Another Nail In The Ethanol-85 Coffin -- There's No Market

Updates

January 24, 2014: it's all about votes and money; nothing to do with the environment. Chicago Business is reporting:

Once invincible in Washington, the industry has lost a string of high-stakes lobbying battles in recent years. Congress allowed ethanol tax credits to expire, along with tariffs that protected domestic producers from imports.

But the most painful blow came late last year, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency broke a pattern of regularly raising the amount of ethanol oil refiners must mix into gasoline. Instead, EPA officials decided to let refiners use less of the corn-based alternative fuel.

Wounded but far from dead, ethanol advocates showed they still can draft plenty of U.S. senators to carry water for their industry, a sprawling confederacy ranging from Midwestern farmers to corporate giants like soon-to-be-Chicago-based Archer Daniels Midland Co. As my colleague Greg Hinz reported yesterday, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois rallied 30 colleagues to sign a letter urging EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to reconsider. Mr. Durbin's co-signers represent a bipartisan cross-section of liberals and conservatives, but most hail from states where corn is king.

Cutting the ethanol mandate, they warn, threatens not only “the environmental benefits from ongoing development of advanced biofuels” but “rural America's economic future.” They paint a bleak picture of job losses, rising dependence on energy imports, investment losses and reduced “consumer choice at the pump.”

Don't be fooled. This isn't about the environment or rural America's future. Mr. Durbin's crew is rushing to aid a narrow interest group that needs government support to survive. Ethanol can't compete in the marketplace without taxpayer help because energy prices are pegged to the price of oil, which costs less to produce than ethanol.

Corn, by the way, is destroying natural grasslands faster than the oil industry. Corn is single-use; oil is dual use.
 

Original Post
ChicagoBusiness is reporting -- "Is Ethanol Out of Gas?"

Drive around Chicago looking for a filling station that sells a special blend of gasoline containing 85 percent ethanol and you'll see 10 reasons why the Obama administration is giving the oil industry a big win over Corn Belt constituents.

Only 10 of nearly 800 gas stations in Chicago and fewer than 200 statewide sell E85 fuel, which was supposed to absorb more of the ever-increasing amounts of ethanol that refiners have been required to blend into gasoline under federal law. Instead, E85 and its cousin, E15, barely have penetrated the market—even in Illinois, the third-largest ethanol-producing state.

A first-ever cutback in the federal government's renewable fuel standard, which mandates how much ethanol has to be blended into the nation's fuel supply, is now roiling farmers and the ethanol industry, which includes huge producers such as Decatur-based Archer Daniels Midland Co. and a dozen smaller downstate ethanol plants. 

I believe there are warning stickers on pumps reminding folks not to use E85 for cars older than 2012. I know I am wrong on this, but somehow, if I can't use E85 in my 2011 car, what makes me want to take a chance on my brand new Cadillac Escalade SUV?