engines would perform spectacularly on ethanol, but performance would be compromised when burning gasoline.