UL Announces Support For Dispensing E15 From Existing Gasoline Pumps

February 20, 2009

Geoffrey Styles says:

While the pump issue is interesting, the real action concerns the ethanol industry's realization that E85 has so far failed as a product, and that without much larger sales of E85 soon, the 10% blending limit in gasoline for non-flex-fuel cars poses a rapidly-approaching limit on their continued expansion.  Even if it turns out that the auto OEMs and fuel marketers can be convinced that E20 poses no more risk of warranty claims to them than E10, consumers should say no, loudly. 

As it is, every gallon of E10 comes with about a 3% penalty in fuel economy.  That isn't noticeable to most of us, considering that variations in tire pressure and driving habits can have a bigger effect on mpg than that.  At E20, however, the penalty is nearly 7%, which for the average car works out to nearly 2 mpg, compared to running on E0.  It's the equivalent of a 13 cent per gallon tax at the pump, since you'll need to buy 1.07 gallons of E20 to take you as far as a gallon of gasoline without ethanol.  Nor will consumers see pump prices fall to reflect the fuel's lower energy content, since ethanol currently costs blenders more (even after the tax credit) than wholesale RBOB, the pre-blend gasoline without ethanol.   

The long-term answer to absorbing the planned volumes of ethanol without penalizing consumers for the fuel value received lies in new engine designs that will be able to adjust cylinder compression to fuel quality, making the most of ethanol's higher octane.  Until those are available, or until most ethanol comes from much more efficient, non-food sources, E20 is a bad deal for consumers, and not much of a deal for the environment or our energy balance, either. 

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