Apparently, there's legistlature in my hometown to require all diesel to be 5% biodiesel by 2007, and 10% by 2010.Way to go Portland! However, I have a concern about slowly shifting our dependence from foreign oil to ethanol/corn-based fuel sources. On the surface I think it's a great idea: it's completely renewable, eases our dependency on foreign oil and makes a great supplement for existing fuel sources.
However, what would happen if we were using corn for (caution: link to tacky HTML government site with animated GIFs) 85% of our fuel needs, then had a couple years of drought across the midwest? Would our energy situation be worse off than it is now?
I'm all for biodiesel/ethanol, but I think it needs to come from a source that doesn't rely so heavily on unstable sources we can't control (the weather).
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I don't really think it would be a problem. Minnesota has had ethanol in their gas for over 8 years and there are ethanol plants all over the state. I think the US throws out a lot of corn every year and the government pays several farmers to leave fields fallow to raise the price of corn so that the farmers make more money.
ReplyDeleteI do have a question though. Don't you have to have a "flex-fuel" vehicle to put ethanol gas in it? What happens if you don't have a vehicle that is meant for biodiesel?
ReplyDeleteJulie,
ReplyDeleteAs far as flex-fuel...it's required for gas-powered vehicles wanting to use E85. Right now the thing in Portland is only going to be required for diesel vehicles which are much more diverse in the types of fuel they take. I've heard of hippies ("stupid hippies") buying old diesel Mercedes because they can be run on oil from McDonalds and what not with little or no conversion.
From what I can gather, if you put E85 in a regular gas car it basically just gunks up the whole engine and won't run.
Yellowstone gas has E10 in all of their gas stations and we used it. Not only did it not mess up our engine at all, but we got 34 miles per gallon (the usual is 25-28). They will also be going to E85 for their park vehicles within the next year. Way to go Parks Service!
ReplyDeleteWow! Five comments! This is some kind of record for my little blog!
ReplyDelete