Congress may have finally recognized the absurdity of subsidizing the ethanol industry, but, unfortunately for America, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has its own agenda.
In January, the EPA issued a waiver that allowed E15 (gasoline with a 15 percent ethanol blend) to be sold for vehicles with model years 2001 and later. This decision was made at the behest of the ethanol industry, but it will come at the expense of American drivers.
While the EPA deemed E15 environmentally safe for models produced after 2001, this higher blend of gas could seriously damage cars. Don’t take my word for it, just ask those who built them.
I sent letters to the major U.S. automakers to investigate how E15 would affect people’s cars. The response was startling. Overwhelmingly , I received complaints that E15 would void warranties, damage engines, and lower fuel efficiency. To date, I have received twelve responses, and all twelve oppose the EPA’s waiver.
According to Honda, their “vehicle engines were not designed or built to accommodate the higher concentrations of ethanol.” This is not just innocuous hedging by disinterested engineers. The letter continued with the warning that “there appears to be the potential for engine failure.” Chrysler concurred, advising, “we are not confident that our vehicles will not be damaged from the use of E15.”
It is summertime, and we don’t just use gasoline for our cars. Boats, motorcycles, ATVs, and lawnmowers all use gasoline. The EPA did not approve E15 for small engines, but small-engine manufacturers are nonetheless worried that E15 will find its way from gas pumps to small engines, where it can do significant harm.
Thus far, the EPA’s only solution to the inevitable consumer confusion has been to impose more regulations and rules on manufacturers and business owners.
The decision to increase the allowable ethanol blend appears to have limited environmental benefits, while imposing huge costs fon American consumers. According to Volvo, “the risks related to emissions are greater than the benefits in terms of CO2 when using low-blend E15 for variants that are designed to use E10.”
The government has artificially propped up the ethanol industry with a 45-cent-per-gallon subsidy to oil refiners, and a 54-cent-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. The ethanol lobby claimed that biofuel would reduce our dependence on unstable sources of oil and reduce greenhouse gas. But after $6 billion per year of taxpayers’ money, ethanol has achieved neither goal. Instead, research and analysis shows that increased ethanol production raises the cost of food and emits more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels.
In southeast Wisconsin, we already have to deal with the consequences of EPA-imposed reformulated gas. Despite history’s warnings, the EPA has allowed E15 to be widely available in the marketplace.
On Thursday, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is holding a hearing to examine the science behind the EPA’s decision to waive the restriction on E15. The political tide on Capitol Hill is turning against prolonging the ethanol boondoggle, but the administration seems to have missed the memo. The result is that the EPA is moving forward with a bad policy that will cost consumers dearly.
— James Sensenbrenner represents Wisconsin’s 5th Congressional District.
Unintended Consequences? What's that? Higher food prices? So What! Giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires? It's okay if it's an 'investment'.
Long past time for Congress to rein in the EPA. Of course, many of the stooges in Congress, both Dem. and Rep., want the EPA to provide cover for their idiotic policies.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf you really want to have fun with this you just need to point out all the adverse "environmental justice" effects. Watch the leftists squirm.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is my understanding that Underwriter's Laboratories (U.L.) was asked to evaluate the suitability of gas station pumps (which were designed and tested for E10) to dispense E15, and that they found significant issues will the compatibility of E15 with materials used in currently deployed pumps. But, as with the auto manufacturers, the EPA also chose to disregard this information.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI have a friend in gas station equipment maintenance and he is busier then ever.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI drive a Ford Escape that can run on E85 gas. My car averages about 21 mpg on regular gas. On E85 it gets about 16 miles per gallon. Over a year, that I would burn an extra 175 gallons of gas. How is that going to help the environment. Oh, to top it off, my car runs like #$&# on E85.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy car can use E85. When I have used it in the past, I get 20 percent less miles per gallon. Around here E85 is only 10 percent cheaper than regular gas. It makes no sense to use E85.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAround here, E85 is 10 cents cheaper than regular. At $4/G, that's only 2.5% cheaper.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI drove my V6 2008 Accord to Florida from NC last month. I was averaging 30 mpg until I gassed up in Florida with E10, my mileage dropped to 28 at that point. This was with 4 adults and a trunk full of stuff averaging the speed limit of 70 mph. When I got out of Florida and put regular unleaded in I was back up to 30 mpg. Same driver, same load same speeds.
While in Florida we were diving, the on-board air compressor they were using to refill our SCUBA tanks was running on E10, it ate through a filter in the gas tank and caused bits and pieces of it to make it into the carb. The small engine (Subaru I think) did not like E10 but that appears to be the most widespread fuel in Florida.
I guess this is all a small price to pay for being green /sarcasm
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm fortunate enough to have 3 sources of pure gasoline in the general area between my home and place of employment. Charley's station is literally right around the corner from my house and, happily for me, is always the lowest cost and is almost always right at 10% higher in price than the lowest cost E10.
Living in a place where there is a lot of boating and having kept a variety of old lawnmowers running in my teenage years (to secure my self-employment), I inherently understood that adding anything other than fuel to an engine was no good for it.
Other pure gasoline users guaranteed I would see increased mpg in excess of the additional cost and that's been my experience in several different vehicles. I currently drive (with only modest restraint on the accellerator pedal) two vehicles that have never had any ethanol other than the tank the dealer sold them with and neither will have another drop if I have anything to do with it.
Conversely, my parents have a two-seater that spends most of its time in the garage and required fairly extensive repairs after E10 "gummed up the works". Now, they drop by my place on the occasional weekend after filling up with the pure stuff at Charley's.
Since ethanol was introduced to consumers relatively incrementally, and its damage and added costs are not often immediately apparent, most drivers have no idea what the difference in performance real gasoline makes. I can guarantee you this, however, if you can get some into your tank at a reasonable price and do your math right, you'll never go back.
The additional note that it actually is LESS environmentally friendly, given its government proponents, is just more proof that our leaders could ruin an iron ball with a rubber mallet.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf ethanol is such great fuel why don't farm tractors run on it?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseStupid question.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf gasoline in so great, why don't tractors run on it? If Oil is so great, why don't we power our houses on oil?
Different fuels for different applications.
If E15 is so bad, why is NASCAR using it?
Here in Oklahoma many of our local gas stations, at least 50% of them in Oklahoma City, aggressively advertize "100% gasoline." These stations are very busy. I ride motorcycles and Yamaha very specifically says to avoid ethanol in fuel. I suspect every other manufacturer does as well. So, can we sue the EPA if our vehicles suffer mechanical damage? I guess we'd just be suing ourselves since those EPA dimwits don't have any money except ours. Let's just pull about 98% EPA's funding, no, make that 99.9%.
So we are forced by government to subsidize the production of this stuff which will damage our property and the dullards at the EPA have zero accountability in the deal. Good grief.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe EPA is stuck with this mandate. The 2005 energy bill mandated that 4 billion gallons of renewable fuel (mostly corn-based ethanol) must be added to the gasoline supply in 2006. That amount rises to 4.7 billion gallons for 2007 and 7.5 billion in 2012.
In order to consume that much ethanol, the EPA had to increase the % ethanol in the blend.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhile the ethanol mandate in the 2005 energy bill is bad enough, it's not even the real problem. The Democrats' 2007 energy bill pumps up the total corn ethanol mandate to 15 billion gallons by 2015, making the 7.5 billion gallons small potatoes.
If ethanol is so great, it should have to stand on its own, minus the subsidy, tariff and mandate.
By the way, that 2007 bill is the same one that also brought us the Upton/Harman ban on the incandescent light bill.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNear my farm in Iowa, the local grain cooperative built an ethanol plant which uses coal to cook the corn into ethanol. As my father says: now we have coal burning cars. How stupid.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@IowaConservative -
Think of it as an approach to early adoption of coal for highway transportation, ahead of plug-in electric vehicles.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe 2005 energy bill mandated that 4 billion gallons of renewable fuel (mostly corn-based ethanol) must be added to the gasoline supply in 2006. That amount rises to 4.7 billion gallons for 2007 and 7.5 billion in 2012. The EPA is stuck with a STUPID mandate - only congress can fix it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf our representative government cannot end the ethanol boondoggle, then we have no hope of fixing the larger issues of spending and entitlements.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFor a list of ethanol-free gas stations check External Link
Ironically, my captcha says "Green Innovation."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm so glad others notice that ethanol reduces fuel economy (and this is "green" how?). I noticed it immediately when E10 gasoline started being the norm. Unfortunately, in metro Houston it is almost impossible to find pure gasoline. But a couple of weekends ago I gassed up on pure gasoline on the way back from vacation, and saw a roughly 3 mpg improvement in my fuel economy in mixed highway and town driving.
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