It could be that emissions are reduced using ethanol, but here's the problem; the amount of energy in a gallon of ethanol is less than the amount of energy in a gallon of gas. So when you use gas with ethanol, you're going to get reduced gas mileage. I've seen this in my Civic.
There are scads of other issues with using corn to make ethanol, but I won't go into them, as they've been discussed elsewhere. Here's a link that might help, though:
The Great Ethanol Scam - BusinessWeek.
And here's another problem that you'll hear discussed nowhere else. I work at a US Environmental Protection Agency lab. One of the scientists I work with does a lot of work with gasoline additives. I asked him what he thought about ethanol, and he said that research showed that the additives in gasoline which are already known to be harmful when introduced to our environment (like when there's a gasoline spill or a leaking underground storage tank, the latter of which is very common), spread farther and faster when the gasoline in question has ethanol in it. He said that the problems with ethanol were well known and widely researched and accepted, that Congress was told about these issues, but that forcing Big Gasoline to add ethanol was the politically correct thing to do as a way to clean up our environment - even when the science proved the opposite.
But for me, it's really about wanting to get more bang for my gasoline buck.
Jim
ethanol free gas stations?
