And yes, I’m sure we don’t produce enough corn to completely switch over yet. But farmers are looking for something to give them a reason to grow more. And ethanol can apparently be produced by lots of different crops. One of the big crops here in Louisiana is sugar cane, which can produce ethanol. I know our local sugar cane farmers would love to produce more, and be assured that they can sell it.

I’ll see what I can do to start the linking campaign. Thanks for that idea!

Believe me when I tell you that I feel the pain when our fleet gets fueled up. I have a vested interest in fuel prices dropping.

I like the idea. However, I did recently hear or read somewhere that we don’t produce anywhere near the corn needed to make this fuel available en masse. Some quick figured I pulled from the web:

It takes 1 bushel of corn (the crop of choice, and the largest crop in the US) to make 2.7 gallons of ethanol.

The US produced 11,807,000,000 bushels of corn in 2004.

In March 2005, we (US) consumed an average of 320,500,000 gallons of gasoline per day.

This means if we put 100% of our corn production into making ethanol, it’d make enough fuel for less than a third of the year.

That’s a great start, and it sounds like there are more materials than can be turned into ethanol (rice hulls, for example). And some additional engineering needs to be done on engines – though today’s engines can take the fuel, it is a lot tougher (more corrosive) on engines than gasoline is, meaning more engines on scrap heaps.

It needs a push – we are starting to get these stations in our area, and I love the potential for saving at the pump – $100+ per vehicle for every vehicle makes me a little woozy when the monthly invoice comes.

I was pretty pumped a couple of years ago, when I learned about E85 and E95 (the diesel version of E85) and that all of the new Chevy trucks could run on it from the factory. I was not as pumped when I learned my 2001 would not run on it but still thought it was very cool that the 2002+ Tahoes (among others) ran on it from the factory. It was a moot point, because I would not have been able to buy the stuff here in CA anyway.

But, as rand said, it is really about who has the influence in Washington D.C. when it comes to what our policies will be. Maybe we all need to start linking to big terms like “oil” and “gasoline” to E85 websites? One thing is for sure, it really sucks paying $3.35+ a gallon for gas.

There might be a random Santorum here or there who disagrees, but generally that has to do with personal vested interests. If you’re wondering why there isn’t an effort to get these pumps put in nationwide, just look at who spend the lobbying and re-election campaign dollars for congress (hint – the ethanol lobby is a micron of the oil industry’s size).

Its a big issue. I don’t see one good reason for the US or most of the world to continue to suck up lots of oil.

Dave