Ethanol: A Dumb Idea or A Crime — Or Both?

[rebewranger]

Ethanol: A Dumb Idea or A Crime — Or Both?
1 hour ago Guest Blogger 3 Comments
by Gregory Wrightstone

Expanded use of ethanol — enabled by President Biden’s lifting a summertime ban on fuels with a 15 percent blend — is a poor answer to high gasoline prices and a refusal to recognize the failures of the corn-based fuel additive. Reuters described the president’s action a win for the corn lobby, but all others appear to be losers.

Shortcomings of ethanol as an alternative to gasoline have been reported continually since at least 2007 when the U.S. government expanded its requirement that distributors blend ethanol with fuels to reduce dependence on foreign oil. The additive also has been touted as a way to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

“There is a great danger for the right to food by the development of biofuels,” U.N. human rights advocate Jean Ziegler said at the time. “It (the price) will be paid perhaps by hundreds of thousands of people who will die from hunger,” A year later he called the diversion of food crops to fuel production a “crime against humanity.”

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/06/01/ethanol-a-dumb-idea-or-a-crime-or-both/

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This stuff always reminds me of the Beverly Hillbillies.
Using ethanol as fuel is taking us back in time to a hundred years ago in the deep country. And it damages modern automobiles with modern engines which cannot process/use biofuels efficiently.

[Smokin Joe]

Warranties of older vehicles would be voided by >10% ethanol in fuels.

There's a reason for this, and manufacturers did not want to get stuck with the tab fixing fuel systems that failed because of excessive ethanol.

The gambit here is to destroy older vehicles with crappy fuel, and it may be remembered by those who drove high compression engines back in the day with tetraethyl lead additives to prevent valves burning. Suddenly, you couldn't get good gas, and if you wanted it you blended your own with avgas (which had a far higher lead content and about 105 octane) or used some other additive to keep from destroying your engine.

[DefiantMassRINO]

It's a dumb crime based on politics, not economics.

Politicians use ethanol policy to buy Midwestern votes, especially for the Iowa Caucuses.

Diverting corn away from food production and livestock feed increases food inflation.