ORIGINAL: 05flhtcse
Around here, Marathon is the most common major brand. Their refinery is just 30 miles from here. All their products, at least around here, says 10% ethanol. Casey's is the most prevalent cut-rate station around here and all their products are 10% ethanol. Ethanol couldn't compete if it weren't for the incentives and breaks. As a fledgeling industry, they should get a break but they should be using this time to improve their product to be competitive on its own merit. If not, it will just be a failure and waste of taxpayers money. Formulate it to produce octane and mileage.
In order to be competitive, they need to get away from using corn as the base product. Corn is one of the hardest materials to convert to ethanol. Heck, you and I can not even successfully process corn as a nutritional source (in corn, out corn
). Brazil does a much better job at competitive Ethanol production using sugar cane because sugar cane breaks down easier. Other options for inexpensive US production should include switch grass, sea weed and even grass clippings, but that would force the corn farm subsidies to dry up. And, for the record, the corn currently being used to create ethanol is not edible by US or even third world standards.
Without getting into too many details, Ethanol has been forced out of mainstream by Big Oil lobbying since early on, going back to the early 1900s, or even earlier for home heating and cooking uses. At one point, Big Oil sucessfully lobbied states to enact state transportation taxes such that the transport of bulk ethanol across state lines for resale required fees of up to $2.00 a gallon for Ethanol.
Every time we get into a high oil price ranges, ethanol looks like a better alternative. Then Big Oil starts to feel threatened and they find a way to reduce gas prices to make us all forget about the need for an alternative. Then Big Oil lobbies local and federal governments to tax ethanol further to make it an even less cost competitive option. Then once the Ethanol plants close, Big Oil startes to jack their prices back up again.