Gas Mileage, ethanol and other nonsense

Posted on November 11, 2007

Why is it I am being forced to use ethanol added fuel in New England? Oh I know - it is that some bureaucrat at the EPA decided it would reduce air pollution somehow.

I don’t believe it.

Adding ethanol to gas results in higher costs for everything made from corn or fed corn. That I believe. It also results in an increase in the consumption of petroleum. You don’t believe it?

Here is how it works. I’ll use my very used Corvette as an example.

For the 10 years that it stayed in New Hampshire and drank MTBE laced gas - before ethanol became the additive of choice there - it got an average of 23 mpg. That was fairly constant. When the state demanded MTBE be removed and Congress decreed that if MTBE was not there ethanol must be, the mileage remained at 23. I had known that driving cross country several times it would get better mileage - but this I put down to more highways and fewer local road use.

Early this year I brought it to North Carolina where the EPA has not mandated an oxygenate (ethanol or MTBE) be added to gasoline. The mileage was about 25 for the first half of the trip but when I filled up in rural Virginia the average rose immediately to 29 mpg.

The entire time I had it in NC the day to day mileage was 25 to 26 mpg. On my two trips north to NH the mileage on the highway would be 28 to 29 for the gas I bought south of the DC metro area where ethanol is not added but for any gas bought in MD, NJ or NH it dropped to 25 or less.

So what does this all mean?

I fill the tank - about 16.5 gallons usually - and on straight gas I drive about 480 miles before filling again. But on the RFG (ethanol) blend I only go about 410. Or looked at another way, it would take only about 14 gallons to go the same distance on real gas as with RFG. In 16.5 gallons of RFG there are 15 gallons of real gas and 1.5 gallons of ethanol. So to drive the same distance on RFG I use one more gallon of real gas than if I was burning straight real gas.

Add to that, growing corn requires a farm to use fuel to power the tractors and harvesters and whether or not they use gas, diesel or even some biofuel, they are using some fuel and then converting corn to ethanol requires some form of energy - most likely from petroleum or coal.

So why do I have to burn more real gasoline by having ethanol mixed in?

Certainly it has nothing to do with greenhouse gasses since burning 15 gallons of real gas and 1.5 gallons of ethanol simply have to be putting more CO2 into the atmosphere than burning 14 gallons of real gas alone - to say nothing about the burning of fuel to grow the corn and convert it to ethanol.

But of course the agri-giant corn producers have filled the campaign war chests of members of Congress and poured tons of money into lobbying efforts just so that we can spend more money on corn based products - from milk to ethanol - and increase their bottom line profits.