12/23/08 Ethanol Update

Ethanol Update. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Toni Nuernberg is the Executive Director of the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council or EPIC. I recently chatted with Toni about the education of ethanol and how it is a struggle to get the word out. NUERNBERG: I come from Minnesota for example and Minnesota has had an E10 mandate for many, many years and pushing very hard for E20. I would venture to guess that most Minnesotans don't understand that they for year haven't bought any gasoline that was not a minimum of 10%. I addition we're working on blender pumps and putting infrastructure out there with retailers offering consumers a choice at the pump. She says they hope to be able to offer consumers multiple grades of ethanol mixes. That would be a great boon to everyone but Nuernberg cautions: NUERNBERG: I do need to caution that currently because of the E10 restriction on conventional vehicles; the higher blends are only for flex fuel vehicles. Our most recent research shows consumers are very interested in seeing the technology continue for flex fuel vehicles and they would like to see it combined with other technologies like hybrids and electric cars and they think that one of the best things that auto manufacturers could do is combine those technologies and give them the best of all worlds. I personally am amazed that we are still using the same basic combustion engine for propulsion. No matter how you pretty up the package with leather and electronic gizmo's, it is still the basic principal of a burning a fuel in a chamber that expands gases to push a piston. Shouldn't we be using something like a warp engine by now? But it does seem that the auto industry has been very slow to change. NUERNBERG: I think they just want to be sure that proper testing is done and that's their caution is that they don't want to have any concerns with warranties out there. And the good news is that the EPA has been doing some testing and they just released a preliminary study in October on engines and small engines included running on higher level blends, mid-blends, E20 and the preliminary results are very positive in that it's really not impacting it. So we hear all the time from consumers that tell us they have a conventional car and they're using that blender pump in their area and they're using a mid-level blend. She does not condone that action but she goes on to say that once the EPA finally signs off on it we should start seeing much more E20 and above blends. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.