Posted on 12/17/2009 7:37:36 PM PST by Graybeard58
PEORIA —
A bipartisan coalition of members of Congress questions the Environmental Protection Agency's recent decision to delay increasing the ethanol blend wall in gasoline from 10 percent to 15 percent.
U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Peoria, along with six of his colleagues sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson this week. Their letter said the EPA's decision inhibits their ability to improve the quality of fuels and help the nation realize energy independence.
"There has been no evidence to demonstrate that the switch to the E-l5 blend will cause damage to vehicles, regardless of the vintage. Further, changing to a higher-level ethanol blend has the potential to create an additional 136,000 U.S. jobs while also cutting greenhouse gases," Schock said.
Higher ethanol blends would reduce the U.S. dependence on foreign oil, increase the price farmers get for their crops and reduce the price of gasoline, Schock said.
Eventually, Schock said, he hopes the blend will increase to 20 percent.
David Sykuta, executive director of the Illinois Petroleum Council, believes the ethanol blend eventually will increase, but he also said there are many industry stakeholders to be considered.
The goal, he said, should be to have as few blends to avoid the "logistical nightmare" that accompanies stocking various blends at the pumps.
"We're not against increasing the blend, if all of the appropriate studies have been done," Sykuta said. "There are differences between what works in test tube and what works in the real world."
Schock said the Auto Manufacturers Association has signed off on the measure, saying it wouldn't have negative impact on vehicles.
"Increasing the blend from 10 to 15 percent is a net gain of 50 percent in the increase in the use of ethanol nationwide at a time when this sector of our economy needs the certainty, when we're trying to incentivize entrepreneurs to present a next generation of biofuels..." Schock said. "Increasing the amount of biofuel by 50 percent in every automobile will have a dramatic effect on demand for biofuels. This will be a real boon for Illinois agriculture."
Others who signed the letter are: Debbie Halvorson, D-Crete; Tim Johnson, R-Urbana; Phil Hare, D-Rock Island; John Shimkus, R-Collinsville; Bill Foster, D-Batavia; and Jerry Costello, D-Belleville.
"By increasing the ethanol blend wall for vehicles, we can create green jobs, increase agricultural output and ensure cleaner air for all Americans. I am happy to join my colleagues in the Illinois delegation in urging the EPA to make this happen as soon as possible," Hare said.
These idiots care as little for math as they do for science!
GAS MILEAGE IS REDUCED BY NEARLY THE SAME PERCENTAGE AS THE LEVEL OF ETHANOL!
Which means your pollutants per mile are equal, while the cost goes UP!
There should be a law against burning perfectly good food in a gas tank
Ethanol is a good idea for a gasoline additive. The other choices are lead and mtbe, They both suck. So does ethanol from corn. Not developing ethanol from cellulose shows our stupidity.
It is worse than you think lad. With some old wooden barrels and the right Scotchman or Highlander from Kentucky and time and care it can be made into Fine single malt whiskey or sour mash bourbon. What they are doing is definitely a crime against humanity.
The most insane thing that they can do is make fuel from food.
No, politicians are pretty much all the same. It is their job to bring home the bacon to their constituents, and they have no shame about doing it.
Walter Williams says that people urge him to run for office, but he just asks them how far they think he would get when he told folks he was not going to bring home any pork to his district/state.
This is why spending will never go down and boondoggles like ethanol will continue to increase. It’s very discouraging.
The damned 10% gas is wrecking all my small engines already (lawnmower, chain saw, weed whacker, snow blower), and it’s reducing the life of our cars. I sure as hell don’t need any damned 15% ethanol mix.
Plus it doesn’t save a damned bit of energy, what with reduced mileage, engine damage, and all the energy that goes into making the stuff.
Totally insane political greed.
Actually, it increases energy costs due to what it takes to produce the damned ethanol in the first place (not to mention the amount of water it takes).
Junk science hurts us again. Methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (MMT) was used for years and worked great. EPA outlawed it because the pure form was harmful. Once burned it produced Mn, which is harmless. Ethanol costs too much, uses more energy to produce than you get out, and reduces gas mileage by 10%,
I only trade at gas stations which advertise "pure gas - no ethanol". The price is a little higher, but it's worth it several times over.
Growth Energy, a corn ethanol lobby group, is grossly exaggerating the economic benefits that a higher ethanol blend in the nation’s fuel supply would bring. This is particularly important in studies of the economic impact of corn-ethanol. The BEA collects no data specific to the industry. In BEA’s data and its multipliers, corn-ethanol is subsumed under the much larger “organic chemicals” category. Taking off-the-shelf multipliers for organic chemicals and using them to analyze the corn-ethanol industry, as Growth Energy does, leads to inflated estimates of job creation that don’t stand up to independent analysis.
Another serious misstep is assuming that there was no activity among the input supplier industries until the arrival of corn-ethanol. The most egregious example comes in studies sponsored by another ethanol lobby group, the Renewable Fuel Association (RFA).2 The RFA consultant allows corn-ethanol to take credit for all the economic activity generated by growing corn, which was happening in commercial bulk long before the advent of ethanol. Over half (53%) of the jobs credited by the RFA consultant as being created by the corn-ethanol industry are in fact jobs that already existed for growing the corn that was already being produced for food and feed. Independent analysts rightfully criticize the RFA for dramatically over-estimating the employment impacts of their industry.
According to the Growth Energy consultants, current annual production of ethanol is 8.4 billion gallons per year. Supplying enough ethanol to achieve a 15 percent blend with gasoline would require annual production of 20.4 billion gallons, an increase in production of 12 billion gallons. The federal blender’s tax credit (VEETC) is $0.45 per gallon of ethanol. That means the additional 12 billion gallons needed to get to E15 would come at a cost to taxpayers of $5.4 billion every year.
Obama now owns GM and Chrysler. The sooner they can kill off our cars, the sooner they can sell more GMs and Chryslers.
Idiots, most vehicles are not designed to run on ethanol blends above 10%. Is the state of Illinois ready to cover the repairs of vehicles damaged by these higher blends?
Why be chickens about this, you Marxist stooges? Have the ethanol content increased to 90%! Make cigarettes illegal. Ban internal combustion engines. Confiscate all weapons.
Idiots!
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