Ethanol Collective ethanolcollective.com

Good news for me since I just bought a 2010 car. Finding E15 will probably be the biggest challenge. Price will likely be the biggest determining factor on mass acceptance. If consumers (outside those of us who support ethanol as much on principle as price) don't see a monetary reason to choose E15 over E10 or E0, they won't choose it. The good news about the power of price is that if E15 is noticeably cheaper, that could overcome much of the labeling hesitation.

I am frankly discusted! More ag land turned to fuel for our SUVs! What we need is a world-wide famine and then we will see this turn around.

My wife and I are retired, go to Africa on humanitarian trips and see hungry people! By the way, we drive one car, a Prius.

Richard Brewster

Ethanol would be great to have as E15, IF we had a viable source of it here in the US. We don't. As Richard said, we are taking food out of the mouths of children and destroying the environment in the name of being eco friendly and independent of foreign oil. There are alternatives that are eco friendly, and that do not ruin our vehicles. I have a classic car, a 48, and it cannot run ethanol no matter what the EPA says, and it is getting harder to buy real gasoline anymore.  I also have a graveyard of lawn equipment that will never run again.  If ethanol was not subsidized and allowed to be market determined, I would be all for it.

I'm going to respectfully disagree about ethanol taking food away from people. When we grow corn here on our farm and deliver it to the ethanol plant, they only use the starch portion of the corn kernel to create the ethanol.  All the nutritional value (protein etc.) is returned to the food supply in the form of distillers grain, which is fed to livestock just as the corn would have been. 

On top of that good argument, Kristin, every year American corn farmers raise enough to meet ALL demands -- food/livestock feed, non-food uses, ethanol and exports -- with 1 billion bushels left over. If there was a shortage of corn, why the huge surplus? Without ethanol the surplus would be enormous. I propose that poverty, politics and non-farmer price gouging are more often to blame for global hunger and starvation than "there's just no corn."

If there is such a bumper crop of corn for ethanol, than ethanol certainly does not need to be subsidized by my tax dollars. Personally, I have no problem with people using ethanol. I have a problem with ethanol being so heavily subsidized that it makes real gasoline too hard to find. I don't mind other people ruining their vehicles, I just don't want to ruin mine. My service manual contains a sever warning about the use of ethanol in my bike, yet pretty soon, I won't have a choice. Remove the subsidies, and make ethanol out of something that is more environmentally friendly, and I am onboard. Ethanol from corn has a return of 1.3 to 1.6. That means that you gain 1.3 to 1.6 gallons of ethanol for every gallon of fuel you burn. Things like sugar beets have a return of 8.3 to 10.2. If we were making ethanol with sugar beets we would get 10.2 gallons of ethanol for every gallon of fuel burned. WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE PEOPLE!!!! This is from Wikipedia, but other sources are available. Also from Wiki:

"The production of fuel ethanol from corn in the United States is controversial for a few reasons. Production of ethanol from corn is 5 to 6 times less efficient than producing it from sugarcane. Ethanol production from corn is highly dependent upon subsidies and it consumes a food crop to produce fuel.[47] The subsidies paid to fuel blenders and ethanol refineries have often been cited as the reason for driving up the price of corn, and in farmers planting more corn and the conversion of considerable land to corn (maize) production which generally consumes more fertilizers and pesticides than many other land uses."

The decision is a vital step forward, however, I suspect one of the primary barriers to more ethanol use has more to do with public understanding and perception of ethanol.  I see a number of flex fuel vehicles in the city where I live but suspect few of them use ethanol otherwise the one ethanol pump in this city would have vehicles lined up behind it rather than looking like it is rarely used.

It would be interesting to conduct a psychological behavioral study to identify primary reasons why some flex-fuel vehicle owners may chose not to use ethanol even when it is available, identify possible communications and/or incentive strategies to encourage use of ethanol, then assess the effectiveness of those communications strategies (ie an ABAB study design).

Some reasons that come to mind could include things as simple as:  Some owners may not know their vehicle can use ethanol, some owners may not believe ethanol has a positive impact, some are purely motivated by costs, some may not be motivated purely by cost.  Understanding the cognitions behind why people may or may not choose to use ethanol is probably a necessary starting point to develop a strategy that will encourage ethanol use.

This might be something ethanol collective could develop as a pre-formated study that multiple university psychology and public policy departments could adapt for graduate student work.