In a Frenzy to Save the World

So I don't know about you, but environment has always been a hate-topic of mine in school. Yet I am not a fool. I know climate change is a problem we have to tackle, but these regulations and discussions have been going on a rampage lately and that is exactly what I hate so much about the topic. All you do is forced upon you. And if there's one thing I don't like, it's being forced.

As of recently I thought I lived in a liberal country, namely Germany. It has its policies, it has its regulations, but at least we're not as closely monitored as the British; or at least we don't know about it. But I've been quite enraged as of late, which I just was reminded of, as I watched TV, actually in search of the news, trying to inform myself what was going on in the world as I had been caught up studying the last week. But I stumbled across a report about a car-convention in Geneva; which ended up in an informatory report about the different kinds of fuel.

Let me elaborate on that. When I got my driver's licence, nearly one and a half years ago, there were different types of petrol/gasoline. The normal Petrol, Super (octane-content 95) and Super+ (octane-content 98). Petrol was the cheapest, Super+ the most expensive, as it is the most effective (due to the higher octane-content), Super somewhere in between.

Big Surprise!

Now I don't know when exactly it started, but I believe in February, I wanted to tank up, went to the filling station, and found myself surprised, seeing round blue stickers on the tap-handles reading E10. Left wondering I stood in front of the pump like an idiot, not knowing what the hell that was, until I found a tiny notice that if unsure about the compatibility, one should stick to Super. So I did.

Coming home I talked with my mum about it, but she didn't know anything about it either. So I looked it up in the internet and found out what E10 is. E stands for ethanol, meaning alcohol, and 10 for 10%, meaning 90% Super, 10% ethanol. And then there was a notice that not all cars are compatible due to aggressiveness towards coatings inside the engine or something along those lines. Yet there was not yet a list which cars were compatible and which weren't.

So is anyone surprised no one bought the stuff at first? No one but the German government and the mineral oil groups seemed to be. But even I am surprised to see that after compatibility lists have been given out for each car and it has been said over and over again that E10 is safe for the cars, only 25% are filling their cars with E10.

But I'm not surprised that people are wary, as the report I watched seemed to try a little too hard to convince people that E10 is indeed safe and that even with more than 10% ethanol in the gas, even old cars have been running without problems for more than 100.000 km. It made me stumble a bit as they were desperate, even going as far as to claim people who were still filling up with Super+ (Super doesn't exist anymore right now but did as E10 was first introduced), were tossing money out of their windows. So I read up again in the internet and found some very compelling comments which had me thinking and writing this, as it seems we're the only country which has this E10 fuel stuff. (If I'm wrong please tell me, I'd like to know how E10 fares in other countries.)

Now I’m not one to panic easily. I know that the usual Super contained 5% ethanol and the engine seemed to be able to deal with it without any damage inflicted. But there are some things which really make me angry and reluctant and even defiant to the idea of filling my car with E10.

Firstly, how can a reform such as this come surprisingly? How come the ADAC (The General German Automobile Club) did not start a study on the compatibility of E10 with various car models? How come the government never bothered to make a statement on it? How come there were no lists of compatibility present from the car manufacturers at the time the fuel was introduced? Did it come surprisingly for them as well?

The EU-Guideline

The root of E10 is an EU guideline. Something along the lines of reducing CO2-emission resulting from cars. As the car manufacturers recently seem to have had too much fun designing new gas-guzzling mini SUVs (which the Americans seem to be so fond of, and which serve no purpose, neither fit to be driven in the wilderness, nor proving to be practicable in the city), instead of working on lighter, smaller models, with less mileage, the whole goddamn public has been asking for, for quite some years now (and which had us Germans pulling Opel back from its coma via taxes (another thing I'm furious about because supporting a business which fails to produce for the market, simply deserves to go bankrupt)), the EU guideline had to be enforced somehow. And the government thought: How to get more money and get the mineral oil groups on our good side with one stone?

That's right. Let's put this on the taxpayers back and sugarcoat it as Bio, environmentally-friendly or green-washed (I hear is a popular English description for such tactics). Surely they'll fall for it.

Well it seems 25% fell for it and the rest is raging with fury. But I'm still wondering what they thought. That the car-driver wouldn't notice that there was suddenly a big white "E" with a "10" behind instead of the usual "Super"? That they would just fill up their cars with it to “give it a try”?

The Germans and their Cars

And on this note a nice quote which you'll probably need to understand our attitude towards cars as we Germans are a bit particular in that aspect. It's from the "Xenophobe's guide to the Germans" by Stefan Zeidenitz and Ben Barkow (for those interested ISBN 978-1-906042-33-2) which was highly entertaining to read out of my perspective, as there are many true facts about us in there. But for the quote in question:

"A further obsession is their cars. The Germans love their cars more than almost anything. While the Italians reserve this kind of adoration for their children, Germans prefer to keep their children indoors, so the cars can play safely in the streets." (p. 40) And while the last part may be a bit of an exaggeration I think everything else is quite true.

So not knowing whether your car is compatible to E10 left us all still buying Super.

Car Failure and Damages Done

It is the most cited reason and frankly the only reason the government and mineral oil groups believe to be the core of the problem that E10 doesn't sell. The fear that it might wreck the engine, or the tank or the pipes or lines, or the atomizer of your car. Whether it's the aforementioned coating inside the engine or the paint of your car which you're trying to shield, everyone fears for the wellbeing of their car. And it is understandable that people, who bought their cars in 2009, during the high tide of the scrappage bonus, are not ready to wreck their new cars now.

It does make you reluctant to fill your car with one kind of fuel when the manufacturer is reluctant to give his go on that very same fuel. And it seems they all were, but again that could have just been the surprise. Moreover there have also been reports of cars which were filled up with E10, cars which had been cleared for the fuel, and the engines failed shortly after. Coincidence? Might be but it is suspicious as I believe many of you who read this will agree. And then there's the fact that while E10 is said to be absolutely foolproof (yes it even seems people have been voluntarily filling up their tanks with a mixture of E85 and the normal Super for years and have not suffered any damages of their cars), the police in Schleswig-Holstein (a "state" of Germany) does not fill their cars with E10 for "fear of engine failures" (http://auto.t-online.de/e10-polizei-in-schleswig-holstein-darf-neuen-kraftstoff-nicht-tanken/id_44896234/index)

So the gist of it is then that it is safe for us, but too dangerous for the police and the officials of the state? Well that's reassuring then.

Window-Dressing

It's a sham. Both environmentally and price-wise. That's what many of those comments I read were saying. And I think they are right. E10 is said to be more environmentally-friendly. Well, big surprise, it actually is. But only by a negligible quantity. And yes I hear it: even the tiniest improvement is effective if everyone does it.

Well, to those who say that let me present you with another fact: E10 is less effective than the former Super, which it more or less replaced. I.e. you have to fill up more often than before, which n return means you are using up more fossil fuel than before. Not so environmentally-friendly now, is it?

Another sham is that the government said E10 would be cheaper. It is not. In fact they gave us fuel less effective, i.e. you don't get as far with the same amount of E10 than you would with Super, for the same price. And as you have to fill up more often that makes it even more expensive than before. And if you take into consideration that the mineral oil tax was extended to ethanol (which is as I said before alcohol, not a mineral oil), do you really still believe it is cheaper than Super? Let me tell you one thing: it is not.

Ethanol - Food or Fuel

Now you may be wondering (or probably have already looked up): What is ethanol? Simply put it is corn. Fermented corn. How can someone classify it as mineral oil? I don't know. How can a rather wealthy industrialized country support filling their cars' tanks with corn while people in third world countries are starving? I can't tell you either. But in the name of the environment, it seems everything is possible. And "yes we can". Apparently, at least that is what the German government thought.

Now, the corn which is used for the E10 is mostly produced in Germany. As we like our cars and are bit of a lazy folk, we drive a lot. That means, despite the corn made for food-purpose, we now need a lot more corn. And as a result we are not only using a horrendous amount of drinking water, which by the way we are running out of as well, for irrigation, we also got monocultures all over.

The problem with monocultures should be familiar to people who like to save the environment. Fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides pollute the ground water, sometimes pollute the drinking water. The ground becomes infertile quickly. The farmers are dependent on the one crop they produce and if it fails to sell are poor faster than they can object.

Oh! But I forgot something. Farmers are profiteering. Not only from the corn they produce for our unwanted fuel. Food became more expensive as well. Understandable as we need the fields to grow corn for fuel, not for food. It is entirely unnecessary to grow food, but we have to save the environment of course.

Perhaps it'd be best if we starved to death. No driving around in your car, no cow you're devouring which produces methan, no heating your home, no breathing. Then we wouldn't even need to save oil (BP saw no need to do that anyways) or fossil fuels as they would provide fuel for quite some time, perhaps even for those grand-grand children we are so worried about.

But on a more serious and less cynic note, if you want those grand-grand children to play in the forest, then don't use paper, but write on your PC or Mac, buy e-books, try to pressure the market into producing cars which are run by electricity. That's what really helps, not reducing CO2-emissions from your car by approximately 0.00001%.

Controlled Economy

But I was talking about my anger before. Well there was one event which had be raging and blowing my nostrils quite literally. It was about a month ago when I was driving to school and had to refill. I arrived at my regular gas-station with, figuratively speaking, the last drop of fuel. Looking at the prices, I saw that Super cost about 1,50 Euro/liter, and thought 'Damn, that's expensive, but you gotta refill, there's no way around it.'.

So I drove up to the pump and got out of the car, walked around it and noticed there were papers attached to the pumps, eight at that gas-station, and they were all reading that Super and Super+ were defect. So the only thing left to fill into the tank was E10. I had no choice but to do that as I wouldn't have made it to another gas-station.

I was furious when I entered the gas-station to pay and had to hold back from complaining and tackling the guy behind the counter to the ground, should he tell me they just wanted to get rid of E10. I still believe that was the initial thought behind the whole matter and I haven't been at this gas-station since.

Well now there might also be another explanation why the gas-station said only E10 was available. It is possible they could have run out of Super and Super+. Refineries had been producing mostly E10, bringing down the production of Super and Super+. But all the people were filling their cars with that particular fuel avoiding E10 and there were supply shortfalls.

But that is tinged with planned economy. The government is forcing the regulation upon the mineral oil groups and therefore forcing me to buy E10 as there is no alternative anymore. The market was regulated and how dare the government, which has the duty to protect the free market, force me to buy something? When are they going to realize that no one wants it, no matter how much zest they add to it?

The Price of Progress

In those comments I read, many wrote that they wouldn't buy E10 even if they didn't need to pay a cent for it. And I always thought money ruled the world. And then I also always thought money to be a great way of communication.

If a customer pays more for product A than product B, if actually 75% of the customers do so, would it not appear that product A is more popular than product B and therefore would be produced in higher numbers? Well that's how the usual self-regulating free market works. Planned economy on the other hand…

But paying more, we are. When I started driving, Super was at 1,32 Euro/liter. Back then when the price when up to 1,36 Euro/liter it was damn well expensive. Anything over 1,40 was unimaginable. Yesterday I threw a glance at the prices and saw Super/Super+ (as now it is the same apparently, though I don't know how they managed to do that) at 1,66 Euro/liter. That was more than 10 cent than two weeks ago. But still , while E10 was lingering somewhere around 1,52 Euro/liter, I didn't even consider. Not even though I knew that the state and the mineral oil groups were profiteering even more from my not-buying E10, as I was willing to pay so much more for Super/Super+.

Just for your information, E10 started out at 1,44 Euro/liter when it was introduced. So funny fact that the price rises when no one wants it. Maybe I didn't pay much attention to economy in class but if a product does not sell, doesn't the price usually go down?

Are we there, yet?

As of yet there is still no governmental drawing back of E10 in sight, though the mineral oil groups have announced they are picking up the production of Super and Super+ to meet people's demands.

I knew there was a consensus about not buying E10 here in Germany, but I was actually surprised to see how far reaching it was. It's a boycott of 75% of the people and that is an immense number. If the government continues pushing us around I can imagine that there will be very active protests in Berlin and probably even throughout Germany.

We are not a revolutionary folk, we abide by rules, nearly worship them sometimes, particularly while driving a car, and I am proud to see how we the people are undermining this decision of the government, which was done without our approval, yes even against our will. They are meant to be our representatives, not follow blindly the EU's every whim.

If they want to reduce CO2-emissions, a better way to do so would be to improve public transport. Personal experience tells me that it is insufficient and the Deutsche Bahn (DB: the main train-transport provider) is a failure, if there ever was one. Delays should be made part of their schedules and the prices are horrendously high, the trains often a wreck, which can have you stuck for a few hours, on the rails. You need to have the time and patience if you wish to go by train, otherwise go by car.

But even if E10 should be abolished, the refitting of the refineries will be paid by us. Regardless of the actual outcome the prices for fuel will continue to rise and the wealth of the mineral oil groups will as well. And if they don't push the prices on us by raising the price, we will pay for it with taxes, as the government will take the costs, again without our consent.