Unfettered Letters

Ethanol

Where do you buy it?

I keep hearing about ethanol and other alternative fuels and how it is supposed to be cheaper than regular gasoline. But when I search for a station that says they sell it, often they are sold out.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought companies were in business to make profits. If one single gas station that sells E-85 in Overland Park is constantly sold out, wouldn’t that sort of raise some eyebrows?

Why aren’t other gas stations carrying this product? And what is keeping local governments from using it? Especially with regular gas prices hovering just below $3 a gallon.

A person could save money using this fuel. Or are we so addicted to unleaded gasoline that other fuels seem just too ridiculous?

I guess my main question is, besides the one ethanol gas station in Overland Park, where can I buy this alternate fuel?

Daryl Sammons
Independence

Try other plant material

There have been stories about a possible shortage of corn for ethanol fuel. It is also a shame to waste a consumable grain for a fuel source. Cellulose processing is a way to use the corn stalk, wood waste and switchgrass to generate ethanol. The most prolific and densest plant with record production this year is ragweed. I propose that it should be harvested to near extinction, and see if anyone has regrets.

Brad Lieffring
Prairie Village

Renewable fuels

I applaud Gov. Matt Blunt for signing into law House Bill 1270, the Missouri Renewable Fuel Standard Act (7/11, Business). This legislation is a win-win for both Missouri farmers and consumers.

While providing an economic boost for our state’s corn producers, the bill protects consumers by ensuring that distributors are exempt from purchasing gasoline blended with ethanol if the price is higher than unblended gasoline. In addition, the use of ethanol has proven to reduce carbon monoxide emissions, making the air we breathe much cleaner.

Missouri is a national leader in agriculture. It makes complete sense to take advantage of our agricultural strength to answer a portion of our nation’s energy needs. Through increased production of renewable fuels, we will reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil.

Thanks to Gov. Blunt’s strong leadership, our state is now positioned to be a national leader in this exciting arena.

Fred Ferrell
Director, Missouri Department of Agriculture
Jefferson City

Ethanol

The editorial about ethanol, “Policies could add fuel to gas-crisis fire” (5/21), stated that we could be “at the mercy of the corn industry.” Are we not now at the mercy of the oil companies? How much mercy are they showing?

Wouldn’t ethanol production provide competition in the marketplace and help keep gas prices down?

Yes, there are some problems with ethanol, but I believe these problems can be solved.

President Kennedy committed this country to going to the moon in the ’60s. The country rose to the occasion. Why can’t we rise to the occasion to declare our independence from foreign oil?

When Kennedy gave his speech, no one had ever gone to the moon. Brazil, on the other hand, has become independent of foreign oil.

I believe we can become foreign-oil independent, if we could just find someone to lead us there.

Tom Herrmann
Overland Park

Solar power

Kit Wagar’s front-page article, “Fuel from corn — an ethanol primer” (5/17), failed to mention what is required for ethanol production. According to Cornell University’s David Pimental, who has been studying energy use in corn production since 1970, it takes 1.29 gallons of gasoline to make 1 gallon of corn ethanol.

Although the family farm is important to maintain, it should not be a higher priority than fossil-fuel consumption.

If politicians want to get serious about global warming and our dependence on oil, they need to come up with ideas that make sense instead of ideas that sound good in the newspaper. Missouri could help farmers and the environment, while becoming a national leader in renewable energy, by investing in solar technology and subsidizing farmers to purchase solar panels, enabling them to sell excess energy back to energy companies.

Jeff Stilley
Lee’s Summit

Conservation

It’s good to see The Star’s leading conservative edging toward conservation of our continent’s oil resources (2/7, “Weaning autos away from oil” by E. Thomas McClanahan). However, using ethanol and electricity generated by burning coal to run cars would only contribute to more global warming. It also would further spread the current drought from the Western states into the Midwest.

It’s too bad he didn’t go as far as proposing to conserve energy by requiring new cars, trucks, and SUVs to get significantly higher gasoline mileage. That would have the most beneficial impact in the short term. In the longer term, increased use of nuclear (assuming the problem of safe disposal of radioactive waste can be solved), wind and solar energy — in addition to conservation — will be needed to cure our nation’s addiction to oil.

T.F. Thomas
Kansas City

Why ethanol helps

I would like to reply to the 11/7 letter from T.F. Thomas, which missed a pivotal point.

One factor in using ethanol that Mr. Thomas did not address is that the carbon dioxide put into the air from burning ethanol is taken from the atmosphere when the corn is grown. So the net environmental effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide is much less than that of burning any fossil fuel. The net effect could be that there would be less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than now if everyone used ethanol instead of gasoline. That’s because not all of the carbon dioxide taken from the air when growing corn will be put back into the air when ethanol is used.

This is a major advantage in using ethanol, not to mention the cost to our country from importing oil at $60-plus a barrel. Why pay farmers not to grow when they could make more money and we could all save money? The only losers would be oil-producing countries and the oil companies.

Corky Lewis
Lee’s Summit

Use of ethanol

The recent Business article on ethanol gave several good reasons to use gasoline with added ethanol — to reduce the imports of oil from overseas and to reduce the emissions of toxic compounds such as benzene and carbon monoxide. However, the statement “ethanol also reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 27 percent” was misleading.

In fact, combustion of ethanol emits about 2 percent more carbon dioxide (per unit energy released) than combustion of isooctane, a major component of gasoline.

Averaging over all the components of gasoline — which vary with the grade of gas, the season and the locale — combustion of ethanol instead of gasoline would reduce the emission of carbon dioxide by 5 to 10 percent.

However, the combustion of pure ethanol is not currently feasible in American cars.

Using a 10 percent ethanol blend instead of gasoline would reduce the carbon dioxide emissions by no more than 1 percent. Thus, adding ethanol to gasoline will not significantly reduce the contribution of car exhausts to global warming. To do that, we must simply burn less fuel, by buying cars which get more miles per gallon and driving more efficiently (fewer trips, less speeding up to stop lights, etc.)

T.F. Thomas
Professor of chemistry
Kansas City

Ethanol availability

I, too, enjoyed The Star’s recent article on ethanol blends. I did some research as well and found that it really isn’t offered in many places. Casey’s General Store is the only station listed in Leavenworth.
I was going to Lawrence and thought that I would check out the E-10 blend there, as many of the Kwik Shop stations were listed on the Kansas Corn Commission’s Web site.
When I pulled into the Kwik Shop, however, I saw that all of the grades looked the same, not distinguishing which octane had the E-10 blend. I went inside and inquired, and the gentleman told me that it was in the “mid-grade” octane.
I was a bit disappointed. As stated in the article, ethanol was to be cheaper for the consumer, yet it is being marketed in the “mid-grade” at a higher price.
I would prefer to support the corn farmers and not the oil tycoons, but it appears that they are in control of the ethanol market as well.
D. Wagner
Leavenworth

Finding ethanol

I enjoyed your article on ethanol blends as an alternative to 100-percent gasoline (10/16, Business), but unfortunately the Kansas City area doesn’t really offer E-10 or E-85 blends. Have you seen any at the gas stations in the area? I sure haven’t. In fact, I went to the Kansas Corn Commission Web site and found that only three gas stations in very rural Johnson County and one in Kansas City, Kan. offer ethanol blends. What gives?

Why doesn’t the Kansas City metropolitan area offer E-10, E-15 or E-85 blended gasolines? I find this frustrating, especially when ethanol is available in other areas.

My father is a corm grower. My guess is someone is profiting from this exclusion, and it’s not the farmer or the consumer.

It’s frustrating knowing that the cheaper ethanol blends are out there, but the local gas stations aren’t offering it up.

Corin Hammitt
Shawnee