E85 in the United States
Encyclopedia
E85
is an abbreviation for an ethanol fuel blend of up to 85% denatured
ethanol fuel
and gasoline
or other hydrocarbon (HC) by volume
.
NOTES:
Minnesota
has the largest number of E85 fuel locations of any U.S. state
with close to 350 stations, while Illinois
has the second-greatest number of E85 pumps with about 160. Although Minnesota has the most E85 pumps they only represent a tiny fraction of the total fuel outlets. According to Oil Price Information Service (OPIS) there are approximately 140,000 publicly accessible retail gasoline stations in the United States.
(All filling stations in Minnesota are however required to sell E10, a mixture of 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline.)
mandated the use of E85 in state vehicles whenever possible in May 2005. Similarly, whereas selling any fuel containing more than 10% ethanol is still currently illegal in some states, even this is rapidly changing. For example, Florida
proposed changing state law to permit the sale of alternative fuels such as E85 at an October 7, 2005 meeting, and held public hearings on October 24. The expected outcome of having held this hearing is the changing of Florida state law to permit the selling of alternative fuels such as E85 by the end of 2005 to the general public. (At that time, only county, state, and Federal fleet vehicles could purchase E85 in Florida, from only 3 pumps in the state.) Several other states have similar laws still on their books that prevent the sale of E85 to the general public. The expected general outcome, though, is the rapidly widening acceptance of E85 sales to the general public in all of the United States by the end of 2006.
s (FFVs) are required to operate on alternative fuels 100% of the time upon the signing of the Energy Policy Act of 2005
into law by President Bush on August 8, 2005. (See Section 701 for this requirement.) Formerly, such FFVs were required to be operated by the end of 2005 on alternative fuels only 51% of the time (i.e., the majority of the time) by Executive Order 13149. (See Executive Order 13149, dated April 21, 2000.) This means that the US Government's use of E85 is effectively doubled as of August 8, 2005 with the signing into law of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This jump in consumption had the effect of limiting public availability of E85 coincident with shortages of gasoline due to impacts of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico
during the 2005 hurricane season. Although the price of corn had not changed greatly, the usage of E85 nonetheless jumped, thereby creating a shortage of E85, and causing E85 prices to rise coincident with gasoline prices during the 2005 Hurricane Season.
For the 2009 automobile year, General Motors will offer 23 different engine/model Flex Fuel vehicle combinations. Ford Motor company offers eight models, Chrysler will offer 11 models, and Toyota will offer just two. Daimler (Mercedes-Benz) has one model (C300) as well, and is probably the only one amongst the luxury car makers.
In US, Honda does not offer any E85 powered flexfuel vehicles in 2009.
GM has stated a commitment to dedicate 50% of its production to Flex-Fuel E85 capable vehicles by the 2012 model year. Also by 2012 all products of British luxury car-maker Bentley Motors will be Flex-Fuel using a patented fuel-system and an in-line fuel sensor.
As of 2008, there were an estimated 7 million Flex-Fuel capable vehicles on the road in the United States. A recent GM study found that roughly 70 percent of its flex-fuel vehicle owners did not know they could use E85, and fewer than 10 percent did so.
. In the final week of the campaign, DFL Lieutenant Governor candidate Judi Dutcher
was stumping for her running mate Mike Hatch
. A reporter asked Dutcher what Hatch's stance on E85 was and Dutcher appeared to be unfamiliar with E85. As Hatch tried to cover up Dutcher's gaffe, he became angry with reporters which many people think led to a lack of support and Pawlenty's re-election in an election year when Republicans did not fare well as a group.
E85
E85 is an abbreviation for an ethanol fuel blend of up to 85% denatured ethanol fuel and gasoline or other hydrocarbon by volume. E85 is commonly used by flex-fuel vehicles in the US, Canada, and Europe. Some of the benefits of E85 over conventional gasoline powered vehicles include the potential...
is an abbreviation for an ethanol fuel blend of up to 85% denatured
Methylated spirit
Denatured alcohol or methylated spirits is ethanol that has additives to make it more poisonous or unpalatable, and thus, undrinkable. In some cases it is also dyed....
ethanol fuel
Ethanol fuel
Ethanol fuel is ethanol , the same type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages. It is most often used as a motor fuel, mainly as a biofuel additive for gasoline. World ethanol production for transport fuel tripled between 2000 and 2007 from 17 billion to more than 52 billion litres...
and gasoline
Gasoline
Gasoline , or petrol , is a toxic, translucent, petroleum-derived liquid that is primarily used as a fuel in internal combustion engines. It consists mostly of organic compounds obtained by the fractional distillation of petroleum, enhanced with a variety of additives. Some gasolines also contain...
or other hydrocarbon (HC) by volume
Volume
Volume is the quantity of three-dimensional space enclosed by some closed boundary, for example, the space that a substance or shape occupies or contains....
.
Availability
The number of stations in the United States that sell E85 is a constantly changing number. Each month, more stations are added to the list, as station owners either add new E85 tanks, or convert existing tanks and pumps to sell E85. One database that encourages users to submit station locations and prices is called http://e85prices.com http://E85prices.com. and lists, as of January 2011, over 2524 stations carrying the fuel in the United States.- All data March 2008 from the Department of Energy and E85refueling.com. Links go to each state's list of stations; see notes below for caveats. For each state the total number of facilities is given. Numbers in parentheses are the number of publicly accessible facilities, when that number is less than the total in a state. Note: For updated locations, see http://e85prices.com http://e85prices.com As of January 25, 2011, there are now 2644 stations in the U.S. selling E85.
| State | Stations | State | Stations | State | Stations | State | Stations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 14 (2) | Alaska | 0 | Arizona | 31 (30) | Arkansas | 10 |
| California | 32 (28) | Colorado | 83 | Connecticut | 4 | Delaware | 1 |
| District of Columbia | 3 (1) | Florida | 27 (5) | Georgia | 34 | Hawaii | 0 |
| Idaho | 5(4) | Illinois | 223 | Indiana | 136 | Iowa | 132 (91) |
| Kansas | 54 | Kentucky | 13 | Louisiana | 9 | Maine | 0 |
| Maryland | 17 | Massachusetts | 2 | Michigan | 112 (61) | Minnesota | 378 |
| Mississippi | 5 | Missouri | 116 | Montana | 3 | Nebraska | 62 |
| Nevada | 23 | New Hampshire | 0 | New Jersey | 2 | New Mexico | 7 |
| New York | 29 | North Carolina | 19 | North Dakota | 41 | Ohio | 63 |
| Oklahoma | 9 | Oregon | 12 | Pennsylvania | 27 | Rhode Island | 0 |
| South Carolina | 59 (58) | South Dakota | 82 | Tennessee | 26 | Texas | 47 |
| Utah | 5 | Vermont | 0 | Virginia | 4 (3) | Washington | 12 |
| West Virginia | 3 (2) | Wisconsin | 133 | Wyoming | 8 |
NOTES:
- Not all stations are publicly accessible.
- Some facilities that are publicly accessible only accept fleet purchasing cards.
- Data is outdated. Please check the links before you use this data.
- Data sourced from U.S. Department of Energy & NGO National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition and NGO USA Energy Independence Publications may differ
- Station count usually the greater of two numbers when sources differ.
Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
has the largest number of E85 fuel locations of any U.S. state
U.S. state
A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...
with close to 350 stations, while Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
has the second-greatest number of E85 pumps with about 160. Although Minnesota has the most E85 pumps they only represent a tiny fraction of the total fuel outlets. According to Oil Price Information Service (OPIS) there are approximately 140,000 publicly accessible retail gasoline stations in the United States.
(All filling stations in Minnesota are however required to sell E10, a mixture of 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline.)
Constraints
Concerns about rising gasoline prices and energy dependence have led to a resurgence of interest in E85 fuel; for example, NebraskaNebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
mandated the use of E85 in state vehicles whenever possible in May 2005. Similarly, whereas selling any fuel containing more than 10% ethanol is still currently illegal in some states, even this is rapidly changing. For example, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
proposed changing state law to permit the sale of alternative fuels such as E85 at an October 7, 2005 meeting, and held public hearings on October 24. The expected outcome of having held this hearing is the changing of Florida state law to permit the selling of alternative fuels such as E85 by the end of 2005 to the general public. (At that time, only county, state, and Federal fleet vehicles could purchase E85 in Florida, from only 3 pumps in the state.) Several other states have similar laws still on their books that prevent the sale of E85 to the general public. The expected general outcome, though, is the rapidly widening acceptance of E85 sales to the general public in all of the United States by the end of 2006.
Federal use
US Federal fleet flexible-fuel vehicleFlexible-fuel vehicle
A flexible-fuel vehicle or dual-fuel vehicle is an alternative fuel vehicle with an internal combustion engine designed to run on more than one fuel, usually gasoline blended with either ethanol or methanol fuel, and both fuels are stored in the same common tank...
s (FFVs) are required to operate on alternative fuels 100% of the time upon the signing of the Energy Policy Act of 2005
Energy Policy Act of 2005
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 is a bill passed by the United States Congress on July 29, 2005, and signed into law by President George W. Bush on August 8, 2005, at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico...
into law by President Bush on August 8, 2005. (See Section 701 for this requirement.) Formerly, such FFVs were required to be operated by the end of 2005 on alternative fuels only 51% of the time (i.e., the majority of the time) by Executive Order 13149. (See Executive Order 13149, dated April 21, 2000.) This means that the US Government's use of E85 is effectively doubled as of August 8, 2005 with the signing into law of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This jump in consumption had the effect of limiting public availability of E85 coincident with shortages of gasoline due to impacts of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico
Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico is a partially landlocked ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In...
during the 2005 hurricane season. Although the price of corn had not changed greatly, the usage of E85 nonetheless jumped, thereby creating a shortage of E85, and causing E85 prices to rise coincident with gasoline prices during the 2005 Hurricane Season.
Price
, E85 is frequently sold for up to 36% lower price per quantity than gasoline. Much of this discount can be attributed to various government subsidies, and, at least in the United States, the elimination of state taxes that typically apply to gasoline and can amount to 47 cents, or more, per gallon of fuel. The US federal tax exemption that keeps ethanol economically competitive with petroleum fuel products is due to expire in 2007, but this exemption may be extended through legislative action. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the price of E85 rose to nearly on par with the cost of 87 octane gasoline in many states in the United States, and was for a short time the only fuel available when gasoline was sold out, but within four weeks of Katrina, the price of E85 had fallen once more to a 20% to 35% lower cost than 87 octane gasoline.Vehicles
In US, Honda does not offer any E85 powered flexfuel vehicles in 2009.
GM has stated a commitment to dedicate 50% of its production to Flex-Fuel E85 capable vehicles by the 2012 model year. Also by 2012 all products of British luxury car-maker Bentley Motors will be Flex-Fuel using a patented fuel-system and an in-line fuel sensor.
As of 2008, there were an estimated 7 million Flex-Fuel capable vehicles on the road in the United States. A recent GM study found that roughly 70 percent of its flex-fuel vehicle owners did not know they could use E85, and fewer than 10 percent did so.
E85 and the 2006 Minnesota Governor's race
In the 2006 election for Minnesota Governor, the issue of E85 may have helped re-elect Republican Tim PawlentyTim Pawlenty
Timothy James "Tim" Pawlenty , also known affectionately among supporters as T-Paw, is an American politician who served as the 39th Governor of Minnesota . He was a Republican candidate for President of the United States in the 2012 election from May to August 2011...
. In the final week of the campaign, DFL Lieutenant Governor candidate Judi Dutcher
Judi Dutcher
Judith H. Dutcher is an attorney and former politician who served as the Minnesota State Auditor from 1995 – 2003 as both a Republican and Democrat . She was the first woman to serve as Minnesota State Auditor....
was stumping for her running mate Mike Hatch
Mike Hatch
Michael Allen Hatch is an American politician, and was Attorney General of Minnesota from 1999 to 2007. In 2006, he was the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party nominee for governor of Minnesota...
. A reporter asked Dutcher what Hatch's stance on E85 was and Dutcher appeared to be unfamiliar with E85. As Hatch tried to cover up Dutcher's gaffe, he became angry with reporters which many people think led to a lack of support and Pawlenty's re-election in an election year when Republicans did not fare well as a group.
See also
- E85E85E85 is an abbreviation for an ethanol fuel blend of up to 85% denatured ethanol fuel and gasoline or other hydrocarbon by volume. E85 is commonly used by flex-fuel vehicles in the US, Canada, and Europe. Some of the benefits of E85 over conventional gasoline powered vehicles include the potential...
- Ethanol fuel in the United StatesEthanol fuel in the United StatesThe United States became the world's largest producer of ethanol fuel in 2005. The U.S. produced 13.2 billion U.S. liquid gallons of ethanol fuel in 2010, and together with Brazil, accounted for 88% of that year's global production...
- Flexible-fuel vehicleFlexible-fuel vehicleA flexible-fuel vehicle or dual-fuel vehicle is an alternative fuel vehicle with an internal combustion engine designed to run on more than one fuel, usually gasoline blended with either ethanol or methanol fuel, and both fuels are stored in the same common tank...
(FFV)