Obama bent over a corn cob?
Beholden to the corn lobby?I am not an ethanol fan. It's corrosive and inefficient. It's polluting our water systems, and it probably takes as much energy to produce ethanol as it provides, if not more. And, after many years of massive government subsidies, E85 is still only available at just 2 percent of the nation's gas stations - mostly in or around Illinois.
Thus, most flex fuel vehicles have never filled up with E85, yet the automakers producing these flex fuel vehicles have received a massive amount of flex fuel credits enabling the sale of a massive amount of gas guzzlers that would have otherwise violated CAFE.
How has that helped reduce CO2 emissions or reduce foreign oil dependency?
Yet, President Obama is now considering a move that would require ALL vehicles to be flex fuel vehicles, at a cost of at least $1 billion per year.
Isn't it time to take the corn out of politics, and out of the energy paradigm?
Labels: barack obama, Ethanol, Foreign Oil Dependency, global warming
posted by Dahcredyns at
1:51 PM
5 Comments:
Did you see that Exxon recently invested $600 million in a algae fuel company? If(and that's a big if at this time) algae is ever converted to fuel at a marketable price, it would be a real game changer.
Yeah, I read the piece the NYTimes did on it. It would be a game changer.
Still, Exxon also noted it would take at least 5 to 10 years to develop a proven commercial system that could then be scaled up. So, it might be decades before enough algae biofuel is produced yearly to have an impact.
There is also the possibility of organic gasoline.
In either case, flex fuel technology might not even be required, or be the right technology. For instance, organic gasoline functions, chemically, like gasoline. So no new technology is needed.
My worry is that we might be stuck on corn-based ethanol for a decade, even decades, and I don't believe that ramping up corn-based ethanol production is the right direction today.
I have serious concerns with Exxon investing in algae fuel companies.
Oil companies have a proven track record of investing in alternative technology simply to suppress it...
Have we already forgotten about Chevron's patent ownership of, and suppression of large format NIMH batteries for electric vehicles?
Why can't some of the E-85 come from sugar cane like in Brazil?
I was in Maui last week and saw sugar cane fileds throughout the island.
While fueling up at nearly $4.00 per gallon, I couldn't help but think that in Hawaii, they could produce their own ethanol locally from all that sugar cane.
With regular gas already at $4.00 in Hawaii, ethanol would be very price competitive....
Smurf-
I had the same thought regarding the suppression of technology.
At this time, I think ethanol should be a regional fuel. Sugar can in Hawaii. Corn in corn belt. But US automakers don't want to build for regional markets.
The other day I was reading how Toyota is moving towards a more regional model of production, away from the one size fits all global model of production.
US automakers, on the other hand, are trying to make everything global.
It seems, again, that US automakers just aren't as nimble and reactionary as the Japanese auto makers.
Certainly there is a lot of sense in global platforms. Still, in today's technological world, regionalism should have a strong role.
That conversation is getting a bit off topic, but it's going to be interesting to see this production mentality difference play out.
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