May 18, 2010
Ethanol and the Oil Spill
The full scope of the environmental catastrophe due to the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico will not be learned for some time – but one thing is certain: if we are ever to drop our addiction to foreign oil and clean our environment, we need to increase our investment in domestic renewable fuels, like ethanol.
In an interview on National Public Radio aired on Tuesday, Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for Analysis of Global Security, says that as long as cars, trucks and other vehicles run on nothing but oil, we will continue to rely on foreign nations for our supply – or offshore rigs drilling in environmentally-risky areas. He warns that shutting down offshore drilling for oil isn’t the answer, as much as developing alternative sources of transportation fuel, like ethanol. You can hear Luft’s interview here.
At Growth Energy, we know that ethanol is the only widely-available and commercially-viable alternative we have to gasoline refined from oil. Ethanol creates U.S. jobs, cleans the air, strengthens national security – and best of all, it is here right now.
Ethanol displaces the equivalent of 500,000 barrels per day of gasoline and saves consumers approximately $180 a year in gas prices. Ethanol made from grain is also 59 percent cleaner than gasoline - with cellulosic ethanol 86 percent cleaner than gasoline.
Today, only about 10 percent ethanol is blended into our fuel but there are opportunities before Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency right now that will help the U.S. invest in more ethanol use.
If the EPA approves Growth Energy’s Green Jobs Waiver to increase the blend level to E15, we will be able to avoid the importation of another seven billion gallons of gasoline and eliminate as much as 20 million metric tons of GHG emissions from the air in a year — the equivalent of taking 10.5 million vehicles off the road. If we increase the number of Flex Fuel Vehicles on the road – and increase the number of blender pumps available at fueling stations to consumers have a real choice at the pump – we could reduce our dependency on oil even more.
Moving to E15 is a step we can take right now to make our environment cleaner and our country more energy secure. Increasing the use of renewable fuels in our gas tanks can help us become a more energy secure nation and a cleaner nation.
