EPA May stop future e85 stations

[MR. EVO MR]

http://us.m.yahoo.com/p/news?refer=a...ews&url=2511cc

Existing stations will stay, but no more expansion because of the pollution it
makes to make the fuel is the decision that there thinking about.

[whoang40]

Wow, that sucks. I recently went back to pump gas from E85 since I'm taking a road trip where it doesn't exist. I also noticed that a few gas stations I went to a month ago switched back to 92 octane. Sucks if you have a flex fuel vehicle and aren't able to do switchable maps like our ECUs.

[logic]

That link was a little messed up; here's one that doesn't require you to keep hitting "more".

I didn't get your conclusion from the article, for some reason. In fact, it flies in the face of these articles from a couple of weeks ago, seeking comments on a suggested increase to 15% for normal gas.

[mplspilot]

I'm not sure if i'm reading the same article as you, but there is nothing there about "stopping future E85 stations"... It just describes the same old debate that the production of ethanol produces green house gases thereby defeating the "greenness" of using ethanol somewhat. We got environmentalists on one side and farmers on the other. The debate puts Obama in a difficult position, as he promised to reduce emissions on one hand and use more bio/alternative/green fuels on the other.

[Creamo3]

Originally Posted by MR. EVO MR

http://us.m.yahoo.com/p/news?refer=a...ews&url=2511cc

Existing stations will stay, but no more expansion because of the pollution it
makes to make the fuel is the decision that there thinking about.

I didn't get that message out of the article; it sounds like they want to weigh the risk/benefits of moving towards more ethanol based alternative fuels and don't want to detriment the environment by deforestation for cultivating future crops. The older ethanol production plants would be grandfathered in and new manufacturers would have to follow stricter rules or push for cullulosic crops. I don't think ethanol production is going to decline and if anything it will increase. The means by which they produce it will most likely change to be more efficient and better for the environment.

[Jim in Tucson]

The future of "Green" Ethanol production may be the High Density Vertical Bioreactor (HDVB).

Very interesting Valcent HDVB.

Informative HDVB FAQ

And a terrific HDVB video.

1) The HDVB uses very little water, as it is a closed system.
2) It uses only a small amount of electrical energy (could be solar or wind powered, for example) to run the circulating pumps.
3) And, most importantly, it could be located on the rooftop of existing buildings, thereby using no additional land mass.
4) Uses no farm land.
5) Has no detrimental effect on the price of food, grains or meat.

[fatgc8]

keep us happy and build us more e85 stations!!!!!!!!

[Jim in Tucson]

Obama is our E85 man!

God bless America!

[nothere]

pasted, but valuable reading to understand the inherent stupidity of mandating anything.



Trends

Ethanol is a false solution with unintended consequences
July 31, 2009

By Max Schulz
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PRINTER FRIENDLY

If there's one thing at which Washington excels, it's crafting unnecessary policies from which a torrent of unintended consequences cascade. Meanwhile, the initial problem policymakers set out to address is relieved in no meaningful way.

That perfectly sums up our nation's experience with ethanol, which is shaping up as a policy disaster with a significant economic and environmental toll. Yet for all the unintended strife and economic dislocation our ethanol policies are causing, they are having a negligible effect on lowering our imports of foreign sources of petroleum and our oil consumption generally.

The specter of foreign oil dependency was invoked by ethanol boosters, including President George W. Bush and corn state senator Barack Obama, when the Energy Policy Act of 2005 ordered that increasing amounts of ethanol be blended into our fuel mix. The same justification was used in 2007 to supersize those mandates. This year consumers are being forced to buy more than 11 billion gallons of ethanol. By 2022, the figure will rise to 36 billion gallons, 15 billion gallons of which are supposed to come from corn ethanol. (To give some perspective, in 2005 the ethanol industry produced less than 4 billion gallons, mostly for use as a gasoline additive.)

The idea behind the mandates was to grow our fuel at home, depriving terrorist-sponsoring oil states of revenue, all the while helping out American farmers. Sounds great, right?

What neither Congress nor the Bush administration figured (full disclosure: I served in the Bush Energy Department, though before the biofuels mandates were implemented) was that mandates of this size and scope would distort energy and agricultural markets or would have adverse environmental consequences.

That's too bad. Laws mandating the production and consumption of vastly larger amounts of ethanol created an artificial demand for corn, driving up its price. Before the global economic slowdown, the price of corn had essentially doubled from a year before. With corn fetching high prices, farmers began planting corn in place of other crops. So with land for other crops moved to corn production, the prices of those displaced crops increased. Between early 2007 and early 2008, prices for wheat tripled, while soybean and rice prices doubled.

The United States produces about 40 percent of the global corn supply and is responsible for more than two-thirds of the world's corn exports. It exports other agricultural commodities as well. Any policy that grossly distorts the market for these commodities in the United States will have effects felt not just at home but all over the world. So we have seen soaring food prices lead to riots in Senegal, Cameroon, Niger, Egypt, and Burkina Faso. Residents in Mexico City rioted after prices for corn tortillas spiked. The political unrest over food prices drove mobs to storm the presidential palace in Haiti.

Last year, the United Nations� Food and Agricultural Organization, the International Food Policy Research Institute, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, The World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund all published studies indicating that Western biofuels policies were largely responsible for the run-up in global food prices.

Then there's the environmental cost. Two reports in Science magazine last year suggest that the land-clearing aspects of biofuels production arguably increase greenhouse gas emissions; so significant is this that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signaled in May that it will take this factor into account in implementing the government's ethanol mandates. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has sounded the alarm about a growing "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, an algae-filled area with oxygen levels too low to maintain marine life. Since 1990, this dead zone has averaged about 4,800 square miles. NOAA warns it could nearly double, thanks to expanded use of fertilizers to grow more corn and flooding along the Mississippi River. Land clearing for biofuels in Indonesia, meanwhile, is threatening the orangutan and other endangered species.

And for what, exactly? American farmers planted a record 94 million acres in corn in 2007, yielding a record 13 billion bushels. Yet we displaced just 3 percent of our total oil consumption with ethanol. It's not clear we could even make any sort of significant dent in our oil consumption. According to researchers at the Polytechnic University of New York, "Using the entire 300 million acres of U.S. cropland for cornbased ethanol production would meet about 15 percent of the demand."

Our ethanol policies might be enriching Archer Daniels Midland and other Midwest agribusinesses. But we're deluding ourselves if we think they are keeping Hugo Chavez or oil-soaked Middle Eastern kleptocrats awake at night.

Max Schulz is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

©2009 Trends

[logic]

In a similar vein to what this fellow is arguing, a good watch is the movie "Food, Inc."

After you see that, and spend a little time thinking about it, you realize that it's not just ethanol that's driving corn production through the roof. Go to the supermarket, walk down any aisle with packaged food in it, and count how many boxes you can find that don't have corn as an ingredient. You probably won't find a single one.

You want to know why corn production is at an all-time high? Everything you eat, and everything your food eats, has corn in it.

[nothere]

yes, corn has become the ingredient of choice for everything.

I imagine that came about because by products of some facets of corn products were cheap and plentiful. So they have been used instead of harder to procure stuff.

[Jim in Tucson]

Max Schulz

This year consumers are being forced to buy more than 11 billion gallons of ethanol. By 2022, the figure will rise to 36 billion gallons...

Laws mandating the production and consumption of vastly larger amounts of ethanol...

I filled up the EVO today at the E85 pump. There was another guy there pumping E85 into his pickup. Neither one of us had a gun to our heads. If the average car hold 20 gallons, 11,000,000,000 gals would be 550,000,000 fill-ups.

Can you imagine how many guns it would take to force that many people to fill-up on ethanol against their will? I'm sure the anti-gun lobby will have something to say about this!

Sorry, Max, but you are an oh so typical liberal elitist. You think that if you say something with sufficient emphaticalness the lesser peóns will simply believe your every word.

I don't have to buy ethanol, regardless of what you think, Max. I could choose to drive a diesel. Or ride public transportation--LNG. Or I could own an electric car. Or simply choose to ride my bicycle. Many 'Mericans are not the sheep you may think they are. Perhaps you should step out of the "think tank" and sample the real world.

[GST Motorsports]

Originally Posted by Jim in Tucson

I don't have to buy ethanol, regardless of what you think, Max. I could choose to drive a diesel. Or ride public transportation--LNG. Or I could own an electric car. Or simply choose to ride my bicycle. Many 'Mericans are not the sheep you may think they are. Perhaps you should step out of the "think tank" and sample the real world.

Unfortunatly I think that is incorrect and there are alot of sheeple out there. That is what these people prey on. It's "big business".

I currently ride a bicycle to work, take a biodiesel powered ferry, and use E85 full-time in my Evo, but I live in the "Bay Area bubble". I'm sure I am a very small percental of America, but no I don't wear tight black levi's or ray-ban sunglasses.

- Bryan

[Green Meanie]

Originally Posted by GST Motorsports

Unfortunatly I think that is incorrect and there are alot of sheeple out there. That is what these people prey on. It's "big business".

I currently ride a bicycle to work, take a biodiesel powered ferry, and use E85 full-time in my Evo, but I live in the "Bay Area bubble". I'm sure I am a very small percental of America, but no I don't wear tight black levi's or ray-ban sunglasses.

- Bryan

Gained some respectability back. LOL

[whtrice]

Hmmmmmm...wonder if "Big Oil" is behind any of these anti E-85 plots.


Back off my E-85 !!!