MIXED REACTION: Blending ethanol in gasoline drives up prices

Coming this spring to a convenience store near you: 200-proof grain alcohol made from corn. Shoppers, however, won’t need an ID to buy it: It will be blended with gasoline – and undrinkable, of course.

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Some experts say there will be a slight decrease in the number of miles per gallon a car will run on the new blend. Oil industry insiders also blame the switch over to ethanol for some of the increase in gas prices.

Even some big supporters of renewable energy have mixed feelings about the new push for ethanol-blended gasoline.

..Ethanol is, however, adding to the cost of gasoline, if only incrementally. The gasoline base that ethanol is mixed with has to be formulated differently from the one mixed with MTBE. Ethanol costs about 30 cents a gallon more than gasoline on the wholesale market.

Even though ethanol will make up only 10 percent of what you pump at the gas station, Mark Routt, a senior consultant at Energy Security Analysis Inc. in Wakefield, says the higher price adds up. Especially because, he said, motors will run about 2 percent less efficiently on the ethanol blend.

‘‘Not only do you consume more of the final blend, but you’re using 10 percent of a more expensive blend, and the base material is more expensive,’’ he said.

Adding ethanol far from its source is also logistically trickier than when MTBE was added to fuel at East Coast refineries, Routt said. Because of its chemical properties, ethanol can’t be transported over pipelines, so all of it must be shipped by train, truck or barge away from the distillery and then blended at wholesale gasoline terminals.

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