Fred Reed and two partners aim to open the Shell-branded station on Gateway Road, just south of Palomar Airport Road in the Bressi Ranch development, early next week. It`s believed to be the first in North County and only the second in San Diego County, joining Pearson Fuels on El Cajon Boulevard in central San Diego, which installed its ethanol pumps in 2003.
A third is expected to open on Oceanside Boulevard in Oceanside by early next year. A half-dozen such stations exist statewide, based on counts by the California Energy Commission and the U.S. Department of Energy.
Reed said he began planning the station for drivers who would turn to ethanol because it burns relatively cleanly. Reed said he initially didn`t expect it to save drivers money, but that was many months ago, well before standard gasoline hit $4 a gallon. Now he tentatively expects to sell it for about $3.50 a gallon, though that will vary with the wholesale price from week to week, just as regular gas does, he said.
Ethanol, the same alcohol found in whiskey, wine and beer, can be profitably refined from a wide variety of food crops. Most transportation fuel marketed as ethanol in California is 85 percent ethanol refined mainly from corn, with smaller amounts from other sources, according to the energy commission.
So-called "flex-fuel" engines that can run on either gasoline, ethanol-based fuel or a combination of the two are available on new models of more than a dozen vehicles, including Ford F150 trucks, Nissan Armada SUVs and GMC Tahoe SUVs, according to a list maintained by the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition.
About 6 million such vehicles were in use nationwide in 2006, representing about 2.5 percent of all motor vehicles, according to the latest data available from the Energy Department. Ethanol`s use as a transportation fuel grew 67 percent from 2003 to 2006, compared to 4 percent growth in gasoline use and 5 percent growth in diesel use, according to the agency.
At North County GMC dealership in Carlsbad, about 30 percent of recent sales have been flex-fuel vehicles such as the Tahoe, said Sales Manager Michael Wester. Reed`s plans, about two years in the making, have helped to bring up that proportion and more customers will probably choose the flex-fuel option once buyers realize that the station is open, Wester said.
Ethanol contains less energy per gallon than gasoline, and people in the industry say that reduces mileage by 10 to 30 percent. Whether or not a driver saves money by using ethanol depends on the prices for the two fuels, which rise and fall independently of one another, based on supply, demand, taxes and subsidies.
Ethanol advocate Dan McCullough said the lower efficiency is mainly because flex-fuel engines are tuned to run optimally on gasoline. Installing higher-flow fuel injectors improves fuel efficiency by 10 to 20 percent for flex-fuel drivers who tank up only with high-ethanol blends, he said McCollough runs the Web site
http://e85prices.com, which calculates the percentage differences between current ethanol prices and gasoline prices at stations across the nation. The idea is that each driver know his or her own vehicle`s fuel efficiency with ethanol compared to regular gas, and tank up on ethanol when the price spread is greater than the difference in efficiency.
"People should try it in their car and with their driving habits and see what they have," said Michael Lewis, the general manager and co-owner of Pearson, which supplies Reed`s ethanol-based fuel and would supply the station in Oceanside. "It is a financial decision. But it`s not only a financial decision."
Ethanol advocates say the fuel reduces the United States` dependence on the foreign countries - including Mexico, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia - that supply about 60 percent of the nation`s crude oil.
They also argue that it burns more cleanly, though a spokesman for the Air Resources Board said "flex-fuel" and ethanol-fueled vehicles must meet the same air-quality standards as those that burn gasoline.
If the United States continues to subsidize corn farmers and ethanol-fueling stations, and if oil prices continue to rise, ethanol will become a clear choice for many drivers, said Charles Langley, an analyst and advocate with the San Diego-based Utility Consumers` Action Network.
"It compares very favorably to gasoline," Langley said. "It`s wonderful that we have a second ethanol station in the county."
Reed said he expects $30,000 in federal subsidies and a $100,000 grant from the California Air Resources Board to offset part of the $200,000 he has spent on ethanol tanks and pipes. The station has four ethanol pumps and eight standard gasoline/diesel pumps.
And ethanol has a dark side, Langley said. Some scientists have argued that the ethanol production process, at least when corn is the source, uses more energy than is contained in the resulting ethanol fuel. And then there are runoff from crop fields and other side effects of ethanol, which have to be weighed against the pollutants from refining and burning gasoline, Langley said.
Economists have also pointed to increasing ethanol production as a key cause of rising food prices worldwide as farmers replace wheat and soybeans with corn and sell more of their corn to ethanol refineries.
In California, regular unleaded gas contains about 5 percent ethanol, according to the energy commission. In "E85," industry jargon for the most common blend of ethanol-based fuel, the remaining 15 percent is petroleum-based gasoline that lubricates engine parts, people in the industry said.
©2008, North County Times
