FLAWED STUDY SEEKS ANOTHER ETHANOL LIFT

Producers of fuel ethanol are resorting to an ever-popular genre of political mischief: fiction masquerading as science. A tax subsidy as great as 60/gal from the U.S. government and similar goodies from many states apparently are not enough for makers of this otherwise noncommercial fuel additive.

Oct. 18, 1993

3 min read

A study conducted recently for the Council of Great Lakes Governors challenges assumptions about environmental drawbacks of gasoline-ethanol blends. It says that in the year 2000, peak ozone pollution in Chicago and Milwaukee would be no higher if reformulated gasoline used there contained 10 vol % ethanol than it would be if the fuel contained standard amounts of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE). The findings sound good for ethanol, which is generally believed to aggravate ozone pollution by increasing gasoline volatility.

NOX, VOCS INCREASE

Indeed, the Great Lakes study doesn't dispute ethanol's contributions to two key ozone precursors: nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). It acknowledges that emissions of those substances would be greater from gasoline containing 10 vol % ethanol, which would lift oxygen content to 3.5 wt %, than it would be from fuel containing MTBE blended to 2 wt % oxygen. But it says the greater emissions wouldn't matter in Chicago and Milwaukee. Explanations hinge on dubious assumptions about emission offsets from off-road engines and NOx scavenging of VOCS, which may occur in Chicago and Milwaukee but certainly does not everywhere.

Scientific doubts about the study attracted a long letter of caution from the Environmental Protection Agency's regulation development and support division. And the ethanol blend it purports to test would be illegal.

The Clean Air Act mandates that reformulated gasoline decrease emissions of NOx and VOCS; use of the ethanol-based reformulated fuel envisioned in the Great Lakes study thus would violate the law. And ethanol blended to 3.5 wt % oxygen in gasoline would exceed volatility limits for reformulated fuel. A waiver from those limits is the political goal behind the study. Ethanol needs the higher oxygen concentration-and thus the volatility waiver-in order to compare favorably against other oxygenates. What the study does, then, is assert its objective, assume away effects of illegal increases in VOC and NOx emissions, and conclude no change in ozone pollution.

WAIVER POLITICS

Former President George Bush sowed the seeds of this nonsense last October, when he proposed an ethanol volatility waiver in a futile lurch for votes in Illinois. The move subverted the unique regulatory negotiation (reg-neg) agreement on new fuel requirements signed in August 1991 by oil, ethanol, and environmental groups under auspices of the EPA. Bush's proposal was fatally complex. But ethanol groups - whining that the reg-neg agreement they signed shuts them out of the reformulated gasoline market - continue to push. Their Great Lakes fiction persuaded 76 U.S. representatives to call for more ethanol in reformulated fuel - which shows that at least 76 lawmakers don't read their own laws.

Appropriately, other signatories of the reg-neg agreement are incensed. They have circulated the EPA letter that challenges the Great Lakes study and asked duped representatives to think again. Meanwhile, the controversy impedes progress toward compliance with challenging mandates for reformulated fuels. It's time to get serious. Ethanol's shoddy political shenanigans have steamrolled commerce and taxpayer interest long enough. They must not be allowed to do the same with science.