North Dakota has made a commitment in ethanol.

The state has already invested about $600 million into new Ethanol Plants.

When all of the plants, including the two existing ones, are up and running the state will be producing a minimum of 386 million gallons of ethanol a year.

But for you, the consumer, is ethanol blended fuels the right thing to pump into your car? Brad Feldman joins us now with his special report. E-85, does it pay?

Ethanol blended fuels have been under the microscope lately, especially E-85. A recent issue of Consumer Reports put E-85 to the test. They used a 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe to see how it runs on E-85 and regular gas. Their findings show that although the alternative fuel is good for the environment it can cost you more at the pump

(Shane Goettle/ ND Dept. of Commerce) "Consumers have to make their own choices on this and have to be a little bit of their own scientists in terms of gas mileage." We went to Ressler Chevrolet in Mandan to see for ourselves. We looked at this 2007 Chevrolet Impala LT. Sticker price on this vehicle is about $24,000. The vehicle specs show that on regular gasoline this car can go about 312 to 474 miles per tank of gas. This is about 18 to 28 miles per gallon

When you put E-85 in this vehicle the gas mileage drops. On the same size tank you will only be able to drive about 229-330 miles. This is about 13 to 19 miles per gallon

(Mike Thomas/ Ressler Chevrolet) "A lot of people are concerned about what kind of mileage you get with E-85 and how does it affect your engine and is it good or bad for your engine." To break this down even further we went ahead and figured out how much you would pay on fuel per year. We based this on someone who travels 15,000 miles using todays prices. $2.17 for regular gas and $1.87 for E-85

In this chart you can see how many times a year you would have to fill

The next row shows how many gallons of fuel you would burn in a year. The end result is how much you would spend on fuel

If you get the minimum gas mileage projected for this car, you would spend about $300 more a year using E-85

If you get the maximum gas mileage, you would spend about $275 more

However, gas mileage is not the only concern. Just finding a station with an E-85 pump can be difficult

(Kim Christianson/ ND Dept. of Commerce) "There's a fair number of stations available in the state. I will say it's concentrated more in the eastern half of the state. The western half we still have a way to go there so." According to the North Dakota Corn Growers website there are currently 31 E-85 stations in the state. This map shows you where the stations are located

(Kim Christianson/ ND Dept. of Commerce) "I suspect part of it is that the corn growers are more involved in the eastern half of the state. Maybe access to supplies is a little bit better in the eastern half of the state. But we are making some headway in the west and that is our intention to have a good statewide network of E-85 stations." For the last two years Christianson has be leading the state's GO E Campaign

(Kim Christianson/ ND Dept. of Commerce) "One of our intentions was to boost the amount of ethanol blended gallons of motor fuel sold in the state. At the time we started we were around 30-percent in North Dakota and our goal was to get to 50 percent

In the span of one year, North Dakotans pumped about 351 million gallons of fuel into their cars. Almost half of the fuel sold had an ethanol blend

Christianson says as the new ethanol plants get up and running he expects to see the number of people using ethanol blended fuel to rise.

If you would like to read the entire article in Consumer Reports, you can log onto www.consumerreports.com. All you have to do is search "Ethanol Myth." watch the video | save this article / add to your favorites list