With the ethanol blend in gasoline about to rise from 10% to 15% under federal mandate and the corn ethanol lobby touting the Gulf oil disaster as a reason to incorporate the fuel source even more, the controversy surrounding the biofuel is back with a vengeance.
Most importantly, automakers are using new test data to persuade the EPA to delay the increase in the ethanol blend in gas. Automakers have always opposed the new standard, but now they say they have tests that show the new blend will damage engines and lead to more pollution. GM says roughly half the engines it has tested have experienced problems. Other critics say the ethanol industry has grown so fast that it has simply run out of gasoline with which to blend and now needs a higher standard so its output has somewhere to go.
The problem is that the higher ethanol blend can cause engines to run hot and damage the catalytic converters of many vehicles, leading to expensive repairs or more emissions of nitrogen oxide, a smog ingredient.
Meanwhile, ethanol lobbying groups including the Nebraska Corn Growers Association have been tweeting up a storm with posts like, “There is a fuel option that doesn’t result in oil spills in the ocean. It’s known as #ethanol.”
Analyst Dan Mitchell of The Big Money says such activity amounts to exploiting a tragedy. Furthermore, the Gulf of Mexico is subject every summer to a hypoxic dead zone the size of New Jersey, as Grist.com notes. The National Academy of Sciences linked this dead zone directly to nitrogen leaching from the fertilized cornfields farther up the Mississippi River — corn production that will increase the nitrogen flow to the Gulf by 10% to 34% in the next 12 years as ethanol mandates kick in. Corn is the primary ingredient in ethanol.
