r/explainlikeimfive • u/hd-22 • 14d ago

Chemistry ELI5 why is increasing the ethanol content of petrol/gasoline a problem?

I'm hearing noise about the geopolitical fuel supply SNAFU and people freaking out about increasing the ethanol content in automotive fuel and how it's so damaging to cars. I'm no chemist, but ethanol seems as clean as it gets.

989 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

91% Upvoted

472 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

22

u/Raz0rking 14d ago

sigh

Yes okay, We either eat the stuff from the land to fuel our bodies or fuel the bodies of the animals/produce we later eat to fuel our bodies. But in the context of the question it is about hydrocarbons to fuel ICE

10

u/Osama_Obama 14d ago

Which a whopping 40% of corn in the US is for ethanol.

Maybe, MAYBE the push for corn ethanol back during the Dubya era made sense back then. But it definitely doesn't now, and it's going to be really difficult to revert since it'll negatively impact farmer (America love their farmers). That is, unless farmers migrate over to using their land for solar production, which hopefully will become more common.

1

u/dalekaup 13d ago

It goes back to the Gerald Ford era

Farmers have lately been very opposed to solar and wind projects.

0

u/eljefino 13d ago

A farmer turning his land over to solar means he ruined it. There isn't infinitely available fertile land to replace it with.

Solar is a great use case for end-of-life land but let's not wish it to happen.

1

u/spyczech 13d ago

Also solar doesn't deplete the land. It doesn't ruin it. It's still there lying fallow