Marathon Pundit: E15 means more ethanol trouble

Monday, January 24, 2011

E15 means more ethanol trouble

The Obama administration hasn't utilized the Friday news dump in a while, but it did so three days ago. The administration's most destructive agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, approved a new gasoline blend allowing up to 15 percent ethanol, dubbed E15.

Ethanol is the poster-child of government boondoggles. Massive federal subsidies keep the industry afloat. To produce corn-based ethanol, enormous amounts of energy needs to be used. If I give Mrs. Marathon Pundit two five dollar bills and she gives me a $10 bill, I am not $10 richer. It's a wash, as is ethanol production. There's another problem. Acreage devoted to ethanol production means less land devoted to food, driving up food prices.

Al Gore, once an ethanol chugger, called the benefits of the fuel "trivial" last year. He also declared, "It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

Which is why we have E15.

Then Gore went to the heart of the ethanol conundrum:

One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.

But the Obama administration, which is at war with fossil fuels, plows ahead.

E15 could end up being at war with your car engine, as we learn in Politico:

The American Petroleum Institute, the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, nine food and farm groups and others have already sued over EPA’s decision in October to approve E15 for model year 2007 and newer cars, light trucks and sport-utility vehicles. They argue that the decision was premature and will hurt consumers.

"Not only will it hurt consumers, it's probably going to hurt ethanol as a brand because we do think consumers will be misfueling and when that occurs ethanol is going to start getting looked at as a less reliable transportation fuel and that"s unfortunate," said Stephen Brown, vice president and counsel of federal affairs for independent don't do it comprehensively … then you run into these problems."

The head of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, Charles Drevna, said his group would continue its lawsuit. "Widespread use of 15 percent ethanol in gasoline could cause engine failures that could leave consumers stranded, injured or worse, and hit consumers with costly engine repairs," he said in a statement. "It's the wrong decision, at the wrong time, made for the wrong reasons."