In the pipeline
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 23rd, 2006
Those in the know, it seems, are more enthusiastic about ethanol than those with the power.
By that I mean users of ethanol - either E10 or E85 - are not only happier with the choice on their own behalf, they like the idea of helping the farmers and kissing off reliance on imported crude oil.
Not meaning to get carried away by all the hype and bluster of this marvellous fuel, but the ethanol industry itself says it’s providing 4 billion gallons of ethanol per year already and if that supply were suddenly to cease, the flow-on effects would trigger a 3% rise in the price of gas at the pump.
Source: http://www.ethanol.org/talkingpoints.html
Three percent.
Cars, SUVs and other light trucks consume 8.7 million barrels of oil every day.
Source: http://www.nrdc.org/breakthechain/chained.asp
Multiply that by 42 and that’s 365.4 million gallons of oil per day. The United States uses as much in oil in two weeks as the ethanol industry provides in one year.
Is it any wonder then, manufacturers aren’t falling all over themselves to throw ethanol fueled car production into top gear. And is it any wonder with that sort of demand, the ethanol producers could get away with charging whatever they liked if the manufacturers were in fact to do just that. The economic benefit to the average motorist would vanish in a puff of environmentally friendly smoke.
I’ll keep an eye on the discussions and the developments. But with BMW going into production of Hydrogen fueled vehicles as I mentioned last Saturday, if there is going to be any long term gain for anyone thinking ethanol, it had better happen a lot quicker than it is today.
Remember DAT? What a flop that was. Before the marketplace adopted it, cds came along and blew them out of the water before they’d barely got their toes wet.
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