Mileage (mpg) Using Ethanol Seen 20% Higher Than EPA Says - Bloomberg

[Bill USA]

35. this won't happen but what should be done is add methanol to the ethanol for blending with gas. In

this way we could get to say 20% to 25% reduction in oil consumption the cheapest and quickest way possible. You can replace the fuel cars burn faster than you can replace the cars that burn the fuel.

Now before you go ballistic, yes, of course all the cars made would have to be FFvs to take the 10%-15% methanol - this is not a technical killer. It can be done and much cheaper than it takes to build a hybrid - and to buy one!

We currently make quite a bit of methanol, spot price around $1.45 gal. We could invest in additional production capacity and make much more methanol.. Methanol is made from Natural Gas, but it can be made from many organic feedstocks (forestry products waste, agricultural waste materials - yes, only those quantities of materials NOT needed to be kept on the fields after harvest) - and it would be a renewable fuel. ORiginally getting a fast start making it from Natural gas would get us more energy security (mideast is sliding into chaos) more quickly than waiting for electrics to save us. Given a bit more time, we could make more from biomass sources.

In time we could replace a much larger percentage of gasoline than the 25% figure mentioned above, but with methanol and ethanol blended with gas we could protect our economy from the relentlessly rising price of oil and perhaps start to see some real economic growth. This would improve the employment situation and we would have more people well off enough to buy the more expensive options like hybrids and plug-ins.

Even though I write about this, I do not expect this to happen. People are too easily fooled by disinformation. We will wait for electric cars to cut into gasoline usage perhaps 25%, in say 25 yrs. Of course, the price of oil will have killed our economy years before that could happen and the planet will be blazing and the ocean fish populations will crash long before that will happen. but I like to write this stuff so I can say later: "I told you so!"