More and more Flex-Fuel cars are hitting our roads each year.

For those of you who may have heard of but don't know what exactly a Flex-Fuel car is, I'll provide a good website link at the end of this entry. Basically it's a vehicle that can run either using gasoline or E85, a fuel blend of 15% gas and 85% ethanol.

American car makers have been manufacturing most Flex-Fuel cars in recent years, like GMC's Tahoe version. GM plans to double their production of Flex-Fuel cars by 2010 producing up to 800,000.

The use of ethanol certainly has its benefits. For one, it reduces our dependency on the use of petroleum and thus foreign oil. It's cleaner burning than gas, so there are less Greenhouse Gas emissions, and it can be made from organic sources like corn. All of this has led to an explosion in demand for corn as thousands of farmers across America rush to grow this cash crop.

Let's step back for a moment and look more closely at the details. Environmentalists worry that too many farms are growing corn, leading to less crop rotation and thus more soil erosion. Several studies have concluded that manufacturing ethanol from corn actually requires more energy than producing gasoline, thus giving you a net loss in energy. Even so, the demand for ethanol will only grow in the coming years.

There is some good news. Researchers have discovered other ways to create ethanol from other organic sources. Soybeans and switchgrass are two major ones. Switchgrass is a naturally growing grass (much like prairie grass) that can be found in many parts of the country. It's easy to harvest and it takes less energy to create ethanol from it than corn. Studies have shown that there is actually a net gain in energy from the use of swithgrass versus corn. I've also included a link to an NPR story on this below.

Some of the more notable research on converting cellulose to ethanol takes place right here in Colorado at NREL, or the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden just west of Denver. Other drawbacks of ethanol use include fewer miles per gallon using E85 fuel, since it burns faster than gas. And with demand possibly surpassing supply in coming years, purchasing ethanol at the pump may only get more expensive.

Luckily here in Colorado, we're closer to bigger corn-producing states like Nebraska which keeps our prices lower on average.

Weblinks:
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/flextech.shtml
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17910749
http://www.nrel.gov/biomass/
http://e85prices.com/