06/03/08 Rebuttal Part 2

Rebuttal Part 2. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Ever since the 80's when ethanol was being introduced into the fuel supply, there have been reports of mechanical issues. Last week's report by a Houston TV station that cars burning ethanol fuel are experiencing more mechanical problems seems to be another attempt to turn the public against the renewable fuel source. Robert White, Deputy Director of the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council says that ethanol can't be the cause. WHITE: I mean you get down to the fundamentals, that ethanol is  because of the oxygen content and the cleaner burning properties of it  that it actually burns cleaner and more thoroughly than gasoline. So the gummy deposits are absolutely not going to happen. You look at the bonus of the octane that ethanol provides, for every 10% ethanol you add to regular gasoline it increases octane 2 ½ to 3% that helps keep your car from knocking or pinging. In all fairness, White does say that there can be issues with ethanol. WHITE: The only times you have problems with ethanol are typically when a fuel retailer is not doing their proper housekeeping. And that can really be one of two things; they have an extreme amount of water in their tanks and water will cause phase separation in ethanol blends and the second is not cleaning their tanks before they add ethanol. In that case ethanol will do what it is designed to do and that is clean the gunk out of tanks and that is then pumped into the vehicle. WHITE: There's tons of data and research from nearly 3 decades now that prove that emissions are lower with ethanol. It is in fact cleaner burning and all of these myths are just being dusted off the shelf and being put back out there at a time when the ethanol industry is trying to expand and help the consumers continue to diversify their fuel supply. White is unsure what the mechanics quoted in the report really had to gain unless they were fishing for new customers since he says many car manufacturers recommend ethanol. WHITE: The data is well documents and we even encourage people to pull out their owner's manual. I a service technician tells you ethanol is bad and you pull it out and General Motors even recommend it, then where does the truth lie? An interesting note, at this year's Indianapolis 500 all of the cars were powered by 100% fuel grade ethanol. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.