What is E85 and how can Oregon get it? (UPDATED)
by Sid AndersonJanuary 19th, 2006 at 13:58:01
Do you own a car that can run on the clean burning biofuel Ethanol? Maybe you’ve got a 2003 Dodge Cargo Minivan? Or a Mercedes C240? Maybe you drive a honkin’ Chevy Tahoe that you bought brand new in the last three years. If so, you drive what is known as a flex fuel vehicle that can, without modifications, run on E85.
The problem is, here in Oregon you’re out of luck. There are no E85 fueling stations. You could always drive up to Washington state where there are only two E85 fueling stations. But your best bet would be to move to Minnesota where there are 182.
But, wait, before you start packing up your minivan to move to Minnesota, you might be in luck here in Oregon because several groups are gearing up to bring a clean energy initiative to the ballot this coming November, and it will likely include the introduction of biofuels into the state’s economy.
Typically this should be something that the legislature should be able to deal with, as it did in Minnesota and is currently doing so in Washington state. Eventhough biofuels legislation was introduced in the last session, House Republicans neutered it to the point of ineffectiveness.
But Oregonians are smarter than most of the House Republicans and we’ll do our best to make sure that anyone driving a flex fuel car has a place to fill up on E85. Even better, let’s make sure that a good number of Oregon farmers can participate in the upcoming bioneering economy by helping them grow the starch feedstock or seeds that make up biofuels. Better yet, lets create an entire industry around biofuel refining and production.
Be aware, however, next fall when you see TV ads, receive faux push-poll calls or campaign mail against the clean energy initiative, that such opposition will be coming from the petroleum industry. After all, they stopped by to say hi to their Republican friends in Salem last year when the biofuels legislation was being debated. Coincidence? Methinks not.
Get more info at the Oregon Biofuels Network and the local chapter of the Apollo Alliance.
Updated: I think I must have just been typing in the words “Apollo Alliance” when one of OO’s founders, Rick Ray was sending out an e-mail letting us know that Onward Oregon is the web home of Oregon Apollo. Great minds think alike…
January 26th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
Hi, I am thrilled to see a movement such as the Apollo program, but I am less than thrilled to see such a focus on biofuels, rather than on some other seemingly viable RE’s e.g. PV, clotheslines, solar water and space heating, microhydro, wind, etc.
I have two big concerns about biofuels. First, the question of whether biofuels, other than waste from burger joints, can be produced without using more fuel than they produce. Until this issue is firmly settled, I am reluctant to back it.
Second, I am disturbed to see farmland taken out of food production, for the purpose of allowing us to maintain our ridiculous driving habits. We can stop driving so much, and drive more energy efficient automobiles, but we have no alternative to eating!
I have done quite a bit of research on the Energy Balance of biofuels. In addition to finding no credible proof that biofuels are not energy losses, I discovered that even gasoline may be a net energy loss! Apparently, we use more energy, in the form of electricity, coal, hydro,etc to make gasoline than we get from the gasoline itself.
The advantage of gasoline, if one can call it an advantage without bursting out laughing, is that gasoline allows us to drive our cars, whereas coal, electricity, hydro, etc do not.
IF that is the case, we ought to be focusing more on making fuels suitable to power our cars more or less directly from coal, hydro, and electricity. No, no, wait: forget coal. Coal is bad. Coal is dirty. So let’s focus on hydro and other forms of electric generation.
One relatively simple way to convert electricity (from hydro, etc) into clean fuel is to use the electricity to produce hydrogen, through electrolysis. This is something we can already do with existing technology. Hydrogen has gotten a bad reputation, I think, because it’s been hyped by the Bush administration, among others, as an “energy source”. It’s not. It’s no more an energy source than a flashlight battery; it takes more energy to manufacture hydrogen than you get back when you burn it. Like a battery, huh?
So Bush et al propose developing these futuristic, expensive, inefficient fuel cells. Maybe there is a place for fuel cells, tho i’m skeptical.
For now, hydrogen produced from electrically generated electrolysis can already be used to power our fuel hogs. Minor modifications to an internal combustion engine make it suitable for burning hydrogen.
Just to give an example of why I’m not big on biofuels, in general, is this article from wikipedia. Other research shows that in Brazil, contrary to here in the US, it IS feasible to grow fuel for ethanol. This is because the climate in parts of Brazil is suitable. You can grow sugar cane, and get a net gain on the energy scale.
But even in Brazil, ethanol is not without its problems:
Ethanol fuel in Brazil
Main article: Ethanol fuel in Brazil
Since the 1980s, Brazil has developed an extensive domestic ethanol fuel industry upon sugarcane production and refining. Ethanol plants in Brazil maintain a positive (+34%) energy balance by burning the non-sugar waste from sugarcane. However, the requirement of more acreage devoted to sugarcane has led to reduced biodiversity in Brazil, which has led in turn to decline in the numbers of some species that live on plants other than sugar cane, higher food prices (as humans cannot live solely on sugarcane), and subsequent riots by farm workers.
April 25th, 2006 at 9:40 am
Speaking about flex fuels, VW makes 2 neat small cars called the LUPO and Polo that are about the same size as the old GEO metro, only these VW’s are powered by a clean burning 3 cylinder computerized turbo diesel that can show up a hybrid! How? Easy, these VW’s have a 3rd generation super clean diesel engine that can get OVER 100MPG!!! And with one fillup of Bio diesel, one can drive from Portland to San-Diego only removing waste veggie oil from the world. There is a web page that I lost the URL on, it was from a fellow in cali getting together trying to get VW to import this great car into the US, but rumor is that since it beats hybrids there is a block on bringing this car into the states
Any google search can pull up all the info needed on this VW. VW currently sells the larger 4 cylinder TDI golf, I own this car and this car has no extra batteries and I get 53MPG ( about 650 miles per tank )every day on my commute from Sandy to Portland 
Its amazing that I sold my Honda Civic that gets 40MPG because it was not good enough. 
August 1st, 2006 at 8:05 am
We don’t need to use farmland production E85 we just use the side of the roads and Freeways to grow corn. We have to maintain them anyway so why not just use the for fuel.
And ideas please send me an email chris@nwcli.com
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