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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
... NY doesn't make corn like Indiana.
One of the distinct advantages to using ethanol as a fuel is having a local distillation/production facility. While we still have to truck in gas since NY isn't exactly rich in oil wells we still lack the excess starch production that can be used as feedstock to columns.
Given our rather poor winter heat (ie, freezing-ass cold) even MORE energy is going to be required for production.
Now, that said, I realize this only address the distribution points within the state. Having a couple of fuel stops, every other one say, that produce E85 would be great and I'd run it. But there's just no easy way to 'make' it yet because we're so energy poor- the key to cheap fuel is recycling as much waste heat as possible (solar capture to preheat stock, exchangers around the condenser, etc)
But hey, it's a step forward, right?
I'm unfamiliar as a whole with the topic, but is a special type of vehicle required to use ethanol-rich fuel or biodiesel?
E85 is offered in places here in Nebraska as well.
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
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!
Pataki is a twit. He says he wants biodiesel to be made available, yet he has let the moronic authorities in his state make it IMPOSSIBLE TO PURCHASE A NEW DIESEL AUTOMOBILE THERE (as is the case in a growing number of other states as well). Talk about transparent lip service. What a doofus.
The entire rest of the world outside of North America is embracing diesel passenger car technology, as it dramatically improves fuel economy, lowering greenhouse gas production in the process - even before you consider biodiesel, which is an essentially neutral carbon cycle participant which produces no net CO2.
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.
I was just reading about this the other day for some reason. The Wikipedia entry on the eight-hour workday is a good starting point.
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.
The "Big Three" US automakers already have the technology for E85. Ethanol is the primary automobile fuel in Brazil, and all the automakers mass produce cars for the Brazillian market which run very well on ethanol. There is not any need for expensive pie-in-the-sky research projects: the technology is here, and it works well.
Just grabbed a random link from Google
i cations/2000hours-vehicle-fleet/materials-2.html
A Testing Based Assessment to Determine Impacts of a 20% Ethanol Gasoline Fuel Blend on the Australian Passenger Vehicle Fleet - 2000hrs Material Compatibility Testing
http://www.deh.gov.au/atmosphere/fuelquality/publ
The Conclusions gives you a list of all the parts affected by a 20% ethanol/80% gasoline blend
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
What the government really needs to do crack down on the companies that are classifying non-truck-like vehicles as trucks. A "truck" should be limited to vehicles with frame rails, no unibodies allowed (but the Jeep Cherokee can be grandfathered in).
Examples of the eggregious abuse of CAFE include the PT Cruiser classified as a "truck" even though it's built on a Neon chassis.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Ethanol is 'cheap' because of State and Federal subsidies.
If the ethanol business booms, so do State/Federal outlays necessary to support the industry. It's something to think about.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Alternative fuels might be good for many reasons. But why not also change the engine at the same time? Turbine engines are used in trucks since a long time http://turbinetruckengines.com/index2.html and even Chrysler invested into turbine engines for cars http://www.allpar.com/mopar/turbine-photos.html . Turbine engines have many advantages. Combined with an electric motor-generator concept, like in the Toyota Prius (w/ old piston engine, sigh), things become really interesting. Adding fuel alternative is easy with turbine engines.
To use ethanol, the engine require some adaptation. The use of ethanol is very common here in Brasil since mid 80's when 100% of new cars sold are ethanol. Today, a lot of new cars are using a "flex" fuel technology which is a eletronic device who controls the combustion.
Biodiesel only works (from an energy yield standpoint) if it is recycled from used vegetable oils. Ethanol from corn is a net energy loser: takes more energy to create than you get back (not to mention that it also depletes soils that could have been used to grow food).
This site seems to debunk much of the hype over ethanol. It also has some choice things to say about the "hydrogen economy". I don't know how credible their analysis is, comment if you think it's crapola or not.
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
Totally agreed. We'd be able to get more cars that are popular in Europe, especially cars from manufactures that can't keep up with the US's inane changes in safety and environmental requirements.
Look at the Lotus Elise. Okay, so it's not an especially economical car, but with its 1.8L engine, and weight just under a ton, it does get pretty good gas mileage--around 25MPG, which is incredible for a sports car. The only problem is that Lotus wasn't able to fully make the feds happy with the Elise, and so it's here on a sort of temporary exemption. The failings, as I understand it, were that it didn't have a traditional bumper, airbags, or ABS (which nobody being a Lotus would want anyway), the headlights somehow didn't comply, and they had a hell of a time with emissions, not because it's somehow singularly responsible for Global Warming, but instead because the entire fuel system needs to be certified by some asinine smog standard, which probably costs many millions of dollars to do and has miniscule effect, if any. So they essentially have to lift the entire engine and fuel from a Toyota MR2, just like Panoz does with Ford's Mustang parts. I'm sure the big boys like the setup--for a nominal cost, they all but eliminate any potential small players in the US market.
What any of that has to do with anything is beyond me, though. It seems like quite a lot of Federal bullshit. The Elise's nose is so low that even if it did have a bumper that fit well into the design, it would still manage to get under the rear end a standard, normal height sedan, let alone a truck! That's why it has good brakes! The structure is sound enough to protect the passengers pretty well in the event of a collision (probably better than every other car of similar size)... So what if the car gets bruised if it's bumped in the parking lot at 5 MPH?! You shouldn't have been run into! The headlamps are probably adequate--I'm sure that European Elise drivers don't feel compelled to go inside when the driving gets dark on account of this. ABS? So what? It's not like anyone is going to be driving this car in a snow storm, and outside of that remote possibility, this car will stop better than 99.5% of the cars out there, wet or dry, even if one is simply to jump on the brake.
I dunno, it seems to me that the US regulations are much more of a moving target than the Europeans', and in a way, that's not fair considering their casualty rate and car related pollution isn't any worse than ours.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Having a couple of fuel stops, every other one say, that produce E85 would be great and I'd run it.
First, the summary of this article is incorrect about E85. Minnesota is not the only state that offers E85. North and South Dakota, as well as Iowa, offer the alternative fuel.
Second, while I cannot link to any articles to back up my statements, it is only because the Fargo Forum charges for archived news articles. But much of what I write is passed on from an article written in the newspaper about the fuel and its overall cost.
Information about the prevalence of E85:
* E85 is a fuel which is 85% Ethanol, 15% gasoline (hence the name E85). It differs from normal (100%) unleaded fuel, as well as 85% gasoline / 15% ethanol fuel offered in North Dakota and Minnesota (and other places I'm sure, but am not positive about).
* To relate to the prior post in the thread, urban centers all along I-94 between Fargo and Minneapolis stock E85 (and I'm sure many other places as well, but I'm going by regional knowledge here). Fargo's metro area has at least nine stations that I know of that carry the fuel, spread all around the city.
* There's certainly a market for the fuel, with many car lots reporting that consumers are specifically requesting for cars that run the fuel. Many adverts in the paper have specifically included alternative-fuel capabilities as a highlighted feature for cars on their lot.
However, there are a few things that were highlighted in a Fargo Form article about two months ago that are worth mentioning:
* E85 is a subsidized fuel. Byron Dorgan has been pushing bill after bill through Congress supporting subsidies on corn grown for ethanol production as well as for ethanol fuel production in energy bills. Because of this, it is currently selling as cheap as $1.60 right now (about 25% less cost / gallon than gasoline, and is usually consistent like that). The further away from the freeway though, the higher the cost (50 miles away in Detroit Lakes, and it sells for $1.78 / gallon).
* Filling a tank with E85 will lead to lower horsepower and decreased fuel economy. In a local study done by the Fargo Forum with five different vehicles, they noticed anywhere from a 15% to a 25% decrease in miles / gallon. In addition, the article made mention that there is no current known long-term cost for increased maintenance that the fuel may cause.
* Ethanol still is a fuel which produces exhaust. While many will promote that you're only putting back into the air what the corn plants took from it to grow, this is incorrect. In the refinement process for producing ethanol, there is a lot of pollution generated from the refining process, though if I remember correctly, overall, ethanol still produces just slightly less pollution than gasoline.
* The only true advantage that Ethanol has is that it's produced in the United States, so the country does not depend foreign oil. At the same time, nobody has raised issue yet with the possibility that a bad harvest could send E85 prices through the roof.
Though New York may soon sell E85 at a gas station near you, there is currently not to much great reason to switch to it.
You link to some prototypes and say they've been used in trucks a long time?
Turbines are simply not used in trucks. They aren't used in large numbers, aren't use in small numbers. They aren't used.
The big 3 all looked at turbines in the 70s, and the problems they have (variable torque instead of variable speed) led to serious issues that transmissions would have to solve.
They were not solved (yet) and turbines are not used in trucks.
Turbines aren't even used in locomotives right now (or perhaps just very very recently). And trust me when I say locomotives (with their electric power transmission) will have them before cars do.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The real potential is in alternative oil sources
nah the Real potential is in the sunlight hitting the earth that is unused/reflected back into space etc. more energy hits the earth in a day than ever existed in every coal and oil mine.
Bio diesel side-steps the problem of mass producing photo votaics, and all the promlems (durability, only provides power when it's sunny etc) related to them. because plants simply grow slower if they have less direct sunlight than they need. bio diesel and plant oils can be stockpiled like oil and can be held in 'reserves.' there are plenty of reasons to 'support' bio diesel via government subsidies... after all the petrolium oil industry is the most heavily subsudized industry in the US today.
Coal-oil costs as much or more to develop as developing a biodiesel industry would, and there isn't as much coal in the ground as there are days of sunlight left.
I'd much rather see people trying to wean us off foriegn energy get 'cronyism' benefits than those who say we have to kill other people to provide our economy with ever more petrolium. Yeah E85 benefits states like iowa and minnesota, and wisconsin etc etc etc.. and yeah biodiesel benefits any state where soybeans are grown.. but would you rather see that money heading to the mid-east? or to some people in minneapolis?
sure you'd rather have a perfect system, but I'll take one where we can at least have the logic to persue energy sources that won't runout before our days in this solar system do.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
In fact, the only E85-compatible vehicle sold in the U.S. that's not made in America is the Mercedes C-class (240 and 320)!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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One of the slowest advancing techs is rocketry (sadly). Current launch prices range from 7-15k$/kg just to get things to *LEO*.
All these calculations, and it never occurred to you that 7.6e22 Kg is about 1% of the mass of the entire planet?? Getting the stuff to LEO isn't even in the same league as the problem of stripmining the top 20Km of the entire planet's surface to come up with that amount of material....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"