Flex Fuel Fight
July 27th, 2009 by Elizabeth UlionThe U.S. Department of Energy is looking into upping the amount of ethanol is your gasoline. Today most fuel at the pump can be assumed to contain 10% ethanol. This could rise to 15% if research shows it will not damage vehicles, Reuters reported. What the automobile industry is really hitting the breaks on is a mandate that would require all cars to be compatible with E85. That is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline.
In fight over flexfuel regulations no one seems to win
According to The Detroit News, after Energy Secretary Steven Chu mentioned that the E85 mandates were “beginning to be discussed” six law makers sent a letter voicing concerns on such a requirement. The letter cited a cost of over $1 billion a year in manufacturing costs and the fact that E85 is available very few gas stations as cause for surprise at such regulation.
“We firmly believe that the government should not be in the business of picking technology winners and losers, which would have a chilling impact on the development of other, potentially more beneficial, technologies in the future,” the letter said.
While I see the point of that statement I found it interesting since government subsidies have clearly paved the way for the automobile industry and made that the technology winner of transportation. Without oil, road and highway subsidies would we be so dependent on cars? The government provides tax breaks and credits for vehicles from Hummers to hybrids. Slate.com reported that “public spending on highways and streets is running at an annual rate of about $75 billion.” Seems like the government already chose the winner and it’s not broke Amtrak.
Elizabeth Ulion is a graduate student at Northwestern University. She dreams of carless city centers – flex fuel or not.
Photo courtesy of post406/Flickr.
The point is that the special interests who stand to lose something will always pick out some seemingly apparent rule that we should never break [that we often do, because it's not a real rule] to point out why we shouldn't hurt their special interest. Here, it's that the government shouldn't pick winners in technology (at the expense of potential gains in other technologies); other times, it's that we should put tariffs on more cheaply made foreign goods to keep domestic businesses a fighting chance (at the expense of competition); and other times, we should get involved in aggressive disputes in other countries (because of our "interests"). None of these are absolute rules, and will always be seen in different lights given the short- and long-term circumstances. Here, we must pick a technology winner, for the mid-term if nothing else. We need energy independence, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by (at least) 20% in the next 11 years, and there's no way to do that unless we figure out a way to give several of the technologies available today a swift and powerful boost.
Oh, I see. Let's plant billions of ears of corn right now so we can power our cars with ethanol. If we can't find the space or time to make all these corn farms/factories, it doesn't matter if the price of corn will skyrocket, and hundreds of millions of people won't be able to afford food anymore because every God damn thing in supermarkets has corn syrup in it. This definitely couldn't start any food wars…
Maybe this seems like a great idea because Washington is trading auto lobbies for agriculture lobbies…. just a thought.
If we had the $700 billion we spent in Iraq and put in new technologies we would be energy independent by now.
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Obama is from Illinois, the #2 corn producing state – there are no environmental benefits to using ethanol when you look at the entire picture… This is just another major lobbying group thats wedged enough politicians into its pocket to suck on the government teat.
I don't know what the DoE thinks they're getting out of this switchover when the environmental gains of ethanol are dubious at best: "A study by atmospheric scientists at Stanford University found that E85 fuel would increase the risk of air pollution deaths relative to gasoline by 9% in Los Angeles, USA" (Wiki/ethanol_fuel).
Fern, poignant thought. It doesn't solve anything to talk about where we would be. We're here now and we have to talk about what we can do. Mandating that all cars be compatible with E85 isn't pushing E85 on anyone, but it allows for every new car to use 15% of the gasoline it does now, which will go a long way in taking us off our foreign petrol crutch.
E85 will do us little good if our vehicles are incompatible. Fortunately, compatible automobiles known as flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs) are now widely available. GM promises that at least half of its vehicles will be FFVs by fiscal 2012. Ford Motor Co. is hopping on the bandwagon too. In 2009, it released many popular models as FFVs for the first time, including the entire E-Series, the Ford Expedition, and the Lincoln Navigator. Chrysler isn't far behind, either. The 2009 versions of the Chrysler Town & Country, Dodge Grand Caravan, and Jeep Grand Cherokee are all FFVs.