The alternative fuel saga

President Bush used his bully pulpit last Tuesday to call, for the umpteenth consecutive year, for the development of alternative fuel for our cars. Last time around he was all high on hydrogen cars. This time it’s ethanol. I suppose I should be pleased that he’s at least tackling a technology that exists: Hydrogen cars are a decade or more from mass production, while ethanol already serves as a fuel additive. But corn-based ethanol requires more energy to produce , from seed to fuel, than we get out of it. And Bush did not discuss at all the idea of lowering tariffs on Brazilian ethanol, which is made more cheaply from sugar cane (the energy potential of sugar is much higher than corn). A cynical man might say the president’s constantly shifting alternative energy target of is designed to delay and confuse the development of anything useful so we still need to use energy from oil and natural gas.

What he did not seriously discuss, were electric cars. Automobiles that rely on electricity run clean and silent, and we can recharge them from our homes. There is the problem of where we get the electricity, but solar farms, wind farms, and nuclear plants provide cleaner, cheaper electricity then we ever had before. But even better than the promise of electric cars is the reality of hybrids. Unlike ethanol, hydrogen or biodiesel technology, the market has kicked in with the gas-electric hybrid cars, and they’re so popular manufacturers can’t even keep up with demand. They represent an intermediary step toward the electric car. Presumably manufacturers will continue to invest in R&D for hybrid vehicles, improving the efficiency and increasing the amount of time the car can run on electric power. At some point, they might even invent a battery and engine that matches the internal combustion engine for reliability and performance, but in the meantime these engines reduce our dependence on foreign oil right here and now. So then, where are the federal tax breaks for people willing to spend the extra cash on these cars? Why not invest in something that is already working?