Etha-NO-l

Hurricane Katrina delivered a nut-sack blow to the United States’ petroleum refining and supply systems, exposing not only their fragility but also the fraud behind the fantastical mechanisms that had kept prices comfortably in the $2 to $2.50 per gallon range. Katrina supplied the fuel, if you will, to rocket fuel prices through the $3 per gallon glass ceiling. With a couple of exceptions we haven’t really looked back.

Post-Katrina, the corn pushers saw an opening quickly mounted a massive campaign to ram their cobs up our gas-addicted asses. Car companies have gotten behind the movement, in particular GM, which by the time the major auto shows began opening after the first of the year, had devised an elaborate marketing campaign touting its fleet of so-called flex fuel vehicles, which can run on a blend of ethanol and gasoline. Now it seems like every commercial break features at least one “Live Green, Go Yellow” ad.

You’ve seen them, no doubt. In the ads, corn pellets (“Go Yellow”) fall out of a burlap sack on an old flatbed Chevy pickup truck and onto a hot asphalt road, where through the miracle of digital animation they magically “pop” into all sorts of cars and trucks. The idea is that ethanol supposedly burns cleaner than gasoline, and its widespread use will improve air quality (“Live Green”). A side implication is that using ethanol, a Home Grown fuel, will reduce dependence on “foreign” oil, which of course is code for any petroleum coming to the U.S. from so-called troubled regions, which today include most of the “Middle East” and “Africa.”

Folks in those parts of the world just can’t get along. Which is why we’ve set up a couple of police stations—one in Iraq and on in Afghanistan, in case you were under the mistaken impression that our goal in spending a billion dollars a day over there was to “free” the Iraqi people from the insane tyranny of Saddam, who we used to like very much when he served as the business end of the bitch-whip we used on those treacherous freaks in Iran. We bombed Afghanistan apparently to send the message that a country in ruins can always be ruined a little bit more.

So we get Ethanol, the Patriotic Fuel. Ethanol will put hungry farmers to work. It will replace gasoline. It will make your car run better. Corn will Save the Earth.

Or, that’s the idea, at least. Except that the ethanol wonder-story has a few holes in it. For one thing, many smart people believe it actually takes more energy to refine corn into ethanol than the ethanol ultimately yields in energy when burned, say, in an engine. And now Car & Driver magazine has come along and in its July issue exposed a few other problems with the ethanol circle-jerk.

In an article notable for its placement in a magazine regarded as an intelligent source of automotive news, writer Patrick Bedard deconstructs ethanol’s promises and reveals some surprising facts. Here are a few of the more interesting points revealed by Bedard:

The Energy Policy Act of 2005, which mandates that by 2012 fuel providers meet a mandated ethanol quota that translates roughly into a requirement that each gallon of gasoline fuel contain at least 5% ethanol. In reality, fuel blends like gasahol, which has 10% ethanol, and E85, which is 85% ethanol, count toward the quota, reducing the actual required percentage per gallon.

Given that quota, the promise that ethanol use will reduce the use of fossil fuels is largely bunk. According to Bedard’s numbers, the best-case scenario would see energy from ethanol replace a whopping 0.7% of the annual energy the U.S. obtains from fossil fuels. And the reality may be considerably worse than that. Given that wide-ranging estimates of the “new” energy provided by ethanol (i.e. the energy it provides on its own, after taking into account the energy required to refine it from corn), the absolute maximum reduction of fossil fuel use that could be achieved via massive ethanol production would be two-tenths of one percent.

Will ethanol reduce our dependence on foreign oil? Again assuming a best-case scenario, ethanol could potentially reduce foreign oil imports by 1.4% by 2012. If all the production were applied strictly to reducing imports from the Persian Gulf region, Bedard writes, they would replace about 7.4% of that supply.

In a head-to-head comparison with gasoline using a Chevy Tahoe SUV, ethanol cut fuel economy (not fuel consumption, fuel economy) by 30% in two of three tests. Running an E85 blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline reduced the Tahoe’s driving range from 390 miles to 290 miles. Good luck filling up more often, with fewer than 600 stations selling ethanol in just 37 states.

Bedard summed up: “The reality is that the federal mandate to increase ethanol use to 7.5 billion gallons by 2012 is eminently doable. But it won’t make much difference to the price fuel, foreign oil dependency, air pollution, or global warming. That’s because the primary fuel in six years will still be gasoline, and if consumption increases at historical rates, the extra ethanol will be lucky to offset the growth in gasoline consumption expected by then, let alone reduce it.”

Take it from the car experts, people. Ethanol is a political tool, not an answer to our energy dependency, and certainly not an option for running our motoring utopia at anything close to the level at which it’s operating now. The Indignant Citizen’s advice: Save $20,000. Don’t by a flex-fuel vehicle. Buy a bicycle.