The high cost of gasoline is caused by many factors. One of the big ones is political in nature and has nothing to do with saving the environment.

What am I talking about? Gasoline costs less than it has in a long time and it should not be going up; right? The facts are that there is more than petroleum in our gasoline and I am not talking about the additives! Of all the things in our gasoline that does not serve any real purpose is ethanol, yes ethanol made from corn.

Ethanol is in gasoline only because of the lobbying by the farmers of America and a few big corporations that also make huge profits making it. Now you better be asking yourself why it is in there then if it doesn’t do anything. Well the truth is that for some very old cars it does lower the amount of pollution they produce, but the truth is while modern cars tolerate the inclusion of ethanol being mixed with gasoline you are the loser because the energy within this mixture causes your vehicle to get less miles to the gallon. Plus ethanol attracts water and is expensive to produce. Remember this- if you get water in your gasoline in the winter, it will mess up your day! Believe me I know from experience.

So why then are we doing this? Well the farm lobby is behind this and while this helps farmers who grow corn, it is hurting those who need the corn for feed for their animals. The price of corn has gone up and thus the cost of meat for human consumption has also risen.

Now let’s take a look at how ethanol decreases your mpg (miles per gallon) of your vehicle. Per The US Energy Information Administration– “The energy content of ethanol is about 33% less than pure gasoline. The impact of fuel ethanol on vehicle fuel economy varies depending on the amount of denaturant that is added to the ethanol. The energy content of denaturant is about equal to the energy content of pure gasoline. In general, vehicle fuel economy may decrease by about 3% when using E10 relative to gasoline that does not contain fuel ethanol.” E10 is what is commonly used in many states here in the United States. So I will give you an example of a car that gets 30 mpg on pure gasoline, if you put E10 in instead you would get about 29 mpg. Therefore if you traveled 18,000 miles per year you would need 621 gallons using E10 to travel that distance. And using pure gasoline you would only use 600 gallons. If it cost you say $2.50.9 per gallon for E10, then the extra 21 gallons would cost you about $53.00 extra a year. So as the cost of E10 goes up and it will, the more money you are losing because of E10 having less energy content.

If E10 (Ethanol) gas also lowered the pollution coming out of the tailpipe of my car, then I would have no problem using it. But E10 produces more greenhouse (overall) gases than pure gasoline. So as far as I am concerned, as are many other organizations, it is time to stop putting ethanol in gasoline!

That is my opinion- Jumpin Jersey Mike