Ethanol Blends vs 100% Oil refined Gasoline?

Question

Two part Question: What is the price point of Ethanol, or how high does a Barrel of OIL have to go to make the Oil / Gas refiners use more Ethanol? Should the US Government subsidize Ethanol Refiners or the Corn Growers to make Ethanol use grow faster? To simplify my thought or question, how can we make a gallon of Ethanol more attractive as an additive to blended fuel, vs 100% Oil based Gasoline?

Answer 1

The answer to your questions go back to before the demise of the USSR. Did you know that the Decatur, IL was one of the top five non-military targets of the soviets (in case of nuclear war)?

It's the location of ADM's headquarters. Look anywhere on your supermarket shelves. Almost any product is sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup! The Soviets knew what would happen to our economy if they wiped out production of corn sugar.

This reaches even further. In the nineties, the price of bulk cane sugar was about $0.12 per pound on the world market. The US would have to import cane sugar for all of our uses.

ADM lobbied and won to place a tarif on cane sugar. That tarif brought the price of cane sugar to over $0.20 per pound. ADM then sells their bulk corn sugar at $0.19 per pound.

A sad ending to Brach Candies in Chicago a couple of years ago. Hard candies require cane sugar for flavor and consistancy. They could no longer compete with purchasing imported cane sugar. So....they moved their factory and jobs to Mexico.

Now, who do you think makes most of the ethanol in this country? Who do you think still lobbies for protection of ethanol/corn sugar?

The production of ethanol is also a wash. It's not an energy savior.

With fertilizer for the corn, planting and harvesting, fermentation time, distillation (requiring heat): It takes about the amount of energy within a gallon of ethanol to produce a gallon of ethanol. So why advertise it as a big help? Ask ADM about their sales of ethanol.  Of course, they want Americans to think ethanol is going to help with the price we're paying at the pump.  It's not.

OK, if very inexpensive coal is used as energy for most of the production of ethanol, the wash shifts some automobile fuel from gasoline to ethanol and then onto coal.  It's still a wash energy wise.

Answer 2

Well, right now blends of <= 10% ethanol are commonly used to help lower emissions.

To use more than that, some changes to the fuel systems in cars would have to be made, and this is probably the biggest hurdle.  

The government already subsidizes the development of better ethanol producing techniques, and in my opinion this is all they should do.  As soon as the technology advances enough to make enough ethanol at a low enough price to be competitive with oil, it will begin to take more of a market share as an energy source.  Forcing ethanol, or any product for that matter, to be competitive simply by throwing tax dollars at it is not good thing and will only create more problems in the long run.