Gas question
Sometimes I get bad gas, sometimes I get good gas. With a barrel of oil being so cheap, it it going to make adding ethanol to gasoline a cost prohibitive idea with so much surplus gasoline availa...
Forum Discussion
JaxDad wrote:Empty Nest, Soon wrote:
As I recall, at the time it was enacted this incentive to add ethanol was more about American “energy independence” from OPEC than from any environmental concern. It was an easy sell to Congress because it had the backing of the very powerful farm lobby.
Wayne
But that's the problem, it does NOTHING to reduce the importation of foriegn crude since it does nothing to reduce the consumption of gasoline.
If a particular vehicle (in this case a M/H) loses only 10% in mileage on ethanol enriched fuel and drops from about 9 mpg to 8.1 mpg then on a 1,000 miles trip it will burn 123.46 gallons of fuel, of which 90% or 111.11 gallons of that is gasoline. If however the M/H was getting 9 mpg on straight gasoline it would burn 111.11 gallons of gasoline.
However, in the first case, burning E10, the vehicle also burned an additional 12.35 gallons for nothing, well, not nothing, it used up food stock, created extra pollution and wasted money.
I agree.
I don’t believe it does one thing to help “energy independence.” But as I recall, that was the basis on which they sold us this bill of goods. Google “ethanol energy independence” and you will still find plenty of sources touting its benefits for energy independence. Baloney!
If the US cared about energy independence, or the environment, we would be moving toward wind, solar, hydro, and maybe even nuclear for those uses where oil can be replaced by other energy sources. We would stop exporting oil and gas. We would leave ours in the ground for now – we’re going to need it later.
Wayne
