Reply #4: It's not so much that this is a huge technical issue - it likely isn't . . . [View All]

[hatrack]

It's that nobody bothered to consider this particular wrinkle of the biofuel mandate.

More precisely, nobody apparently remembered that (a) biofuels are susceptible to bacteria, (b) like any motor fuel, retail biofuels are stored in large metal underground tanks subject to a variety of physical, chemical and biological processes and (c) gas station owners may or may not maintain their facilities in a way that meets the needs of these particular fuels.

Did anyone even ask about this issue beforehand? Did anyone even think about it?

And that's what worries me about energy policy and collective responses - things that nobody thought of that ought to be obvious as all hell. Corn-based ethanol comes readily to mind . . .