The ethanol boondoggle continues despite its inefficiency

Eric Peters:

Ethanol Finds Its Market … Reluctantly

It’s not people looking for affordable, efficient gasoline.

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At the pump — and down the road, because ethanol-laced fuel doesn’t take your car as far as gasoline will. A gallon of not-quite-gas contains less energy than a gallon of gas, and so you burn more go the same distance. There’s a weird irony in that because the main rationale for the force-feeding of ethanol to the public has been to reduce energy consumption.

But ethanol increases energy consumption — by lowering fuel efficiency by about 2 to 3 mpg.

There is also increased energy consumption on the production side, where it takes more energy to turn corn into ethanol than to refine gasoline from oil.

But the racket continues because ethanol has powerful friends. Powerful corn state friends, who apply pressure on political candidates — especially at the national level — to genuflect before the Corn Kahuna, in order to line the pockets of those who couldn’t otherwise sell it — at the expense of those who are forced to buy it.
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There is more.

Ethanol is of more value has an ingredient in hand sanitizer than it is in your gas tank.  It is a destructive additive for small engines that constantly need repairing if you leave any of it in the tank.  The mandate forces refineries to waste money on ethanol that should be used to covert their operations from using heavy crude to the more abundant light crude coming from the shale wells.  It thus drives up the need for imports when its original reason for an additive was to reduce imports.