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N.Y. Governor Pushing for Alternate Fuels
Aviran Mordo writes to tell us that the Governor of New York is pushing hard for the widespread availability of both ethanol and biodiesel on the New York State Thruway and 100 more locations around the state. From the article: "Costs and further details of the plan, which Pataki first sketched out in his State of the State address on Wednesday, will not be disclosed until he makes his budget proposal later this month. If the plan is approved by the Legislature, it will give New Yorkers one of the nation's most diverse ranges of fuel choices. Only Minnesota offers an ethanol-rich blend known as E85 at more than 100 stations. Likewise, biodiesel is offered at only a few hundred of the nation's roughly 180,000 stations."
The article speaks the true reasons:
Pataki has been criticized for promoting ethanol because it is made from corn grown in states that include Iowa, which he has been visiting recently to gauge support for a possible presidential run.
and:
Environmentalists have largely denounced making ethanol-capable vehicles, calling that a boondoggle intended for the agriculture lobby and Detroit. When automakers build cars and trucks that can use ethanol, called flex-fuel vehicles, they earn credits that make it easier to meet fuel-economy regulations, in turn giving them leeway to build more gas-guzzlers.
Also, biodiesel will be a huge source of revenue for the political cronies (same people supported by both parties). Gas station ownership is heavily regulated and licensed. Biodiesel won't be just given tax breaks but direct taxpayer-funded subsidies! From TFA:
On Friday, a gallon of E85 was selling for $1.73--in part because of subsidies--at a station in Akron, Iowa, compared with $2.19 for a gallon of unleaded regular.
From a political standpoint, biodiesel subsidies also pay for numerous megacorp farming cronies.
If New York wants cheaper fuel, do two things:
1. Annul all gas taxes
2. Get rid of boutique fuel mixes making refineries wealthy
Here in the UK diesel and petrol are pushing about $6.60 a gallon (US). We cope by having more fuel efficient cars - 55mpg from my diesel at motorway speeds is the norm. Use less fuel - best way of saving money!
E85 is a scam. It gives less mileage than an equivalent volume of plain gasoline. Most stations don't acount for the reduced energy output in their pricing. Many even charge more for E85 than regular gas. If you do see E85 cheaper than regular, you can guarantee that that state is subsidizing the producers to attain that price.
This is really just a way to put money into the pockets of the corn lobby, particularly ADM corp. They cringe at all of the surplus corn and other grain we just give away though USAID and would love if they could divert this into a new revenue stream.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
While ethonal does reduce CO2 emissions by burning fuel more completely, (reducing air pollution) it also significantly lowers over fuel economy (upwards of 10% to 20% on most vehicles).
No one in the ethonal lobby ever wants to talk about the nitrogen/oxygen (NO2?) by-products that are increased, which are much worse greenhouse gasses than CO2 ever has or will be. (stays in the atmosphere much longer, and holds in magnitudes more heat than CO2. Coupled with the fact that it's very hard to extract from the atmosphere, unlike CO2)
Then there's the increased pesticide use, the fact that it takes more fuel to produce ethonal than you get back, and it's a giant pipe dream.
When you start mixing politics and science you get shitty science.
Seriously... a huge number of this nation's problems have arisen from it's need for Middle East oil. Biodiesel cuts the Middle East out of the equation and gives that business to US farmers and agriculture.
Biodiesel also is much better for the environment because it recycles carbon already in the atmosphere rather than releasing new carbon buried inside the earth.
If New York wants cheaper fuel, do two things:
1. Annul all gas taxes
2. Get rid of boutique fuel mixes making refineries wealthy
A low gas price is just one possible political goal. Another one is energy price stability.
Even if one focuses solely on the economical benefits of such a policy, it could make sense to:
* cut energy consumption where the net economic effect is positive
* raise energy taxes where the net economic effect is positive
* invest in very long term local energy production (think 100+ years or renewable: wind, solar, nuclear)
* invest in small scale local energy production (think straight vegetable oil instead of biodiesel)
* invest in the reliability of partners on which your rely as external energy sources
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
> it does get pretty good gas mileage--around 25MPG, which is
Which is abysmal. Normal cars today (think: regular old five-passenger sedan, what used to be a "family car" before the minivan was introduced) get 25-35mpg, and we've had cars since the eighties that get 45-55mpg. When it comes to gas mileage, the ability to manufacture cars that do better is not in any way related to the problem. The problem is not technological but socio-economic: specifically, car buyers as a rule value other things much more than they value fuel economy. Yes, there are exceptions; I know a guy who uses a motorcycle partly because of the excellent gas mileage it gets. As a general rule though, most folks in the U.S. are more concerned with other factors. Some notable "other factors" include image, cargo space (which can be important for some people, but its importance tends to be over-estimated), safety ratings (which are important, but I find it odd how *much* stock people put in them, given how unsafely most folks drive; there's a fundamental disconnect there for a lot of people, I think), and the emotions generated by preposterously absurd television commercials involving the sorts of terrain that nobody would ever *seriously* consider as a place to drive a consumer-grade vehicle containing a family. (Sports cars also are an issue, but currently they're a much smaller one than SUVs due to their relatively limited popularity; I think the national average for sports cars is something like only 0.5 sports cars per household; whereas for minivans and SUVs it's closer to 0.5 per driver.)
Before the current (probably temporary) gas price sag, it was *starting* to turn around. In the 1980s, people looked at the gas mileage figures of vehicles they were considering buying as a major factor in terms of what the vehicle was going to cost them over the next several years. In the nineties, people forgot all about that. Today I am *starting* to hear people talk about moving away from their large SUVs because of fuel costs and maybe backing down to sedans or whatnot. At the moment, this still appears to be mostly talk, but if gas prices go up another dollar a gallon or so, we may start to see people actually *doing* it. If it becomes a measurable trend, we'll see car companies actually *advertising* the fuel economy of smaller vehicles, like we did in the eighties (and on into the first part of the nineties, too; I particularly recall Geo advertising during the first part of the Clinton administration).
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.