60 more days to comment on ethanol 15

[bamabikeguy]

I watch US Farm Report every weekend, agree with their stances on most agricultural ideas, like ending ag-subsidization for corporations and hobby millionaires, making foreign aid in the form of small tractors & flatbed trucks instead of jets and bombs, and STOPPING the corn corporations from increasing the alcohol content of fuel to 15%.

It was announced that the comment period to the EPA has been extended till July 20. Public outcry, about how sugar and switchgrasses have been ignored in favor of corn, how economically false the corn subsidy is, and especially to we small engine users, the damage MORE alcohol will do to carburators, linings and hoses.

If the program was based on truth, that sugar is the key, instead of Con-Agra, Montsanto and Archer Daniels Midland subsidized fraud, (it costs fuel to grow corn), public outcry would probably be less. Corn is a lot better agricultural feed than a fuel source. Period.

But right now is the first chance to kill this bogey-man before it even hits Congress.

EPA Extends the Public Comment Period on E15 Application

Release date: 05/15/2009

Contact Information: Contact: Cathy Milbourn, (202) 564-7849 / 4355 / milbourn.cathy@epa.gov

(Washington, D.C. - May 15, 2009) EPA is extending the comment period by 60 days on a waiver application requesting an increase in the amount of ethanol blended into a gallon of gasoline to up to 15 volume percent (E15). The original public comment period was to end on May 21, 2009, and will now end on July 20, 2009.

The current limit on the amount of ethanol that can be blended into a gallon of gasoline is at ten volume percent ethanol (E10) for conventional (non flex-fuel) vehicles. Growth Energy and 54 ethanol manufacturers submitted the E15 waiver application on March 6, 2009. The statutory provision calls for EPA to make a decision within 270 days of receipt, which is December 1, 2009. The comment period extension will not change this timeframe.

The Official EPA Ethanol comment page

http://www.epa.gov/otaq/additive.htm

Notices

* Notice of Receipt of a Clean Air Act Waiver Application to Increase the Allowable Ethanol Content of Gasoline to 15 Percent; Extension of Comment Period (signed May 15, 2009)
EPA is extending the comment period related to a waiver application to increase the allowable ethanol content of gasoline to 15 volume percent. Under the Federal Register Notice, published April 21, 2009 (see below), the public comment period was set to end on May 21, 2009. The purpose of this document is to extend the comment period an additional 60 days until July 20, 2009. This extension of the comment period is provided to allow the public additional time to respond to the legal and technical issues raised in the application.

Contact: Robert Anderson at 202-343-9718 or anderson.robert@epa.gov
o Notice (PDF) (prepublication version, 3 pp, 28K)

* Notice of Receipt of a Clean Air Act Waiver Application to Increase the Allowable Ethanol Content of Gasoline to 15 Percent; Request for Comment (published April 21, 2009)
EPA has received a request for a waiver under section 211(f)(4) of the Clean Air Act for ethanol blends up to 15 volume percent (E15). The Administrator must make a decision on the waiver application within 270 days of receipt. Since the application was received on March 6, 2009, it must be granted or denied by December 1, 2009. The Federal Register Notice announces receipt of the request in order to solicit public comment that will assist the Administrator in reaching her decision.

Contact: Jim Caldwell at 202-343-9303 or caldwell.jim@epa.gov
o Notice | PDF Version (3 pp, 77K)

 

[bamabikeguy]

At the same time, with all the talk of PROTEST, it would be a good thing to start talking up a BOYCOTT of E-15% right about now.

Family, friends and neighbors should be informed early and often that IF our payola based Congress enacts E-15%, without ending the Big Sugar tariff, without research and development of alcohol burning plugs and wires, and R&D for alcohol resistant gaskets and linings, or without fully legalizing home based fuel distilleries, that a Boycott will commence.

Remember New Coke, the Edsel and Quadraphonic sound !!

The best way to fight misguided ideas is on the marketplace, punish the companies quick and fast if they take the bait.

We've adjusted to E-10%, and if they would come up with a fully alcohol burning plug and cylinder, we would be the first to jump on E-100%, boiled in our own back yards from yard clippings.

But this E-15% is just a ploy, to pay for the mistaken gamble the Big Corn folks made in overbuilding the corn refineries, not accounting for transport, and trying to get the price per bushel up in the $8-10 range as a guarantee.

 

[bamabikeguy]

MORE fudging of the facts by corn-bought Congressmen !!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/opinion/24sun2.html?th&emc=th

Getting Ethanol Right
Published: May 23, 2009

Representative Collin Peterson is furious that the Environmental Protection Agency is doing its job. The Minnesota Democrat says the agency is trying to kill off the biofuels industry - to the dismay of the corn farmers and ethanol producers he represents. He has vowed to vote against any bill, including climate change legislation, that might require the involvement of the E.P.A.


What inspired this tirade was an E.P.A. draft proposal showing how it intended to measure the greenhouse gas emissions from corn ethanol and other renewable fuels. The agency said it will not make any final rules until it completes further research, but its preliminary findings were not flattering to corn ethanol.

The E.P.A. was only doing what Congress ordered in the 2007 energy bill, which required a quadrupling of annual ethanol production to 36 billion gallons by 2022. In practical terms, this meant more traditional corn ethanol, until other more advanced forms of ethanol could make their way out of the labs. Scientists believe that various grasses and scrub trees that do not compete with food crops can someday be turned into fuel.

Congress hoped the ethanol mandate would produce a more climate-friendly fuel that could help reduce oil imports. But just to make sure, it stipulated that ethanol from any source be cleaner than conventional gasoline. It handed the job of measuring emissions to the E.P.A., and told it to consider the fuel's entire life cycle.

This included counting the greenhouse gases released when forests or grasslands are plowed under and planted to make up for the crops used to make ethanol. When the E.P.A.'s scientists counted these indirect effects, corn ethanol emitted more greenhouse gases than gasoline over a 30-year period.

The E.P.A. says its analysis needs refinement, and in any case the 2007 bill grandfathers in existing corn ethanol plants or those under construction. That means there will not be any reduction in corn ethanol production; indeed, there could be more. Mr. Peterson and his farm bill colleagues are still steamed, because any adverse finding diminishes corn ethanol's appeal.

Lisa Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, can expect heavy pressure in the months ahead. The ethanol industry and its Congressional champions will argue that the science is unclear, that indirect effects cannot be measured accurately, and so on.

Ms. Jackson should stand her ground. Biofuels have an important role to play, and some will eventually be produced without pushing up food prices or increasing emissions. It is the E.P.A.'s duty to give the most unbiased accounting it can of their strengths and defects.

 

[kitcarguy]

I really do not know much about whats going on here. Is there a condensed version of all of this somewhere that I can read?

 

[Happy Valley]

I think bama's done a pretty good job already of condensing the salient points
of this issue, particularly in the OP.

The public comment period has been extended to July 20, 2009.
E15 will be bad for most existing vehicles but particularly devastating for small engines.
Burning food as fuel is stupid but good for Big Agra.

 

[bamabikeguy]

Business Week 5/14: The Great Ethanol Scam

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/may2009/bw20090514_058678.htm

More than one major transportation-based industry in America besides Detroit is on the ropes. For the fourth time in our history the ethanol industry has come undone and is quickly failing nationally. Of course it's one thing when Detroit collapsed with the economy; after all, that is a truly free-market enterprise and the economy hasn't been good. But the fact that the ethanol industry is going bankrupt, when the only reason we use this additive is a massive government mandate, is outrageous at best.

Then again, the ethanol lobby and refiners have a solution to ethanol's failure in America: Hire retired General Wesley Clark as your point man and lobby the government to increase the amount of ethanol in our fuel to 15%. The problems with that proposition are real-unlike ethanol's benefits.
Where's the Logic?

First, the primary job of the Environmental Protection Agency is, dare it be said, to protect our environment. Yet using ethanol actually creates more smog than using regular gas, and the EPA's own attorneys had to admit that fact in front of the justices presiding over the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in 1995 (API v. EPA).

Second, truly independent studies on ethanol, such as those written by Tad Patzek of Berkeley and David Pimentel of Cornell, show that ethanol is a net energy loser. Other studies suggest there is a small net energy gain from it.

Third, all fuels laced with ethanol reduce the vehicle's fuel efficiency, and the E85 blend drops gas mileage between 30% and 40%, depending on whether you use the EPA's fuel mileage standards (fueleconomy.gov) or those of the Dept. of Energy.

Fourth, forget what biofuels have done to the price of foodstuffs worldwide over the past three years; the science seems to suggest that using ethanol increases global warming emissions over the use of straight gasoline. Just these issues should have kept ethanol from being brought back for its fourth run in American history.

Don't let anybody mislead you: The new push to get a 15% ethanol mandate out of Washington is simply to restore profitability to a failed industry. Only this time around those promoting more ethanol in our gas say there's no scientific proof that adding more ethanol will damage vehicles or small gas-powered engines. With that statement they've gone from shilling the public to outright falsehoods, because ethanol-laced gasoline is already destroying engines across the country in ever larger numbers.

Got a Spare $1,000?

Last July was bad enough for motorists on a budget-gasoline prices had shot up to more than $4 a gallon. But for some the pain in the pocketbook was about to get worse. At City Garage in Euless, Tex., for example, the first of numerous future customers brought in an automobile whose fuel pump was shot. A quick diagnosis determined that that particular car had close to 18% ethanol in the fuel. For that unlucky owner, the repairs came to nearly $900. The ethanol fun was just beginning.

City Garage manager Eric Greathouse has found that adding ethanol to the nation's gasoline supply may be a foolish government mandate, but it has an upside he'd rather not deal with. It's supplying his shop with a slow but steady stream of customers whose plastic fuel intakes have been dissolved by the blending of ethanol into our gasoline, or their fuel pumps destroyed. The average cost of repairs is just shy of $1,000.

It gets better.

2 more pages of the article follow......