Ethanol: It is time to boot the ne'er-do-wells out

 

A friend calls you up. "I need some advice. Can we meet for a beer?" "Sure," you say and set a time and a place.

"It's my son. He is thirty years old. He is still living at home. I have to give him more and more money. When he was young, I expected to pay for all his expenses. I mean he was just a child. But now, he should be on his own. He keeps telling me he is going to get a job, but you know it is a tough market out there.

In fact it is so tough, my pay has been cut. I have to trim all my expenses. But he doesn't understand. He claims that he still needs the same amount of money. I don't know how long I can keep this up. I have to borrow to support his habits.

His girlfriend used to like that he didn't work. He had lots of time, and my money, for her. But even she has tired of his tricks. Even she is saying that the relationship isn't working. That it was a mistake in the first place.

What should I do?"

You laugh at your friend. "You fool. You are too nice. You are being taken for a ride! You need to boot your son out. Until you make him stand on his own, he is going to keep asking for more and more."

Any reasonable person would offer the same advice.

In the above analogy, the son is ethanol. It has been supported in America for thirty years. It is reasonable to expect to help the new industry get off the ground, but if after all this time, it still needs dad's help? It is time to boot it out.

The father is the United Sates Government who keeps throwing good money after bad. At a time when everyone else is cutting back and all plans need to be trimmed, the son--ethanol--is still getting the same subsidy. Dad, the government, is borrowing money from China in order to keep the ne'er-do-well son funded.

The girlfriend is Al Gore. He used to heap praise on the son--ethanol, but now, even he has seen through the rouse. Even Al Gore acknowledges that ethanol was a mistake.

Ethanol actually has a long history in America. It was the fuel for the early automobiles. But then oil was refined into gasoline. It was much more effective than ethanol and, in the free market, ethanol producers went broke.

It made a reappearance in the 1970's, in the days of gas lines and high prices. American's were in a panic, we had to do something to loosen the stranglehold the Middle East had on us. Ethanol, then called gasohol, was touted as the answer.

It sounded good. We can grow it and we can keep growing it. It is "renewable." Lobby groups were formed to promote government funds pouring into the farm states. It didn't hurt that one of the key corn-growing states is Iowa--the same state that does the initial picking of presidents. No one with aspirations for the White House can afford to go against helping Iowa.

Ethanol did nothing to cut our use of Middle Eastern oil, but it still didn't go away.

The modern ethanol renaissance began in 1990 with amendments to the clean air act. It regulated not just how to burn gasoline, but how we make it as well.

Its next big boost came due to a new panic: global warming. We were told that the earth was warming, the ice caps were melting and that polar bears were going to die. Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, lead us to believe that cities would be underwater if we did not curb our fossil fuel use. Add that to the fact that relations with the Middle East have gone downhill and ethanol is back in the news. It became America's energy hope. President George W. Bush poured money into it.

To support this fledgling industry Congress passed a variety of incentives to help it succeed.

• Ethanol gets subsidies--ultimately paid for by the taxpayer. The Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit, a 45 cent a gallon subsidy for ethanol blenders, was passed by Congress in 2004. U.S. blending tax breaks for ethanol make it profitable for refiners to use the fuel even when it is more expensive than gasoline.
• Ethanol is mandated. In 2007, motor-fuel retailers were required to blend at least 15 billion gallons of ethanol per year into the nation's gasoline supply by 2015.
• Ethanol is protected. While ethanol can be made more cheaply from sugar in Brazil, we do not want Brazil's ethanol. To be sure that the young American industry can survive, imported ethanol is stuck with a 54-cent tariff--making it noncompetitive with the home grown, corn version.

In a 2010 letter to Senate leaders, seventeen Senators from both sides of the aisle urged them to end ethanol protections. They pointed out that the current subsidy was "fiscally indefensible." The letter states that "the data overwhelmingly demonstrate that the costs of the current ethanol subsidy and tariff outweigh the benefits." The Senators point out that ethanol is the only product to receive a trifecta of government support: direct subsidies, mandates that force consumers to buy ethanol, plus, trade protectionism--typically support comes in the form of just one. Despite this logic, the ethanol subsidies continue.

But it is green and renewable. The burning of ethanol as a fuel doesn't emit co2 into the atmosphere. So it is worth the investment, right? Not according to the King of Green, Al Gore. Though he supported huge subsidies for ethanol in the 1990's, Gore has now acknowledged that it was about what was best for his presidential run, not what was best for the environment. In a speech in front of a green energy conference in Greece, Gore said, "First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion rates are at best very small." Additionally, he admitted, that the push for corn-based ethanol did raise food prices.

While exact numbers vary from study to study, even the most pro-ethanol admit that it takes about a gallon of petroleum to produce a gallon of ethanol. The ratios are often found to be more like three to one. Studies have concluded that ethanol increases greenhouse gases (GHG) and is a net energy loser. The Congressional Budget Office found that using ethanol to cut GHG cost about $759 per ton when the market value of a ton of GHG, according to the European Climate Exchange, is about $19. Greens are abandoning ethanol--but not Congress.

Ethanol has other flaws too. It contains less energy than gasoline which means that if your car typically gets 25 mpg with gasoline, with E10--a 10 percent ethanol blend--you are apt to get only 21 mpg. With E85, your mpg could be as low as 16 mpg. At the same time, government has mandated that that mpg performance increase by 57.7 percent, they have also mandated increased use of ethanol.

Not only does ethanol wreck your mpg, it wrecks your engine. Ethanol can corrode engine parts and damage catalytic converters. Some newer vehicle manuals warn that use of E15 could void the warranty.

At Abe's K & S Services Center they specialize in small engine service and repair. Abe says 85% of the repairs they do are caused by fuel problems. Because of the increased ethanol in the fuel available at gas stations, Abe's had to change their warranty policy. They no longer warranty fuel related damages. He steers people to pure-gas.orgwhich shows where customers can buy ethanol free gas nationwide. For his customers, many of whom are in the lawn care business, the increased ethanol doubled their repair costs until they learned about its hazards and quit using it. The ethanol eats up the rubber components like a cancer. It has no shelf life. Someone with a weed whacker that is used sporadically may find that after sitting for a few months the unit won't start. Abe looks at it and fixes the rotted fuel lines. The customer leaves happy. They whack weeds and put it away. A few months later, they take it out for a day of yard work and find the same problem. The ethanol has broken down and washes away lubricants. For customers who use the small engines infrequently or those who depend on the equipment for their livelihood, Abe recommends TruFuel an ethanol free, premixed fuel for small engines that has a shelf life of up to five years and costs about $6.00 a gallon.

In Albuquerque, city vehicles have gone back to regular unleaded gas rather than the more expensive flex fuel they'd been using for about four years. Fire Department Chief Mark Garcia addressed the concerns, "We do have problems when we are talking maintenance. We want to make sure the 55 emergency vehicles we have are ready at the spur of the moment." Police Department Chief Ray Schultz had similar concerns, "When we first switched to E85 we were seeing dozens of vehicles because of the corrosive nature of the fuel. It was mainly a fuel pump issue." The city is saving money by using less expensive regular unleaded gas and they are saving money with fewer repairs.

Ethanol isn't just bad for your car and your budget--it damages wildlife and fish. In the April 2007 issue of Fly Rod and Reel Magazine, America's foremost conservation writer, Ted Williams says, "Instead of cleaning up America, ethanol has added to the mess we are making out of our water and air." He asks, "How will ethanol affect your fishing, apart from possibly ruining your outboard motor?" Here's his answer: "First, no crop grown in the United States consumes and pollutes more water than corn. No method of agriculture uses more insecticides, more herbicides, more nitrogen fertilizer. Needed for the production of one gallon of ethanol are 1,700 gallons of water, mostly in the form of irrigation taken from streams either directly or by snatching the water table out from underneath them. And each gallon of ethanol produces 12 gallons of sewage-like effluent." What does this "effluent" do? Williams says, "The toxic, oxygen-swilling stew of nitrates, chemical poisons and dirt excreted from the corn monocultures of our Midwest pollutes the Mississippi River and its tributaries, limiting fish all the way to the Gulf where it creates a bacteria-infested, algae-clogged, anaerobic 'Dead Zone' lethal to fish, crustaceans, mollusks and virtually all gill breathers."

No wonder Al Gore has decided it was a "mistake." But Congress continues to support it. Not because it is a "better mousetrap," not because the science supports it, not because it costs less, or makes life better. History is already showing that ethanol, is one more environmental scam. It doesn't perform as advertised, but it costs more.

The promotion of ethanol is one more example of a government out of touch--cutting what we are good at and have historically built on, to fund what doesn't work and the public doesn't want. There is only so much money to spend on stuff that doesn't work and doing so is irresponsible-especially when there are vital projects going unfunded. What money we might have had for such expendatures is now gone.

Wind energy is virtually the same, but its early supporters have not turned on it yet. And, it does not have the trifecta of government support--though if there could be a tariff on imported wind, there would be. Neither is based on sound science. Both are the price of "nice."

It is time to boot the ne'er-do-wells out. 

Posted via email from Enviromenment