My Response to a Simpleton's Argument Against Ethanol

Reply to James B. Meigs, a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City-Journal.org

Marc Rauch

By Marc J. Rauch
Exec. Vice President/Co-Publisher
THE AUTO CHANNEL

I was recently directed to an article published on City-Journal.org titled, "A Simple Policy to Reduce Food Prices". The article was written by James B. Meigs, a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.

The stated purpose of the article was to suggest "Repealing the EPA's biofuel boondoggle and overcome the Liquid Pork regime" that the author and website apparently fantasize over.

I'll start with my credentials: I'm the author of "THE ETHANOL PAPERS" (a 600-page book about alternative fuels, the history of engine fuels, and the science of using these fuels). I'm also the author of "YES, TIN LIZZIE WAS AN ALCOHOLIC" (a much shorter book about Henry Ford's development of the Model T automobile and his preference for ethanol as an engine fuel.) This shorter book also reveals how Prohibition was created by John Rockefeller and friends to block the use of ethanol as an engine fuel. I've been a guest and keynote speaker at many national and international energy-related conferences. In addition, as noted above, I'm co-founder and co-publisher of TheAutoChannel.com (the Internet's oldest and largest automotive information resource).

The story written by James B. Meigs is absolute nonsense. It is filled with inaccuracies and myths. For example, Mr. Meigs implies that the Renewable Fuel Standard mandated the use of ethanol to be blended with gasoline to address a variety of environmental and health issues. The RFS did no such thing; it mandated that something be used to mitigate the deadly effects of petroleum oil fuels and tetraethyl lead (TEL). It was actually the oil industry that selected ethanol as the ingredient. Several years earlier, when TEL was banned from most engine fuel uses in America, the oil industry by-passed ethanol to replace TEL in favor of MTBE (methyl tert-butyl ether), another poisonous concoction. MTBE is produced by the oil industry from its natural gas and petroleum oil assets. The oil industry chose this garbage because they figured they wouldn't lose money by outsourcing a needed oxygenate to outside interests.

However, within a fairly short period of time, MTBE was banned. The oil industry could have come up with some other garbage to poison the world with, but anything else would have cost them too much, so they - not the government - chose ethanol, which has been their mortal enemy for more than a century. Ethanol has been the oil industry's mortal enemy because it is a superior internal combustion engine fuel and there was no way that they could contain and own a fuel that can be made by anyone anywhere in the world, and it can't be patented.

But, the oil industry did do something they thought clever and to protect themselves from giving up too much to their mortal enemy. Big Oil got their friends in government and the EPA to limit ethanol's volume in every gallon of gasoline to just 10%. The oil industry then backed it's play to ensure the 10% cap by inventing myths such as the "Blend Wall," while also rolling back out the lies that they invented against ethanol decades earlier to frighten the public. If the oil industry did not "own" so many politicians and the EPA, the level of ethanol to be used to correct all the ills of gasoline and diesel fuels could have been - and should have been - much higher.

For example, Brazil has been mandating higher ethanol-gasoline blends for about 25 years before the enactment of the Renewable Fuel Standard. The automobiles driving on the roads in Brazil are the same as the automobiles on the roads in America. Similarly, Great Britain and other European countries regularly allowed (and in some cases, mandated) the use of alcohol-gasoline blends almost a century earlier).

Today, while America is still dicking around with allowing the year-round use of E15, Brazil has upped their mandated internal combustion engine fuels to be E30, and it will probably go up to at least E35 or E40 in the not too distant future. And, again, the vehicles on the road in Brazil are the same as those in use in America, Canada, Mexico, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, etc., etc. So, if there is a legitimate problem with using ethanol-gasoline blends higher that E10, the world would know about it, rather than just be intimidated by false myths.

Meigs Goes Dumpster Diving

In what I presume is an attempt to bolster his ill-informed attack on ethanol fuel, James Meigs dredges up hackneyed, preposterous anti-ethanol claims that have been thoroughly debunked, such as the Food vs. Fuel argument. I know that this argument has been thoroughly debunked because I am one of the significant debunkers of this horse manure. I've written about it numerous times, and then wrote and published the final word about this anti-ethanol nonsense in August 2022. My report is titled: BAM! Closing the Door to the Food vs. Ethanol Fuel Argument.

No one has ever successfully challenged my findings and conclusions. (If you, or someone you know, would like to challenge me, please make the introduction. So far, 2026 has been awfully boring and I would love some mental stimulation.)

Wrapped up into the Food vs. Fuel argument is the silliness about how much good farm land is used to grow corn and other ethanol crops. The great majority of the corn used to make ethanol serves multiple purposes, so it's not a matter of "one and done." The same corn kernels that are used to produce ethanol are then used to feed animals that humans eat. Consequently, corn use is not "food or fuel," it's "more food and more fuel." *

In any event, corn doesn't have to be used to make ethanol, there are a variety of other crops that can be used, and many of these other renewable crops provide greater annual ethanol yields than corn. Some of these other crops don't require much water or fertilizer, or any irrigable water and chemical fertilizer at all. The reason we use corn is that we have many farmers who do a great job of growing corn, and they could use the business. Some anti-ethanol people want to paint this as a negative, but there's nothing wrong with helping farmers because they feed us with many, many other items, too. America has provided billions and trillions of dollars to support the oil industry - far, far more than any subsidies given to corn farmers. Moreover, nearly all major and minor wars around the world since 1914 were fought over access to petroleum oil. We have never fought a war over corn, and we have never lost any military personnel while protecting the corn or ethanol industries. However, James B. Meigs doesn't mention any of this; he sticks with lies, prevarications, rumors, and negative myths about ethanol.

Mr. Meigs writes:

"...renewable biofuels are an environmental disaster. More than 20 million acres of cropland are devoted to corn-ethanol production, for example, which increases fertilizer and pesticide runoff. Without the mandated demand for ethanol, much of that land would remain as wild habitat or be available for other human needs."

This claim is nothing more than intimidation and rumor mongering based on an irrelevant out-of-context statistic. I already covered the use of the remnant high-protein corn (dried distillers grains - DDGS) that are used to feed cows, chickens, and pigs. It is no secret that beef, chicken, and pork are a central part of the global human diet. So, to imply that the growth of corn in some way reduces the availability of human necessities is outright stupidity.

To his subordinate point of increased "fertilizer and pesticide runoff," this only worsens the stupidity of his overall claim. The truth is that agricultural improvements since the enactment of the RFS two decades ago allow for the growth of far more corn per acre than ever been possible, while using less water and fertilizer than ever. And just as important, these agricultural improvements have benefitted the growth and availability of virtually all crops, not just "energy crops."

Then, to prove just how completely ignorant he is of the entire ethanol fuel issue, Jim Meigs trots out the asinine claim that ethanol use results in one-third fewer miles per gallon of fuel. This intensely vacuous argument is predicated on the comparative BTU ratings of ethanol vs. gasoline. Yes, gasoline indeed has a higher BTU (British Thermal Units) rating than ethanol, and that ethanol's BTU rating is approximately 33% lower than gasoline (gasoline is approximately 114,000 BTUs, ethanol is 76,000 BTUs). But, this comparison is misused in two ways, both of which make the claim a bad joke.

First, and foremost, the BTU ratings of gasoline and ethanol have absolutely nothing to do with internal combustion engine (ICE) performance. The BTU rating system was created to measure the capability of fuels (coal, wood, oil, natural gas) used to heat water to power steam engines. Internal combustion engines do not run on steam.

The use of BTU statistics to compare ICE performance was a concoction of the petroleum oil industry; it is meaningless. It is like trying to claim that gasoline is superior to ethanol because it has a prettier color. I completely and irrevocably destroyed the BTU argument several years ago when I wrote and published these three reports:

• The Irrelevance Of BTU Rating - Big Oil's Gimmick To Hoodwink The Public

• The Irrelevance Of BTU Rating - Revisited

• The Reason Why Some Ethanol-Gasoline Blends Outperform E0 in All Engines

The second reason why Meigs and other oil industry-sponsored charlatans or morons are incorrect when they use BTU rating to compare gasoline and ethanol is the "mathematics" of the claim; it literally doesn't add up!

Let's pretend for the moment that there's some energy-content relationship of BTU rating with internal combustion engine MPG performance. In order for the "33% fewer miles" and the "cost profile" suggested by Meigs to have any negative significance, you would have to compare the distinctly separate use of 100% ethanol fuel to ethanol-free gasoline (E0). But this doesn't happen because we use blends. In using E10 or E15, for example, you can't say that the replacement of 10% or 15% volume, respectively, in E10 or E15 magically reduces the blend to 76,000 BTUs.

An E10 blend averages out to about 110,000 BTUs; and an E15 blend averages out to about 108,000 BTUs. This means that E10 does not have 33% fewer BTUs than E0, it has only slightly less than 1% fewer BTUs. Similarly, E15 does not have 33% fewer BTUs than E0, it has just slightly more than 5% fewer BTUs. Therefore, if your automobile gets 20 miles to a gallon of ethanol-free gasoline, then (mathematically) it would get about 19.8 miles to a gallon of E10; and 19 miles to a gallon of E15. In the photo just below from Stillwater Associates (a transportation fuels consulting firm based in Irvine, CA), the price per gallon of 87 octane ethanol-free gasoline is a skosh under $2.54. The price per gallon of 87 octane E10 is 20 cents lower, roughly 8% cheaper. Consequently, if BTU rating comparison meant anything, then I have just shown how the use of an ethanol-gas blend still makes greater sense (while saving many cents) versus the mythical "energy-content" advantage of gasoline. Using an ethanol blend would provide a net gain benefit.

THE BOTTOM LINE

So, what have we learned here? That City-Journal.org published a stupid article attacking ethanol? That James Meigs, a Senior Fellow at Manhattan Institute is devoid of any knowledge about this issue? That the use of ethanol fuel is a good thing! You decide and let me know. I'll then either congratulate you on your understanding, or "esplain you" better.

* David Blume coined the phrase, "It's not Food vs Fuel, it's More Food and More Fuel".