It’s hard to keep up with what’s in and what’s out of the energy bill at this point, but here’s a reminder, courtesy of Washington’s The Hill blog, that big bucks for biolfuels won’t mean you can actually use them. The bill seeks billions in biofeul subsidies, but does nothing to force oil companies to make them available at your gas station. A key paragraph:
A study found that more than 99 percent of flex-fuel cars, which can
reduce oil use if they use E85, a mix of 85 percent ethanol and 15
percent gasoline, run on regular gasoline because E85 is not
available. Only 1,133 public service stations out of 170,000 sell
E85. More than one third of these stations are in Illinois and
Minnesota. New Jersey has 116,512 FFV’s and zero E85 stations. There
are twelve other states and Washington D.C. that do not have a single
E85 station, covering an area that is approximately one third of the
continental United States and have a combined 404,877 FFV’s.
OilWatchdog, which broke the story on the restrictions of oil company dealer contracts, has all the info on why you can’t buy biofuels under the Chevron canopy.