If you can read German, then you might be interested to read a good summary of the bio-ethanol technology and availability on the ADAC website.  It covers the different types of bio-ethanol, their production, and discusses whether they are really CO2-neutral.

ADAC is Germany’s largest automobile club, with around 15 million members.

Of course, I guess you could use bio-ethanol in other areas where fossil fuels have been used until now.

Here is one example: a table-top bio-ethanol fire.  It is made of glass and uses 1/2 litre of bio-ethanol to burn for 6 hours.

It looks very interesting, but will it keep you warm on a cold winter night?

This week the environmental news is full of reports that bio-ethanol production uses more water than was previously thought.

Many of them say that the usage is about three times higher than was previously claimed, something that may not be welcome news in parts of the World where water is in short supply.

However, it is not all bad news.  Apparently Minnesota and Iowa, for whatever reason, use less water than other states in the production process.

I wonder if making it from wood chippings, as is often the case in Scandinavia, needs more or less?

Today I had an appointment about 100km today, and it was only last night that I realised that I didn’t have enough bio-ethanol in the tank for the return journey.

For the first time, I had to make a detour to fill up with bio-ethanol, meaning that I had to leave earlier to allow enough time to drive to Bad Homburg before I hit the motorway.

Of course, I could have driving down the road to the nearest petrol station and filled up with normal 95-octane fuel, but with that sort of fuel costing around 50% more than bio-ethanol, I felt it was worth making the detour.

But the whole situation did make me conscious of the restrictions of the bio-ethanol fuel.  After all, I don’t get as many kilometres out of a tank as I used to with normal petrol.  I quick check of the list of petrol stations that stock E85 also showed me that there was nothing suitable in the area that I was travelling to.  Well, at least not without going out of my way and looking for it.

So in the end I took the quickest option and visited my usual petrol station, and wished it hadn’t been necessary.  Will the main petrol stations, especially those on motorway service stations, ever start stocking bio-ethanol?