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-Because this federal largesse now existed, within five years, 163 ethanol plants had been built -- but only 74 of them were still in operation -As gasoline availability opened up in the 1980s and gas prices went down, many ethanol plants simply went out of business -Shortly thereafter, in yet another attempt to broaden the product's usage, Congress enacted a law that allowed car manufacturers to take excess mileage credits on any vehicle they built that was capable of burning an 85% blend of ethanol, better known as E85 -Other manufacturers also built E85-capable vehicles -- one such car was the Ford ([|F]) Taurus. Congress may have intended simply to create a market for this particular fuel by having these vehicles available for sale. -But what the excess mileage credits actually did was save Detroit millions each year in penalties it would have owed for not meeting the CAFE regulations' mileage standards. -In the mid-'90s the Clean Air Act of 1990 kicked in, mandating that a reformulated gasoline be sold in the nation's smoggiest cities. -So the Clinton Administration again tried to create an ethanol industry in America, by having the Environmental Protection Agency mandate that fully 30% of the oxygenates to be used in gasoline under that program come from a renewable source. But members of the American Petroleum Institute had already geared up for the production of Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether (MTBE), their oxygenate of choice. The ensuing lawsuit was argued before the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on February 16, 1995. -The EPA took the position that it had been given a mandate to find ways to conserve the nation's fossil-fuel reserves, so it needed a renewable fuel -- and ethanol neatly fit that bill. -Even more damaging, the EPA's own attorney admitted to the judges that because of its higher volatility, putting ethanol into the nation's fuel supply would likely increase smog where it was used. -The final decision favored the American Petroleum Institute. The judges agreed that the EPA was bound by law only to promote items that would improve air quality -- not to reverse the nation's advances in smog reduction. That decision was apparently forgotten with record speed. In the summer of 2000, ethanol as an additive was mandated for the upper Midwest, including the city of Chicago -After Asian economies had collapsed in the late '90s, the price of oil had fallen to as low as $10 a barrel. Gasoline was selling in many parts of the U.S. for as little as 99 cents a gallon. But by 2000, the per-barrel price had risen to $32, and gas was averaging $1.55 a gallon nationally -And then reformulated gasoline made with ethanol hit Chicago and points north. Gas prices there suddenly soared over $2.00, with a few stations selling their product for as much as $2.54 per gallon. -Just a few months later, Brazil -- which had worked toward energy independence since the mid-'70s oil crisis and had already mandated that the percentage of ethanol in its fuel be raised to 24% -- was forced to import ethanol refined by the Archer Daniels Midland Co. when the nation's sugar-cane crop suffered a devastating drought. Brazil understood that a year of poor crops was just as damaging to its national fuel supply as Iran taking its oil off-market would be to the rest of the world -the 25% to 30% drop in mileage resulting from the use of this blended fuel, another feature lets users calculate and compare annual fuel costs using regular gasoline to costs using E85. -But the government site's automatic calculations are based on E85 selling for 37 cents per gallon less than regular gasoline, when the //USA Today// article reports that at many stations in the Midwest E85 is actually selling for 13 cents per gallon more than ordinary gas.

Ed Wallace, E. (2006, April 27). //Ethanol: A tragedy in 3 acts//. Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/autos/content/apr2006/bw20060427_493909.htm

Ed Wallace, E. (2006, April 27).