Robert Pore's Ag Blog

YONKERS, NY — Tests and an investigation by Consumer Reports conclude that
E85 ethanol will cost consumers more money than gasoline and that there are
concerns about whether the government’s support of flexible fuel vehicles is
really helping the U.S. achieve energy independence.
Findings from CR’s special report include:

•E85, which is 85 percent ethanol, emits less smog-producing pollutants than
gasoline, but provides fewer miles per gallon, costs more, and is hard to
find outside the Midwest.

•Government support for flexible-fuel vehicles, which can run on either E85
or gasoline, is indirectly causing more gasoline consumption rather than
less.

•Blended with gasoline, ethanol has the potential to fill a significant
minority of future U.S. transportation fuel needs.

To see how E85 ethanol stacks up against gasoline, Consumer Reports put one
of its test vehicles, a 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe Flexible-Fuel Vehicle (FFV)
through an array of fuel economy, acceleration, and emissions tests.

Overall fuel economy on the Tahoe dropped from an already low 14 mpg overall
to 10. In highway driving, gas mileage decreased from 21 to 15 mpg; in city
driving, it dropped from 9 mpg to 7. You could expect a similar decrease in
gas mileage in any current flex fuel vehicle because ethanol has a lower
energy content than gasoline—75,670 British thermal units (BTUs) per gallon
instead of 115,400 for gasoline, according to the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration. As a result, you have to burn more fuel to generate
the same amount of energy.

With the retail pump price of E85 averaging $2.91 per gallon in August,
according to the Oil Price Information Service, a 27 percent fuel-economy
penalty means drivers would have paid an average of $3.99 for the energy
equivalent of a gallon of gasoline.

When Consumer Reports calculated the Tahoe’s driving range, it found that it
decreased to about 300 miles on a full tank of E85 compared with about 440
on gasoline. So, motorists using E85 would have to fill up more often.

Most drivers in the country have no access to E85, even if they want it,
because it is primarily sold in the upper Midwest; most of the ethanol in
the U.S. is made from corn, and that’s where the cornfields and ethanol
production facilities are located. There are only about 800 gas stations—out
of 176,000 nationwide—that sell E85 to the public.

When Consumer Reports took its Tahoe to a state-certified emissions-test
facility in Connecticut and had a standard emissions test performed, it
found a significant decrease in smog-forming oxides of nitrogen when using
E85.

Despite the scarcity of E85, the Big Three domestic auto manufacturers have
built more than 5 million FFVs since the late ‘90s, and that number will
increase by about 1 million this year.

A strong motivation for that is that the government credits FFVs that burn
E85 with about two-thirds more fuel economy than they actually get using
gasoline, even though the vast majority may never run on E85.

This allows automakers to build more large, gas-guzzling vehicles than they otherwise
could under Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules. As a result, these credits
have increased annual U.S. gasoline consumption by about 1 percent, or 1.2
billion gallons, according to a 2005 study by the Union for Concerned
Scientists.

From an alternative-energy perspective, it doesn’t matter whether ethanol is
blended as E85 or in lower mixes such as E10 (a 10/90 ethanol/gasoline
mixture) that all cars can burn; a given amount of ethanol still goes just
as far in reducing demand for gasoline. Experts agree that the maximum
amount of ethanol you can get from corn in the U.S. is about 15 billion
gallons. But scientists are working on producing ethanol from other plant
material, called cellulose, which could increase this capacity by as much as
45 billion gallons. (For comparison’s sake, the U.S. burned 140 billion
gallons of gasoline in 2005.)

The important backdrop to the ethanol debate, of course, is that petroleum
is a finite resource that’s rapidly being depleted. Government scientists
are planning for a day when world oil production peaks and begins to slow.
They say the country must begin planning for alternatives 20 years before
that peak. Today ethanol is receiving their attention because it requires
fewer technological breakthroughs and less infrastructure development than
batteries or fuel cells, and by including cellulose, its capacity can exceed
that of biodiesel.