Could the US president’s push for greater use of ethanol in transport stifle the development of next-generation biofuels? That’s the question one article poses for us today as the US Senate debates new legislation which would require car makers to equip new vehicles to run on both ethanol and gasoline and require service stations to install new pumps to dispense blends of the two fuels.
According to desmoinesregister.com, the legislation designed to increase ethanol use in cars and trucks, sponsored by Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa and supported by the ethanol industry, has been met by some concern from those who stand in opposition to the wider use of ethanol as a transport fuel.
The website reports that Sen. Jeff Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is worried that building an infrastructure for ethanol could discourage the development of synthetic versions of gasoline and diesel which could hold stronger environmental credentials and be easier to introduce to the marketplace.
Those fuels, which are being researched at Iowa State University and elsewhere, could, according to experts, be used in conventional engines and distributed through existing pipelines and service stations- thus side-stepping the need for special infrastructure required to retail higher blends of ethanol. Such "drop-in" fuels are the "best fit for the country" in the medium to long term, Bingaman said at a hearing Thursday on Harkin’s proposal.
"We should not go so far in locking our infrastructure into ethanol that we prevent different, and perhaps even better, renewable fuels from coming to market in the future," Bingaman told desmoinesregister.com.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently approved raising the legal limit for the use of ethanol in transport fuel to 15 per cent mix for newer vehicles, while the US President, Barack Obama also announced that he wants all federal vehicles to be run on alternative fuels, including ethanol, by 2015, as part of his measures to free the US from a heavy dependence on foreign, imported oil (see story).
In Germany, a similar push to increase ethanol use resulted in market chaos as consumers shied away from the newly introduced E10 fuel (10 per cent ethanol, 90 per cent petrol), causing a shortage of regular petrol (see story).
What do you think? Is supporting the market for ethanol wise? And will it prevent better fuels from achieving their market potential?
