The idea that cars can run on something other than gasoline – and on something as easy and cheap as a corn-based product – may have sounded like fantasy years ago.

Thursday, February 01, 2001

The idea that cars can run on something other than gasoline – and on something as easy and cheap as a corn-based product – may have sounded like fantasy years ago.

But with the opening of an E85 pump in Albert Lea this week, it is effectively a fantasy come true for some local drivers.

E85, a fuel that’s 85 percent ethanol, carries the promise of a better future for the automobile – a future that eases high gas prices, reliance on foreign oil, destruction of the atmosphere and damaging fossil-fuel exploration.

The fuel can’t be used in all cars – yet. The movement toward ethanol and products like it will take time, but the fuel’s tremendous benefits cannot be ignored forever.

Especially in Freeborn County, we cannot overlook the value of ethanol not only for consumer, but also for farmers, who get a valuable new way to market their crop, and for the industrial economy, which gets the growing Exol ethanol plant south of Albert Lea.

The christening of that single E85 pump Wednesday was the first step in what we hope will be a long history of alternative fuels in Albert Lea and elsewhere.

The oil industry isn’t going to be happy about it, however. It stands to lose as much as ethanol supporters stand to gain. That may help explain the industry’s half-baked efforts to blame high oil prices on ethanol, which is now only added to a small fraction of the nation’s gasoline.

As E85 and other alternative fuels weather this difficult infancy in the consumer market, buyers who have the chance would show foresight by supporting them as much as possible. A better future – in fuel, anyway – is at stake.