The International CBX Owners Association

Corn doesn't grow like a weed. Modern corn farming involves heavy inputs of nitrogen fertilizer (made with natural gas), applications of herbicides and other chemicals (made mostly from oil), heavy machinery (which runs on diesel) and transportation (diesel again). Converting the corn into fuel requires still more energy.
Also cars built after 1988 show no reduction in CO or HC emmisions when burning oxygenated fuel.

EMS wrote:

Rick Pope wrote: Like most folks, you're overlooking the whole point of ethanol in our gas. It brings oxygen to the party, thus reducing emissions.

..and you really think that's the reason we have ethanol in the gas, Rick??

Well, we used to have MTBE as the oxygenator, but they started finding that it was contaminating drinking water and the fumes had rather nasty side effects. There was a scramble to find a suitable substitute and ethanol won the battle. So yes, it's there to clean up our skies. Remember back in the '70s when the sky was brown on muggy summer days? When was the last time you heard the word "smog" on the news?

As to the whole notion that it takes as much energy to produce ethanol as it provides, that's just bad science, rooted in studies from the 1960's. And it's not taking food from the mouths of starving children, as a by-product of ethanol is Distillers Grains, a much sought after supplement to dairy and beef cattle rations.

You can have my soap box now.

I wonder how those countries manage, which do not have ethanol in their gasoline and their cars are running and their air is cleaner than here......

The main reason for the reduction in smog is not due to ethanol but to reducing industry and power plant emissions and the increased efficiency of today's cars and trucks.
It takes 1000 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol so in the future at least we will have clean air while we are enjoying a refreshing glass of dust.
The energy economics get worse at the processing plants, where the grain is crushed and fermented. As many as three distillation steps are needed to separate the 8 percent ethanol from the 92 percent water. Additional treatment and energy are required to produce the 99.8 percent pure ethanol for mixing with gasoline. Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion to ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make 1 gallon of ethanol. One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTU. Put another way, "about 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in ethanol. Every time you make 1 gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTU."
Ethanol from corn costs about $1.74 per gallon to produce, compared with about 95 cents to produce a gallon of gasoline. "That helps explain why fossil fuels -- not ethanol -- are used to produce ethanol". "The growers and processors can't afford to burn ethanol to make ethanol. U.S. drivers couldn't afford it, either, if it weren't for government subsidies to artificially lower the price."

Like I posted previously, all this ignores the value of the by products, which is substantial. (Calories in the distillers grains- 1 calorie = 1 btu)

And keep in mind that MOST of the water used is in the form of rain, on the production fields.

The devil is in the details, which detractors conveniently ignore.

Now on to our regularly scheduled programing.