SO how are we saving gas by going to ethanol which GETS LESS MPG and is driving up the price of corn and feed and driving dairy farmers out of business. Price of steaks lately?
Because ethanol is the most cost effective octane enhancer available now that tetraethyl lead is banned.
It allows the refiners to get more useable gasoline out of a barrel of oil because they can blend a lower octane gasoline (that would be illegal to sell as gasoline otherwise) with the ethanol and still meet mandated octane requirements.
It also effectively converts coal and natural gas to a transportation fuel. Almost all the process energy that goes into ethanol production comes from electricty (mostly coal, and natural gas sourced) and directly from natural gas. This energy is transformed into a transporation fuel you can run in your car with no modifications once it is blended with gasoline.
Ethanol only produces less energy than gasoline on a volume basis (ie gallon per gallon) if burned at proper fuel air mixtures it produces more power and torque than a straight gasoline of equivalent octane.
Corn is not expensive in historical terms, it is actually cheaper than it was in 1984 and just slightly above the cost is spiked to in 1996.
It is a commodity that follows demand, the livestock feed customers have been getting corn at true costs below the cost of production for years thanks to government intervention in the markets. Corn prices are just coming back up to their fair market value (ie the farmer can sell his crop at a profit after deducting expenses without depending on price support payments).
The higher prices of corn due to the demand for ethanol actually reduced total government payouts in the farm program, with the net cost reductions more than paying for the blenders tax credits which were paid to help develop the fuel ethanol industry.
Funny thing was that the vast majority of that money spent in the blenders tax credit never went to the farmers or producers of ethanol, it went to the oil companies because they were the ones doing the blending. Now that that incentive has been eliminated the fuel ethanol producers are (if well run and using state of the art plants) still selling fuel ethanol at profit without it. The industry is finally competitive with the oil industry, in fact they are now becoming co-dependant, the oil companies could not meet gasoline demand without ethanol blending at current import rates.
The gas savings are indirect. They also are very dependent on the specific car you are driving. Some car models actually get better fuel mileage on high ethanol fuel blends than they do on straight gasoline. It is taking some time for the auto manufactures to figure out how to take advantage of ethanol added fuels but some of them have got their engine management systems sorted out so that there is little or no drop in fuel mileage with ethanol blends.
I run all my cars on E85 gasoline blends and none of them are FFV's. The problem is folks get tunnel vision on fuel mileage per gallon when what they should be watching is cost per mile. If measured that way ethanol added gasoline is cheaper than straight gasoline, in markets where there is a mature distribution system so fuel ethanol is sold at the proper markup.
In 2004 I started experimenting with E85 conversions on my car and once I finished the conversion in 2005 I was saving about 2 cents per mile using E85. My fuel cost per mile on gasoline (premium required due to my turbocharger) was just a tad over 12 cents a mile, on straight E85 it at 10 cents a mile.
Don't worry about miles per gallon worry about cents per mile.
Larry
