Biofuels and Future Potential Problems Down the Road

It is quite possible that there will be future potential problems and issues with biofuels down the road. For instance if we are to break our addiction to Middle Eastern foreign oil we will need to produce 15% or more of our fuel by growing it here in the United States Midwest, but to do that we need to produce quite a bit of it. It is possible to grow it, but we need refining capacity and a distribution network to get to market. Additionally people will need to have cars, which run on flex fuels or can run both diesel and ethanol.

After we hit 15% biofuels we will need to expand at 10% per year and that will be tough because there’s only so much water and only so much farmland to make this and not all the cars on the road are capable of using E85 Ethanol, which is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. It would destroy your car engine if your car was not made for this. Most automobiles can run 15% ethanol and 85% gasoline without too much problem or damage to the engine.

If our goal is to break America’s addiction to Middle Eastern foreign oil we will need to ramp up the process quicker and figure out a way to get all the ethanol and biofuels to market for both personal automobiles and over the road trucks. We should also look into ways to allow biofuels to be used in aviation in the future. Bio-diesel must be available at truck stops, card key fuel stations, travel centers and large government GSA offices.

We know from the past that blended fuel programs have been very popular in many states but generally this is because of the discounted fuel tax, which keeps the price lower than regular gasoline or diesel fuel. In the future ethanol will have to cost less to produce and deliver to market than gasoline. That might be difficult considering that OPEC will lower the price of their oil in order to keep ethanol away from the American people. All these issues are very important considerations and we must think on this in 2006.