The United States Postal Service is the single largest buyer of E85-compatible vehicles. According to Bloomberg, from 1995 – 2005, the government agency has used your tax money (and customers') to purchase some 30k corn juice-compatible trucks and minivans. So how's that going then? "You're getting fewer miles per gallon, and it's costing us more,'' according to Walt O'Tormey, P.O. engineering veep. In specific, the mail carrier's gas consumption jumped by more than 1.5m gallons. Well, duh. E85 doesn't deal the mpgs like regular. Still, a Postal Service study put a number to their pain: the new vehicles got as much as 29 percent fewer miles to the gallon than their previous trucks. Oh, and the post office only fueled a thousand of their E-85 compatible fleet with Iowa's best, due to availability. (Stroke of luck, that.) The rest of the article bashes E85, but good. Including news (to us) that the Sierra Club's lining-up against the bio-fuel. "Not only does this [CAFE credit for E85 vehicles] do nothing to improve fuel efficiency,'' says Daniel Becker, an environmental lawyer and former head of Sierra Club's global-warming program. "It's also ensuring that we're going to use more gasoline.'' Yeah, that sucks. Unless, of course, you're a corn farmer.
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e85 is an Epic Fail
“You’re getting fewer miles per gallon, and it’s costing us more,” according to Walt O’Tormey, P.O. engineering veep.
Wait a second…he didn’t know that up-front? He’s the engineering veep, and fewer miles per gallon for E85 is common knowledge.
You know it’s an epic blunder when energy companies and the Sierra Club are agreeing on something.
I think that the Sierra Club’s announcement is pretty critical and deserving of its own news blog. I really can’t stand the organization and its litigious bullying, but this shows a fundamental shift in thought to the E85 argument. Whereas it used to be fringe right-wingers calling bullshit on ethanol, now one of the most influential environmental organizations is crying foul as well. It’s only a matter of time before the center fails as well leaving Congress to explain its mistake to the people.
So the Q is, considering how everyone agrees E85 is a failure, how and when will the subsidies be stopped? Corn-based E85 is clearly not the answer. How much longer must money be wasted on this? Basically, how do we change these useless laws?
Didn’t the sierra club push E85 initially?
Proof again that groups like SC and CARB (MTBE, electric car mandate) don’t know what they’re talking about. Unfortunately legislation still gets enacted based on what these bone-heads think is the flavor of the day.
Who was it that said, when told there was no bread for the peasants, “well let them eat cake”.
Wasn’t it Mary Antionette? How’d that work out for her? (Hint: when people say, “she lost her head” they aren’t talking about her getting upset).
So in modern day parlance, “let them eat mud.”
Read yesterday’s article in The Daily Reckoning here:
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/index.html
I think I’m okay to quote a very small portion of the article entitled WELCOME TO THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH
“In Haiti, people are eating mud.
We’re not making this up. There’s a photo of a miserable woman making mud cakes in Port-au-Prince, in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.
For the benefit of readers who wish to cut their food budgets, the Telegraph gives us the recipe: you simply mix clay with salt and vegetable fat and lay it out in the sun to cook – like mud pies. Then, you call them “biscuits.”
Last time we looked, mud was not one of the main food groups recommended by dieticians. But all over the world, poor people have to make do with what they can find. Rice is the staple food in Haiti, and it’s trebled in price in the last year, says the Telegraph. Other grains are not far behind. Since January of 2007, wheat has gone up 200% and corn 150%.
Desperate poor have already rioted in 34 countries this year.”
The other day, in response to the President’s further supporting corn-based Ethanol, I made a comment to the LA Times that the stuff might well be re-named “Deathanol” for all the misery that it is already causing.
E10, even E15 in WIDE supply might be a way to cut ODOFO (“our dependence on furrin’ oil”). But as it stands thousands upon thousands of “Flex-Fuel” cars running on “G100” does no one but the manufacturers any damn good. And the phony CAFE credits are even a bad deal for them in the long run!
-Stokes
GM and Bush are both all for E85, so it must be the smartest move, right?
jthorner:
GM and Bush are both all for E85, so it must be the smartest move, right?
I’m sure GM is all for E85 as long as it earns them tax credits.
N85523 : You know it’s an epic blunder when energy companies and the Sierra Club are agreeing on something.
Precisely what I was thinking. Ay Caramba!
What really makes me mad about the Sierra Club statement is that they used to be pushing biofuels like crazy. I remember when the car running on hempoline came through Boulder and the Sierra Club was there saying that this is the future. For the last seven years (how long I’ve been in Boulder), I’ve been arguing with the do-gooders on the street that have been advocating Biofuels. (The Sierra Club and others like Environment Colorado send their minions around town trying to get people to donate to lame environmental causes). So now years later, after Billions have been invested, people are seeing that Biofuels aren’t the cure all? If they would have listened to engineers and scientists they would have known that earlier. It’s just that no one trusts science, they only trust their gut. GAH!
@Miked
The US Ethanol regime is a mess with subsidised Ethanol plants using subsidised Corn supplied by subsidised Farmers to produce subsidised Ethanol using an inefficent process, protected by high tariffs on imports from Brazil (where Ethanol is derived from Sugar Cane much more efficently).
I don’t know much about the Sierra Club but I doubt they ever supported all that or ever supported Corn derived Ethanol at all?
I wonder what the economics would look like for the USPS if they were allowed to import Ethanol from Brazil at a market price instead of a “fatten the farmer” price?
And while those mud-pie eating people are rioting – why are those countries not doing what they need to feed themselves with farms like we do? Of course I understand that sometimes people live where farms require impossible amounts of irrigation but just about every country has options – farming, fish or other seafood farms, etc etc.
At the same time I thought we’re told E85 is made with corn and other foods not normally consumed by humans?
I am tiring of poor countries who can’t organize themselves enough to have some social programs to make their poor little corner of the earth a better place. I mean America had a depression and we organized work projects across the country to make America a better place and put people back to work.
How about the same thing in these poor countries. In the end they get water projects and streets, a cleaner city to live in, farming projects or irrigation projects and food in their bellies.
I hear folks complain about the rampant greed in America but in these little countries there are the rich and the dying poor and little in between. Time for people to help themselves and each other there.
Now – if E85 is in fact taking food from people’s mouths then yeah, we need to fuel our cars and trucks some other way – like weeds and trash. We certainly create plenty of that…
“You’re getting fewer miles per gallon, and it’s costing us more,” according to Walt O’Tormey, P.O. engineering veep.
Jason: Wait a second…he didn’t know that up-front? He’s the engineering veep, and fewer miles per gallon for E85 is common knowledge.
As I understand it, the E85 compatible vehicles get lower mpg, even when they are running on good stuff, E0. Why did they need that loophole, after all?
Basically, how do we change these useless laws?
There are a lot of hard-working lobbyists making good money off E85, I’ll have you know. These are the only people’s whose voices get heard in Washington, DC. Your tax dollars go from federal budget to E85 producer to political campaign. You want to stop that? How much will you pay to stop it? Gotta love democracy, eh?
Busbodger – we are obviously not all given the same cognitive gifts from our Creator. If they had the ability to invent the wheel or an agribusiness they would. They dont design computers in Haiti last time I checked. Its easier to run to the US for help, that way its free.
“how do we change these useless laws?”
Everyone agree that Iowa should be moved to the end of the line for the presidential caucus/primary sequence?
I try to put real gas in my car whenever I can. I’m near the end of a “metro area”, and real gas is just better.
Worse, and probably affecting a lot of folks, is the damage gas-ethanol does to other gas powered gadgets. I recently rebuilt a set of Jetski carbs, and the plastic and rubber inside the carbs were shot. I’m sure this has given trouble to others, with motorcycles, outboard motors, etc. too. Anything which sits for a lot of the year, a snowmobile, cycle, etc is vulnerable.
A friend also just suffered the gas-ethanol problem with his jetski, and it ruined a big trip.
ethanol is for drinking, not burning. I’m sure a lot of gas powered gadgets have been sent to early retirement because of the damage the ethanol does to the rubber and plastic.
don’t even get me started on the fact it is pretty much a break even to grow the food to ferment into ethanol.
At this point, it’s not a good deal, but as Archer Daniels Midland is firmly now part of the energy industry, via the requirements to buy the ethanol, we are stuck with it for all the worst reasons.
At this point, it’s not a good deal, but as Archer Daniels Midland is firmly now part of the energy industry, via the requirements to buy the ethanol, we are stuck with it for all the worst reasons.…
And there lies the heart of the problem. E85 is good for big business and bad for everybody else. If you do a so called “well to wheel” analysis on corn based ethanol, you lose because of the energy intensiveness of mega farming. This, plus the lower energy content, means E85 in its present form is not going to trim energy imports. So, from this point of view it is a disaster. Brazil’s ethanol story is a success because they use the waste product of their sugar industry as the primary source of ethanol. If we chose to use switchgrass and other non energy intensive plant products we have a chance of producing a small amount of sustainable ethanol. But we have to be realistic about what can be expected in terms of output.
I did not find anything that showed the Sierra Club supporting the use of energy intensive crops for ethanol production; they seemed to think the waste based production was the way to go, but other facts may be buried that I did not uncover in my quick search.
As for the corrosive effects of even modest amounts of ethanol, you bet! Unless the fuel system components have been expressly designed to handle ethanol, the damage can be quite severe.
When corporations use the force of government to swindle taxpayers, it’s a form of leftist socialism called “fascism”.
eg. IBM/Dehomag, GM/Adam Opel AG, Ford-Werke, Exxon/IG Farben, Du Pont, Krupp, Union Carbide, Westinghouse, General Electric, Gilette, Goodrich, Singer, Eastman Kodak, Coca-Cola, ITT, J. P. Morgan, Union Bank who all supported the German WWII effort.
It’s an old scam that works well.
Whenever i read about E85 i want corn on the cob.
“When corporations use the force of government to swindle taxpayers, it’s a form of leftist socialism called “fascism”.”
Schwaaa? Leftist socialism called fascism?
I think you mean “it’s corporate welfare, an integral part of corporatism and generally an aspect of fascism”. Corporatism is generally a feature of right-of-centre governments (which is simplifying a little, but leftist governments–real ones–tend to be collectivist, and coporatism is anything but.
I think you’re getting your ideologies confused: Leftists (real ones, not what right-wingers think a left-winger is) wouldn’t touch corporate welfare with a ten-foot-pole.
I work for the Post Office and NOTHING the clowns in management does surprise me. We have a gas pump at our office,and fuel our LLV’s as needed. No records of miles between fuel are ever recorded,just gallons used. As a experiment,I recorded the miles and gallons on my truck. A 4 cylinder(S-10 drivetrain) automatic that drives 25 miles a day,never going over 50 mph and I get 9 miles a gallon.The trucks were built in 1992 and are falling apart but management is spending billions of dollars on new sorting machine. I put in a suggestion that we monitor fuel useage and move trucks around to but the higher mileage ones on routes that drive more.Never heard a thing.