EPA raises amount of ethanol that must be blended with gas | Hacker News Reader

EPA raises amount of ethanol that must be blended with gas

apnews.com

37 pointsgeox81 comments

The "blending" of corn with gas is an example of how the government routinely makes policies that are bad for everybody except some politically influential special interest. In this case, corn farmers in Iowa who have excessive political influence because Iowa is always the first state to vote for presidential nominees.

This is yet another reason why we need to get special interest money out of politics and why all presidential primaries should be held on the same day. If Iowa wasn't the first state in the presidential nomination process (and thus able to make or break presidential campaigns), no presidential candidate would need to pander to their corn farmer lobby.

> The "blending" of corn with gas

It isn't 'corn' - it's ethyl alcohol. It's C2H6O no matter how it was produced. All fossil fuels come from organic matter. You're making it sound silly by calling it corn but not actually making any useful point.

It’s created in the US from corn. This policy was made to benefit corn producers. You are correct but your point isn’t relevant.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31438659 ("The Coming Food Catastrophe (economist.com)", 597 comments)

- "There is scope for substitution. About 10% of all grains are used to make biofuel; and 18% of vegetable oils go to biodiesel. Finland and Croatia have weakened mandates that require petrol to include fuel from crops. Others should follow their lead."

Yes. The timing of this is… utterly absurd.

Except you can’t eat the corn that goes into ethanol.

So they should grow food on those farms instead.

Yes you can. Not directly, but that corn can be turned into meal or sugar and then baked.

Not an expert, but Wikipedia seems to say all corn ethanol is made from edible grains, and that the alternative, cellulosic ethanol (made from inedible fibrous parts) has not been commercialized.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_ethanol#Production_proces...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_ethanol

- "However, the much cheaper manufacturing of grain-based ethanol, along with the low price of oil in the 2010s, meant that cellulosic ethanol was not competitive with these established fuels. As a result, most of the new refineries were closed by the mid-2010s and many of the newly founded companies became insolvent. A few still exist, but are mainly used for demonstration or research purposes; as of 2021, none produces cellulosic ethanol at scale."

You can make whiskey from it, though.

This map of non-ethanol gas stations has worked well for me.

https://www.pure-gas.org/

With us heading into a huge global grain shortage this seems like a very bad idea.

Is US corn-based ethanol better or worse for the climate than gasoline?

Topical: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/us-corn-based-e...

Some parts of the gov say better some say worse. The difference is in how land use effects are calculated.

Everyone agrees it raises food prices.

Fantastic! It's like this administration is trying to kill the poorest people.

It might be worse. There was a discussion a few months ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30343170

Worse. It loses energy or is energy break even between fertilizing, spraying, reaping, transporting, processing, & transporting again. However it does line some farm state pockets.

This might be controversial, but I don’t think we should be using food as fuel for our vehicles.

Would make it hard to use a horse, mule or ox in that case

> The fuel consumes more than 40% of the nation’s corn supply

I know life's not so simple, but annoys me to hear this along side news blurbs about "massive food shortages coming!".

“Only 1 percent of all corn grown in this country is eaten by humans. The rest is No. 2 yellow field corn, which is indigestible to humans and used in animal feed, food supplements and ethanol.“

https://www.wired.com/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-busted-2/

This is such a naive take. Most corn is used as feedstock. This is hugely important to production of animal protein, which humans eat.

Just because we don't eat the corn directly, doesn't mean we aren't eating the corn.

This would be like saying "only 1% of water is actually consumed by humans, so we don't need to worry about water shortages". The world just isn't that simple.

It's not naive. It takes 10 times more corn to produce animal protein than it would have produced usable plant food for humans.

What does that have to do with anything?? If you're taking inputs that are used to produce food (feedstock, ferts, acreage etc) away from food production, this will create inflationary price pressures.

Source: career commodities trader

Exactly. We're taking 90% of usable food input and feeding it through an extremely inefficient plant-to-animal protein "converter". This is not only causing inflationary food pressure - it's directly responsible for hunger, environmental degradation and unimaginable pollution.

Fine, then argue that there are better ways to produce food.

This has nothing to do with ethanol mandate. Stop with these logical fallacies.

Are you suggesting someone is diverting feedstock corn to ethanol corn in such a way that we won’t be able to feed livestock?

That seems like it will be a popular political move, you should tell them.

There are two resulting forces:

1. Prices increase, incentivizing additional plantings to offset this new demand, and feedstock supply is unaffected.

2. Feedstock supply is reduced, and we raise less livestock.

The reality will be somewhere in the middle.

this is a naive take. All corn is edible, though usually processed like it has been since corn was maize - ground or nixtamalized. And that’s how yellow corn is also used, to make tortilla chips and taco shells. You just aren’t going to grill it and eat it off the cob.

Saying it isn’t edible is like saying cassava isn’t edible.

For a more nuanced take on the indigestible claim:

https://www.livescience.com/why-humans-cannot-digest-corn.ht...

But yes, No. 2 yellow field corn is a food for humans - just not in its rawest form.

>> The fuel consumes more than 40% of the nation’s corn supply

> I know life's not so simple, but annoys me to hear this along side news blurbs about "massive food shortages coming!".

Honestly, that's probably part of the process of shifting production. Coordinating lots of people is hard.

Does the percentage of ethanol have any effect on the engine?

Older car hoses can degrade faster from it. You also get less power per liter with the blend but overall no.

It also doesn’t “keep” as well (which is why you should burn non-oxy premium in small engines if you can’t get normal non oxy; or fully drain/run dry your lawn mower at the end of the season).

Learned this the hard way with my zeroturn mower this spring. Left a bit in the tank. Gummed everything up. Had to take an air compressor to all fuel lines and clean the carburator.

Reasonably priced well built electric tractors and zero turns can't come soon enough.

Replaced all my 2 stroke engines with electric last year. It's been awesome.

It's an octane booster, which helps reduce knock.

Anything past E90 is terrible for motorcycles of all sizes and many small engines.

Reading my Suzuki Owner’s Manual it says no more than 10% ethanol, but also under no circumstances more than 5% methanol (wood alcohol). It’s getting so you need a gasoline “nutrition” label to keep your 2-wheel fun machine running well.

U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biofuels-emissions-id...

> The research, which was funded in part by the National Wildlife Federation and U.S. Department of Energy, found that ethanol is likely at least 24% more carbon-intensive than gasoline due to emissions resulting from land use changes to grow corn, along with processing and combustion.

This will keep fuel prices high. Corn production is way down this year.

Producing ethanol fuel with corn instead of sugarcane is really stupid.

"The fuel consumes more than 40% of the nation’s corn supply"

Good thing we're not approaching global famine.

Different corn.

Still occupies acreage that could be used to grow something else.

Great. Not the OPs point.

I think it is. The US wastes great expanses of land to grow corn when that land and resources could be better used for actual food.

I suppose if you tried hard enough you could process ethanol corn into food, but it wouldn't be that healthy I'd imagine. You can't really change crops mid season very easily or cost effectively. I suppose we could lament the opportunity cost of not planting human food instead, but the fields and farms may not be setup in terms of fertilizer and seed to handle that change in crop.

>I suppose if you tried hard enough you could process ethanol corn into food, but it wouldn't be that healthy I'd imagine.

Unhealthy in what sense? That it's all carbs? Or that it's toxic for human consumption? If it's the former and you're starving, it being high carbs is the least of your worries.

It's not. We eat the corn, just in different forms. The vast majority of corn is used as feedstock, or to produce HFCS. This is the same corn used to make ethanol.

Also, the inputs (fertilizer, etc) are shared across the entire agri sector.

You’re agreeing with me.

“Only 1 percent of all corn grown in this country is eaten by humans. The rest is No. 2 yellow field corn, which is indigestible to humans and used in animal feed, food supplements and ethanol.“

https://www.wired.com/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-busted-2/

I'm not at all. You posted this verbatim, and I replied lower down. This is a very uninformed take.

We still eat the corn. Your implication that this corn isn't consumed by people and thus not a competing with the food supply is absolutely untrue.

Ethanol is edible as calories. I'm sure there are other ways to make human-edible food out of this, like HFCS.

Global imo not the USA. US is not a net importer of food, but an exporter. Most of the imported food can be grown in the states also three of the top four food imports to the US are used for/are beverages i.e. wine, coffee, and malt beverages. Also the reason why so much money went into ethanol research is because of the massive corn wastage that happens every year. Maybe the US should crank up food export, but demand is for wheat not corn.

Agreed, we won't face even scarcity, I expect. But it's a bad look (and just bad) to be pouring food into cars while people starve due to conflicts they have no influence over.

Corn is what we got, so I wish we'd plan to help others eat with it.

I wouldn't be surprised if some games were played so that we're exporting all the food while people here starve similar to the Holodomor in Ukraine.

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