By ANN HINCH
Associate Editor

URBANA, Ill. — Two days before last Friday’s third annual Biofuels Law and Regulation Conference at the University of Illinois in Urbana, an Associated Press photographer snapped a picture of an Exxon sign in Washington, D.C., bearing gasoline prices at and above the $5 mark.

In Indianapolis Saturday, many stations featured regular gas for $3.99 per gallon; one that also sold E85 listed it for $3.29. At the April 22 UoI conference, Geoff Cooper – vice president of research and analysis for the Renewable Fuels Assoc. (RFA) – noted that drivers of flex-fuel vehicles can notice as much as a 25 percent drop in miles per gallon (mpg) when using cornstarch E85.

Last weekend, the driver of an empty flex-fuel car with a 15.5-gallon tank would have spent $61.85 to fill it with $3.99 gasoline (an E10 blend), or $51 for E85 priced at $3.29.

But, if that driver then experienced a 25 percent loss of mpg, this seems to mean for the same miles traveled on a tank of regular gasoline, they would have had to spend a total of almost $68 in E85.

“We haven’t seen those prices in the right ballpark to incentivize drivers to use more E85” yet, Cooper told colleagues, lawyers, academics and others attending the conference.

He said research has shown the most efficient blend of gas and ethanol is E20-E30, and that blender pumps are the best way to deliver this to consumers. He explained a blender pump (the USDA calls it a flexible fuel pump) draws from two separate tanks – one gas and one ethanol – rather than one set pre-mix, such as E10 or E85. It allows the driver to choose their own ratio.
“We think that’s the way of the future – let the consumer decide what’s best for him in terms of pricing and use,” Cooper said.

According to a March 2011 report the RFA commissioned from Michigan-based Air Improvement Resource, Inc., out of approximately 160,000 gas stations nationwide with 6-8 pumps each, only about 300 pumps are now blender. To meet the federal government’s escalating Renewable Fuels Standard, the study stated by 2022, there should be at least 53,000 nationwide – or one at a third of all stations.

Earlier this month, the RFA reported the USDA is accepting applications until June for financial incentives in installing 10,000 blender pumps over the next five years. Interested parties should visit www.byoethanol.com or contact their nearest USDA Service Center for details.

More than one obstacle
But improving mileage performance of high-ethanol blends is just one of “a whole host of obstacles” the biofuel industry faces in growing over the next decade and beyond, Cooper said.

The blend wall itself is what he calls the biggest challenge. This is what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determines the safest maximum blend for non-flex-fuel vehicles, which controls how much ethanol can be manufactured and sold.

A few months ago, the EPA determined E15 is safe for engines of cars and light trucks manufactured after 2000. But this doesn’t mean stations automatically started offering E15 alongside their E10. For one, Cooper said there is pump-labeling to think of so drivers aren’t confused. Also, he said there are issues with Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. certifying E15 as safe for all those vehicle parts.

Lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions accounting is another problem, he said; this refers to calculating how many emissions a biofuel puts out from the feedstock’s cultivation up to use in a fuel tank. This is what touched off the debate about how U.S. biofuel production might indirectly affect land use (especially dense rain- and other forests) in other countries.

Cooper said the EPA “duct-taped a whole bunch” of projection models from various experts together to decide that corn ethanol would only be about 21 percent more efficient in reducing emissions by 2022, than pure gasoline. Cooper repeated what many farm and ethanol groups have asked: Is fossil fuel production being held to the same calculation standards?

No, he said. For one, the baseline used for fossil fuels is 2005, not 2022 estimates; second, he said the carbon intensity of gas production (emissions) is getting worse over time. “We’re essentially comparing 2022 biofuels to 2005 petroleum,” Cooper explained.

Cooper said the biofuel industry does have the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2) to help it develop and find customers more easily. Still, he said in order to meet RFS2 mandates up through 2022, the industry still has to find ways to overcome these challenges.