CA: Ethanol won't hike gas prices

Contra Costa Times ^ | 2/7/03 | Lisa Vorderbrueggen

[NormsRevenge]

SACRAMENTO - California energy officials no longer believe replacing MTBE with ethanol will spike gasoline prices at the pump.

"You won't see $4-a-gallon gasoline because of ethanol," said James Boyd, a California Energy Commission member. "You might see it as a result of other things, like the unrest in Venezuela or the situation in the Middle East, but not ethanol."

[NormsRevenge]

Energy experts last year predicted the switch would produce unholy gas prices, but a 12-month extension for refineries and scads of new ethanol plants in the Midwest have quietly deflated the concerns.

[Dog Gone]

California will put strict requirements on in-state ethanol producers, and will accuse them of being gougers. The permits and emission credits will make it prohibitive.

Far better to make ethanol out of state, and sell it there.

[tubebender]

"You won't see $4-a-gallon gasoline because of ethanol," said James Boyd, a California Energy Commission member.

Are you old enough to remember back a couple of years ago when some Cal bureaucrat said the same thng about electricty "deregulation"? 87 octane is pushing $1.90 a gal second, only to SF.

[tubebender]

That's $1.90 in Eureka Ca...

[Libertarianize the GOP]

You will only see a slight increase in gas prices but at the same time you will notice a decrease in fuel economy due to ethanol.

[Eala]

That's $1.90 in Eureka Ca...

Ouch! I thought it had gotten high here (East of Redmond WA) at ~$1.60/gal.

[tubebender]

We are usually the highest price in the US including Hawaii but there is a price war going on...

[timydnuc]

Has anybody looked into the TOTAL COST of ethanol?

Corn seed

Land use cost to grow the corn

Fertilizer, herbicides, insecticides to protect the crop (and their production costs in terms of fuel)

The fuel (gasoline) to harvest the crop and get it to market.

The cost of making the ethanol it's self (cost of energy to create energy).

Most hard liquior is distilled in much the same manner. Buy an inexpensive liter of Vodka and you will find it costs you about 8 to 10 dollars for that liter. Do the math and you will find that ethanol (which is the alcohol that you buy at the local booze store,it's just made to taste better) MUST be subsidized by another entity to produce "inexpensive" fuel. More over, it must be forced, by an expensive refinerary process, to mix with straight gasoline fuel. The subsity that I speak of is, of course, from the government....our tax dollars. The government forces us to use alcohol, mixed with gas to fuel our cars.

Now the question remains: is the addition of ethanol to common gasoline an environmentally wise decision, and worth the extra cost? Many "experts" look at this as 'less is better than none', meaning that the hydrocarbons emitted by a bipolar fuel such as the ethanol mix is better than the total emission by gasoline alone. The fact remains that hydrocarbons emitted by a totally ethanol burning engine is almost the same (10% less, but the cost of that engine is 5 times more than a gasoline fueled engine) than the hybrid fuel and 2% less than the carbon, gasoline fueled engine.

There will be an alternative to gasoline that will come soon. I agree with the President, we must make the move now. We are the most innovative people on the face of this earth. We invent things, we make them work, we sell them, it's all that freedom that we have. Sure, we can do this, and we just might, but for now we are looking at the situation as it stands. Ethanol is a losing proposition! In a logical sense and pracitically, but state and federal programs still fund it. Why?

[Old Professer]

Ethanol as an oxygenator does lower emissions on older, non-computer controlled engines but it remains problematic for fuel systems not designed to resist corrosion.

Alcohol is hygroscopic; it sucks water in from the air and holds it in solution up to 20% which means that almost 2% of every gallon of gasoline you buy could be water which means lower gas mileage.

As the older models of cars are scrapped out the benefits will diminish to the zero point and the ethanol producers will then be selling a totally unnecessary product for fuel.

[Old Professer]

Most hard liquior is distilled in much the same manner. Buy an inexpensive liter of Vodka and you will find it costs you about 8 to 10 dollars for that liter. Do the math and you will find that ethanol (which is the alcohol that you buy at the local booze store,it's just made to taste better) MUST be subsidized by another entity to produce "inexpensive" fuel. More over, it must be forced, by an expensive refinerary process, to mix with straight gasoline fuel.

Oddly enough, ethanol will mix with gasoline while methanol won't.

[NormsRevenge]

methanol isn;t quite as clean chemically as is ethanol.

I had a cousin in Minnesota that built a large ethanol distilling system in a barn. This was back in the late 70s , I believe back when Jimmah Cahta was running things,, The Sweater Age .

I never did find out if they made it work or if it was worth the effort. It tooks lots of work and corn. The sale was too small to be efficient.

The history of alternative fuels ... hmmm.. how many can there be out there? that are cheap clean safe .. looks up at the sun.. nyaaahhhh .. renewable energy sources.. we need 'em .. and soon

[NormsRevenge]

sale=scale

[HighWheeler]

from this site:

http://www.dailyreporter.com/editorials/eds/aug15/asa8-15.shtml

The evidence is overwhelming that adding ethanol to the gas we use is excessively costly and is a net loss of energy. If California is required to use ethanol, as the cancer-causing MTBE is phased out, the demand for ethanol will be massively increased with shortages and gas price spikes even greater than we have experienced these past two years.

Moreover, according to a new report from Cornell University Professor David Pimentel, producing ethanol from corn undermines our groundwater resources more quickly than the natural recharge rate for groundwater. Pimentel chaired a U.S. Department of Energy panel that investigated the energetics, economics and environmental aspects of ethanol production.

So far, the position of the EPA has placed the onus on California (or any other state) to "prove a negative." According to the EPA, a state would need to demonstrate that not using ethanol would have no effect on the (eventual) attainment of an air quality standard. In other words, the EPA does not have to demonstrate that using ethanol does any good. It may, in fact, do harm. Rather, a state to gain a waiver must prove a negative, which, of course, is not possible until a waiver is granted.

Study's findings

Pimentel, in a study to be published in September, has conducted a detailed analysis of the "corn-to-car fuel process." Pimentel found that:

The planting, growing and harvesting of an acre of corn requires about 1,000 gallons of fossil fuels. Thus, even before corn is converted to ethanol, the feedstock costs $1.05 per gallon of ethanol.


The distillation process for converting corn to ethanol adds another $0.69 per gallon, for a total cost to produce ethanol of $1.74 per gallon, compared to about $0.95 for gasoline.


Looked at another way, it takes 131,000 BTUs to produce one gallon of ethanol. But one gallon of ethanol only has an energy value of 77,000 BTUs. So for every gallon of ethanol used in our gas supplies, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTUs.


The combined federal and state subsidies for ethanol production (Wisconsin is one of the states that subsidizes ethanol) total about $1 billion each year. Without these massive subsidies, it would not be economic for ethanol to be produced.