Ethanol Math

My hometown paper, the Kansas City Star, had a surprisingly clear and intelligent article about ethanol over the weekend.  Excerpts [emphasis mine]:

Conventional gas delivers more energy than a gallon that contains ethanol.

If it's a gallon of E-10, which is a blend of 10 percent ethanol and conventional gas now widely available in the Kansas City area, there's an energy difference of about 3.4 percent.

Now that may not seem like much when you're topping off the tank this week. But over the course of a year of normal driving, it would take an additional 40 gallons of E-10 to go the same distance as conventional gas. If they were both priced the same, it would mean an extra $120.

If it's E-85, a blend containing 85 percent ethanol that can be used in specially equipped vehicles, the energy loss soars and more than offsets its lower cost, even though E-85 is about 60 cents per gallon less at retail than conventional gas.

But it's not just the higher cost at the pump.  It's also less efficient energy:

Mileage can suffer by about 25 percent with E-85, according to AAA. Over the course of a year, that amounts to an extra 300 gallons of E-85 to go the same distance as when using conventional gas. That means an average household, when the total cost of conventional gas and E-85 are compared, would spend nearly $100 more per year for E-85.

British thermal units measure energy content. A gallon of ethanol has 76,000 Btu. Conventional gasoline, in contrast, has 115,000 Btu. If you purchase a blended gallon of gas that contains 10 percent ethanol, you get 111,100 Btu.

That amounts to a 3.4 percent reduction in energy. So if you have a car that gets 20 miles per gallon, you'll likely end up losing seven-tenths of a mile per gallon because of the energy content loss.

AAA now calculates a price for E-85 to adjust for its energy content. The national average pump price for the fuel on Thursday was $2.91 per gallon; regular gasoline was $3.56. But adjusted for its energy content, the price for E-85 jumps to $3.83, or 27 cents more than regular.

So, now we have a situation in which ethanol is not only causing food shortages around the world in the name of protecting the environment, but it also ends up costing us more at the pump, too!  Does anyone else see a lose-lose situation here?

Get off the ethanol, already!

There's my two cents.