car_guy

Sinking Slowly into the Sunset

Government mandates for ethanol are unfortunately necessary because the oil companies are refusing to react to the market because it is moving in a direction that is not in their best short term interest.

There are over 2.5 million flex fuel vehicles capable of running on E85 and the oil companies have instituted numerous policies blocking and/or penalizing station owners for supporting this demand. This is because over 50% of the price of gasoline is for crude oil. If this becomes 85% ethanol, the oil companies become refiners/distributors instead of providers and their margins shrink considerably.

Ethanol is far superior to CNG for the transition off of oil because all existing vehicles can run on 10% ethanol with no modifications which means we can reduce gasoline consumption by 10% by simply switching to E10. Flex fuel vehicles that use E85 can run on pure gas, E10, E20, or E85 so if the owner cannot find E85, they can still fuel the vehicle. This capability makes an orderly transition possible.

CNG vehicles can only drive on CNG, which means you cannot travel too far from a CNG filling station or you will not be able to refuel.

Redbaron - the CNG plan has already been tested and it has failed. If they oil companies were interested in building a public fueling infrastructure for CNG vehicles, what are they waiting for? The US 3 produced CNG vehicles for over 10 years and ramped down production when the price of CNG exploded and the infrastructure was never put in place. Also, if you really want to elminate government mandates, let's start with CAFE. The government forcing the auto companies to build vehicles in the absence of demand is a major cause of the problems the industry is facing. The ethanol mandate forces the oil companies to comply with market demand they refuse to acknowledge.

Sinking Slowly into the Sunset

What a load of garbage. There is no infrastructure in place to actually fuel a CNG vehicle. They are only sold to fleets. CNG has also skyrocketed in price over the last 5 years, keeping pace with oil. To build a CNG infrastructure to fuel a car that you or I could use, would require rebuilding the entire vehicle fueling system. How is the genius Pickens planning to do that? How much money has he invested in fueling stations?

The US 3 stopped building these vehicles when the price of CNG went into outer space. The only people interested in this idea are oil company slappy's apologizing for big oil not investing their billions in actual alternatives to fuels they already produce.

Wind farms are not exactly a high risk investment since most states have regulations requiring local utilities to purchase electricity produced by independents. If you have solar panels on your property and produce more than you use, the utility is obigated to buy it from you. The risk is producing the electricity at a profit, which these days is not that hard.

The real embarassment is the oil companies. They are making money hand over fist and investing none of it in the future. GM had to build its own hydrogen refueling stations in California because the oil companies failed to meet their committment to provide them.

E85 from corn is a tranistional fuel to cellulose. GM is also investing in companies to accelerate this process. The oil companies are also fighting this to their dying breath because the last thing they want is the US to use less oil. Texas has the nerve to ask Washington for a waiver on the use of ethanol in gas it is reducing the amount of oil the companies are refining and cutting into their profits.

So, ethanol is significantly reducing the amount of oil being refined and the amount of gas being used in the US (all of the gas you buy is 10% ethanol), Brazil has become energy independent using ethanol and E85, and you are still pushing the oil company BS about CNG.

I agree we should remove the tariff on importing ethanol from Brazil and Latin America. We need to force the oil companies to provide E85 to the millions on flex fuel vehicles on the road and become more energy independent, like Brazil, rather than selling out our future to fat oil profits today.