The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 499
blending of ethanol with gasoline instead of any other biofuel or petroleum byproduct is a voluntary business decision. As it happens, ethanol is the best, the
least expensive, and the safest substance to blend with gasoline; therefore it is
the one that is primarily used. In America we grow corn, instead of another crop,
to meet the ethanol needs because we have lots of farmers who know how to
grow corn and because the climate in the agricultural states that need a moneymaking crop is more suited to corn than to sugar cane.
He then says that the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) is really the "Renewable
Fuel Racket," and says that it "artificially boosts the ethanol market that in turn
boosts the demand for corn," and he calls it a "massive boondoggle."
Not knowing what the Renewable Fuel Standard is about explains why he calls
it a "Renewable Fuel Racket" and a "massive boondoggle." On top of not understanding the RFS, Mr. Hilton clearly has no knowledge of history or automotive technology. This in itself is extremely surprising given Mr. Hilton's previous
position as Director of Strategy for David Cameron, the former Prime Minister
of Great Britain.
You see, Mr. Hilton, high compression internal combustion engines used in
most motorcars for the past 100 years require a fuel that does not cause engine
knock. Engine knock not only creates a rough running vehicle, but it can also
literally shake an engine apart. In order to quell the knock, an additive has to be
combined with gasoline (gasoline, also called "petrol" in the UK, is the primary
fuel used in America and certain other countries for these past 100 years). For
many years the anti-knock additive was tetra-ethyl lead. Tetra-ethyl lead (TEL)
is highly poisonous, even more poisonous than gasoline. It was finally banned
by Congress after they and the public were lied to by the petroleum oil industry
for more than 70 years. For a few years, the replacement for TEL was MTBE,
another poison. It was also banned.
So here we were, the highly industrialized world with millions and millions of onthe-road vehicles in need of a fuel that could power all these vehicles without
engine knock. The options are to use more poisonous 'aromatics' such as benzene, toluene, and xylene; or non-poisonous ethanol. Or to put it another way,
the option is expensive substances such as benzene, toluene, and xylene; or
an inexpensive substance like ethanol.
The "big government boondoggle," as Steve Hilton calls it, would be to bypass
ethanol and ignore the expensiveness and poisonous characteristics of aromatics. Perhaps, Mr. Hilton, you need a dictionary and some history books for
Christmas (or Chanukah) to sort this all out.
