Ethanol Pushers

"We know the clock is ticking," he says of the corn-based fuel. "It's just not sustainable for the long term."

The Presto Conoco station at the intersection of Holmes and Bannister Road is the metro's only retailer of E85 — the fuel blend that includes 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline.

At the pumps on the far west end of the station, stickers caution "STOP! NOT GASOLINE." On the middle of each pump, a placard displays a drop of water and cottony white clouds surrounded by a golden starburst.

A manager on duty says the station has had the pumps for a couple of years now. In fact, these pumps have appeared in a number of photo ops for the likes of Rep. Emanuel Cleaver and Sen. Jim Talent, as they've showcased their disdain for Middle East petroleum and their support for homegrown fuels. The cashier says the heavily stickered E85 pumps get a steady flow of traffic, thanks in part to the Bannister Federal Complex that sits barely a quarter-mile down the road.

"It's mostly government," she says of the E85 customers there. "But some other people, too. Want a brochure?" She extends a glossy flier from a stack next to the cash register.

On this busy Tuesday morning, though, the E85 pumps stand empty. For all its on-site advertising, what the brochures call "The American Fuel" is a tough sell.

Today, with regular unleaded gasoline selling for $2.09, the ethanol blend costs $3.49 a gallon.

Proponents tout ethanol as a clean-burning fuel that significantly offsets greenhouse-gas emissions. Scientific studies, however, suggest that such boasts are misleading. Two studies published this year found that ethanol saves the atmosphere less than 14 percent of the greenhouse gases produced from gasoline consumption.

Even such modest gains were questioned in an August analysis from Consumer Reports. Putting a Chevy Tahoe filled with E85 to the test, researchers suggested that the corn fuel actually increased greenhouse-gas emissions by 12 percent to 25 percent. That's because the average flex-fuel vehicle gets about 5 miles per gallon less than the average gasoline-powered car. And driving on E85, which can drop fuel economy by 30 percent, the flex-fuel SUV has to refuel far more often.

Despite these problems, the federal government has created loopholes in fuel-efficiency standards in an effort to encourage automakers to build more flex-fuel vehicles.

The auto industry estimates that more than 6 million flex-fuel vehicles are on the road, and U.S. automakers recently pledged to roll out 2 million annually by 2010. But because of their lower fuel economy — and the fact that not many gas stations sell E85, which forces most flex-fuel vehicle owners to fill up on old-fashioned gas — those supposedly clean-burning engines may actually feed our addiction to oil. Research by the Union of Concerned Scientists (a nonpartisan group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts) calculated that flex-fuel vehicles boosted U.S. oil dependence by 80,000 barrels a day in 2005. By 2010, that could grow to 200,000 barrels a day of additional oil dependence.

Meanwhile, those government loopholes have allowed automakers to avoid as much as $1.6 billion in fuel-economy fines between 1998 and 2004.

Squinting in the harsh glare, city employees holler greetings to one another as they pull into the fueling station at the fleet yard on Brooklyn Avenue. It's just after 7:30 on a crisp September morning, and each of six diesel pumps is occupied by a heavy-duty blue truck with a Water Services emblem on its doors. The rusting faces on the green pumps say "Gasboy," but the city employees are filling their tanks with a different brand of fuel.

Back in 1997, the city of Kansas City, Missouri, started a pilot program to curb its use of gasoline and diesel and switch a portion of its municipal fleet to alternative fuels. It started with two Crown Victorias, says Sam Swearngin, superintendent of the city's central fleet. Now, hundreds of city vehicles — from public works trucks to aviation department buses —use renewable fuels to reduce the city's pollution and costs.

But the city fleet doesn't consume a single drop of ethanol.

Instead, the employees fueling up this morning are pumping a blend of biodiesel, a fuel made from soybeans. Others are powered with compressed natural gas.

Don't get Swearngin wrong; he has nothing against ethanol. But it does have some clear disadvantages compared with other farm-based fuels, including biodiesel.

High blends of ethanol require flex-fuel engines, whereas biodiesel can run in any diesel vehicle in the city's fleet. To dispense E85, Swearngin would have to install different underground tanks, but biodiesel flows fine through the aging Gasboy pumps. Besides, drivers get far fewer miles out of a gallon of ethanol compared with gas, whereas biodiesel packs as much power as typical diesel.

"The trend in Midwest fleets is biodiesel," Swearngin says. "I can't tell you when or if I'll ever use ethanol."

Of course, when the 10-percent mandate takes effect, Swearngin will use small amounts of ethanol like the rest of the state.

But, if Kansas City's air pollution experts have any say, the metro may get an exemption from the law.

James Joerke, air quality manager for the Mid-America Regional Council, says his organization is not anti-ethanol. But it is pressing the governor's office to let Kansas City off the hook because the 10-percent blend could push the metro out of compliance with EPA ozone standards.