One thing I really enjoy is corn on the cob. It is a summer staple. It goes as well with hamburgers as hotdogs or is a meal all by itself. One can never have enough corn on the cob during any season.
Now in many states, the local governments have mandated the use of ethanol fuel in our cars. In essence, we are taking the food we eat right off our tables and burning it in our cars as gas. It is supposed “to be good” for the planet.
Got to ask: what’s wrong with this picture?
Before the government made us burn ethanol, I burned regular gas in my 2001 Toyota Camry. With regular gas, my Camry religiously made 31 mpg and on a good many road trips, the mileage actually went better than 34 mpg.
I have the fuel logs to verify the information. They are complete, dating all the way to the day I purchased the car with 13,009 miles on the odometer to last week when I filled up at 281,308 miles. Ask me what the price of gas might have been at any time in the last eight years and I can tell you the price to the 1/10th of a penny. I can also show you the exact true mileage performance of the Camry.
And I can show you the precise moment the government forced me to buy corn to power my car. Ever since the third tank of ethanol, my check engine light illuminated and stays on permanently.
Many of the “environmentalists” will say burning ethanol is necessary and the loss of efficiency is no big deal. So the mileage is down a little and we no longer have corn to eat, they might retort. Well, I do think it is a big deal as do many others.
What does it mean in dollars?
Well, using my Camry as an example, here is the real breakdown. Assuming I drive another quarter million miles, the difference between 28 mpg and 31 mpg is significant. If, over the years it takes to drive another 250,000 miles and the price of gas averages $3.50 per gallon, the difference between 28 mpg and 31 mpg becomes $3,026.
Or, in more understandable terms, it will take 56 more fill-ups to travel the same distance on ethanol as on regular gas. If it takes another seven years to accrue the next quarter million miles, that is eight more stops at the gas pumps at $56 a fill up, for another $450 per year. Or an average of $38 more per month. After paying for my ethanol, I probably won’t have money left over to buy any corn.
Wait, there’s no corn to buy anyway.
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© 2010 J. Clark
The other thing you never hear anyone talk about is the enormous amount of water needed for the processing corn for ethanol. So not only are we getting less fuel economy and consuming more corn for ethanol, we are using up incredible amounts of a valuable resource, fresh water.
If you lived in Minnesota you would experience a more noticable difference in your gas mileage in the winter. Ethanol doesn’t burn as efficiently in cold weather. We figure that if the price of E85 is not at least 30% less than regular, it doesn’t make sense financially due to the loss in mileage. I have never been in favor of using food as fuel.
There is a ethanol plant just 20 miles from us and if you say anything against ethanol you have the local farmers in your face big time.
Good points! Down here in Florida, you cannot even buy ethonol-free gas anymore. Also, the price of fuel did not come down one bit when they started putting corn in it. There is also one other ugly thing about this: many of those who owned airplanes with low-compression engines like the Cessna 150s and 172s purchased supplemental type certificates (STCs) for their engines allowing them to burn auto fuel. Ethanol eats up the rubber and plastic components of the fuel systems which prevents those pilots from using auto gas.
That’s unfortunate for those pilots. We still have the option to buy ethanol-free gas here but I imagine not for long. There is a very strong lobby for increasing the percentages of ethanol in the gas so I predict that it won’t be long until it happens.
I would urge anyone looking for ethanol free gasoline to check http://www.pure-gas.org. You can still find it in FL and other states in the south. Pilots should look at the web site http://www.flyunleaded.com We hope to announce a program in the near future to increase the number of public use airports that will have mogas for aircraft. It is extremely unfortunate that the ethanol industry and the politicians don’t know that unleaded auto fuel, without ethanol, is an approved aviation fuel. Pilots should write their state legislators and tell them how the spread of ethanol is affecting them and ask them to pass legislation to prohibit the blending of ethanol in premium auto gasoline so that there will always be a supply for aviation, marine and public safety use.
Florida is an interesting state. It will be the last state in the country (the fifth one) to implement a mandatory E10 law, which goes into effect on 31 Dec. 2010. As with all mandatory E10 states, the Florida law has exceptions for aircraft and marine use and small engines used in public safety, but as with all state mandatory E10 laws there is no legal requirement that ethanol free gasoline be made available. The unintended consequences of the federal RFS mandate in EISA 2007 will take every bit of the gasoline produced in the U.S. E10 by 2012 and then ethanol will be coming out of our ears with no place to put it. To understand why, see http://www.e0pc.com
Thank you for the timely and informative post. There are so many “unintended consequences” I sometimes wonder if our leadership is looking much further down the road than the next bend. Again, thank you for the information.