McCaine’s future threatened by his stand on ethanol
by Bobby Fontaine July 28, 2008
Barack Obama’s possible Presidency is also vulnerable to being ambushed by the same lack of understanding of this particular issue along with everyone else in Washington, which is ethanol being added to gasoline.
And I don’t mean how it affects food prices. I’m talking about a cure for the ethanol market that everyone in the national political arena is missing.
Everyone is for or against ethanol. But then McCain is for and against it. Obama loves the stuff but I’m willing to bet that even as loyal as he is to his home state of Illinois and their statewide investment in the future of corn ethanol, he doesn’t have a clue how to approach the issue
without getting caught up in partisan rhetoric that will not solve the problems ethanol must overcome if it’s to have a chance of surviving.
You see while everyone takes up positions for or against ethanol that will all lead to its downfall, there is a way to make ethanol work that’s being totally overlooked in Washington DC. In fact the Chinese are already putting it to use, as are the Europeans. The state of Louisiana is even experimenting with this approach but what they’re doing has received very little attention in the US, the one place that needs to get this ethanol equation correct the most.
One of the biggest complaints there are about ethanol made from corn is that it drives the price of food up even to the point of causing food riots and starvation in third world countries. But this new way of producing it attacks that aspect of the problem directly, even while still making it from corn.
Another problem is that it costs more energy to produce than it gives back when fueling our vehicles meaning that it would make us less dependant on foreign oil to not produce it at all. It also costs mileage over gasoline that doesn’t contain it, some say by an even wider margin than the ratio it’s added to gasoline meaning that it causes the gasoline its mixed with to also loose mileage in some vehicles.
Then there’s the drawback of it having to be added to gasoline at fuel depots before heading to filling stations. It has to be brought there by train or truck because it can’t be transferred through pipes lines which makes it an enormous logistics problem for everyone involved in the process which we as consumers have to pay for in the long run.
It also increases the emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC), Nitrous Oxide (NOx), and Nitrogen Oxide, (NO), all powerful greenhouse gases. Ethanol’s VOC and NO emissions contribute greatly to low level ozone formation. NOx emissions are said to be 300 times greater a threat climate change than Carbon Dioxide(CO2). Recent investigations on Capitol Hill are turning up evidence that the Bush administration has been keeping the truth of low level ozone’s effects on health and ability to change climate patterns from us to protect his mandate to replace 20% of our gasoline with ethanol by the year 2020.
The science the Bush administration has been systemically skewing from public view is that CO2 does not effect climate changes as previously thought. What we’re being lead to believe is global warming is not global at all but regional afflictions on a global scale caused by low level ozone forming pollutants, low level ozone itself, NOx emissions, methane, and all their reaction with atmospheric water vapor. These gases altering the properties of water vapor are what’s been making our weather patterns change over the past 15 years, ever since oxygenates like MTBE and ethanol began to be added to our gasoline. But since oxygenates were so widely supported by both political parties and environmentalists, it’s taken until now for the truth about their affect on the environment to surface. This is happening as evidence of Dick Cheney pressuring EPA officials to cover up the truth is slowly coming out .
As far as ethanol being subsidized, my opinion is that if it weren’t, we wouldn’t be doing what we are doing with it now. So although what we’re doing is riddled with problems, since the initial investments in the ethanol industry has produced such dramatic results with hundreds of refineries being built to produce it, if we flipped the equation around now, perhaps hindsight would reveal that the subsidies worked as we began to import less oil and gasoline as a result of what started out as a failed federal mandate
What the Chinese, Europeans, and state of Louisiana have discovered that our leaders in Washington and our Presidential candidates are missing out on is that ethanol can be produced much simpler in higher amounts without costing mileage loss, harmful emissions, or needing to be trucked to fuel depots for distribution. Since ethanol is only reported to be straining world food markets by a few percentage points, these new benefits might also offset to a great degree that aspect of ethanol by making its production and use so much more efficient. Really what I think has been missed in the food shortage debate is that winter takes a heavy toll on the corn market with no new crops coming in while the ethanol industry keeps right on producing, but that’s another story.
The ethanol we’re adding to gasoline now is anhydrous ethanol. It’s being used in the wake of MTBE, an oxygenate that was banned for polluting groundwater all over the country. Anhydrous ethanol replaced MTBE to meet requirements by the EPA. The state of California has now shown oxygenates worsen air quality. But the Bush administration has been quietly overriding the new science on how low level ozone affects health and the atmosphere to support using ethanol for its fuel properties. He wants to leave behind a legacy of having started a process to end our dependence on foreign oil so he defends ethanol with such vigor that he and the rest of our divided leadership misses the fact that ethanol can be good for everyone. Since no one has gotten the ethanol equation right so far, no one can be faulted or credited politically with where we are now if we move forward in a more positive direction together.
Anhydrous ethanol means without any water content, very little, a half a percent. It has to be distilled three times to get it that way. Hydrous ethanol is the product of the first distilling having a lot of water left in it. It requires far less energy to produce while the water content makes for higher volume. But it can’t be added to gasoline because gasoline and water don’t mix, until now.
It’s been discovered, and even implemented in China, that hydrous ethanol can be altered to be added to gasoline where the water content does not cause it to separate from gasoline. Doing it this way eliminates the problems that using anhydrous ethanol causes us now.
I understand this is an election year. I also understand that many Americans are divided on this issue. The many factions for and against ethanol use are very passionate about their stand on the issue. So of course everyone being wrong on the topic is undesirable. But the truth is finding its way out anyway because getting this right is so vital to our future energy concerns. For those who know the facts already, the debate over ethanol going on now looks pretty foolish. And I expect that it won’t be long before other states learn what Louisiana is doing and follow that direction, which will make it a matter of common knowledge in many regions of the country.
I don’t suppose I’m worried about the Bush legacy being hurt by his having gotten this issue wrong. But for McCain and Obama, I don’t want one of them to be raising their right hand to take an oath to become the most powerful man in the world while not having known that this issue had a brighter side that needed no debate, he just didn’t happen to be educated in the simple facts about it.
There is even a method for refining gasoline and diesel fuel to give more mileage with less emissions being used in Texas to help bring their state into compliance with EPA air quality standards. You can read further what I wrote about it at "Gasoline with 20% more mileage, 70% less pollution.". But that topic is a far more obscure side of the energy debate that I would understand why our candidates would not know the whole story about. However the Chinese moving ahead of us with their ethanol energy policy without our Presidential candidates even knowing what’s going on is a national embarrassment and a threat to our national security because of how vulnerable our energy problems make us nowadays.
I hope both candidates, the Bush administration, and the rest of congress will figure out how to bring attention to what can be done in the direction of hydrous ethanol rather than only looking for what can be said about what the other party is doing wrong with anhydrous ethanol. There are plenty of other issues that demand a high level of partisanship that can be used to divide an election into two voting blocks. But it doesn’t appear that ethanol qualifies as one of them anymore. So lets take it off the table so it can be fixed without political interference.
It’s simple. The headline reads – “New discovery that solves ethanol issue receives wide bipartisan support; The energy department is working with delegates from both parties to figure out how to implement a new program.” End of story.
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