[Rhodes22-list] Hey Roger, Ethanol News

[brad haslett]

Rummy,

I'll let Roger handle the question why current
production engines can't handle a higher concentration
of ethanol.  In Brazil, where about 40% of the fuel
supply is ethanol, they have dual fuel tanks and
vehichles designed to run on ethanol.  My personal
preference is for diesel-electric hybrids powered by
biodiesel.  This is old technology (think trains) and
Detroit could start building them next week if the
market demands them. Here's a couple of timely
articles.  

Brad

------------------------------------------------

Imagine: 500 Miles Per Gallon 
There have been many calls for programs to fund
research. Beneath the din lies a little-noticed
reality—the solution is already with us

By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek


March 7 issue - The most important statement made last
week came not from Vladimir Putin or George W. Bush
but from Ali Naimi, Saudi Arabia's shrewd oil
minister. Naimi predicted that crude prices would stay
between $40 and $50 throughout 2005. For the last two
years OPEC's official target price has been $25.
Naimi's statement signals that Saudi Arabia now
believes that current high prices are not a momentary
thing. An Asian oil-industry executive told me that he
expects oil to hit $75 this decade.

We are actually very close to a solution to the
petroleum problem. Tomorrow, President Bush could make
the following speech: "We are all concerned that the
industrialized world, and increasingly the developing
world, draw too much of their energy from one product,
petroleum, which comes disproportionately from one
volatile region, the Middle East. This dependence has
significant political and environmental dangers for
all of us. But there is now a solution, one that the
United States will pursue actively.

"It is now possible to build cars that are powered by
a combination of electricity and alcohol-based fuels,
with petroleum as only one element among many. My
administration is going to put in place a series of
policies that will ensure that in four years, the
average new American car will get 300 miles per gallon
of petroleum. And I fully expect in this period to see
cars in the United States that get 500 miles per
gallon. This revolution in energy use will reduce
dramatically our dependence on foreign oil and achieve
pathbreaking reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions,
far below the targets mentioned in the Kyoto accords."

Ever since September 11, 2001, there have been many
calls for Manhattan Projects and Marshall Plans for
research on energy efficiency and alternate fuels.
Beneath the din lies a little-noticed reality—the
solution is already with us. Over the last five years,
technology has matured in various fields, most
importantly in semiconductors, to make possible cars
that are as convenient and cheap as current ones,
except that they run on a combination of electricity
and fuel. Hybrid technology is the answer to the
petroleum problem.

You can already buy a hybrid car that runs on a
battery and petroleum. The next step is "plug-in"
hybrids, with powerful batteries that are recharged at
night like laptops, cell phones and iPods. Ford, Honda
and Toyota already make simple hybrids. Daimler
Chrysler is introducing a plug-in version soon. In
many states in the American Middle West you can buy a
car that can use any petroleum, or ethanol, or
methanol—in any combination. Ford, for example, makes
a number of its models with "flexible-fuel tanks."
(Forty percent of Brazil's new cars have flexible-fuel
tanks.) Put all this technology together and you get
the car of the future, a plug-in hybrid with a
flexible-fuel tank.


Here's the math (thanks to Gal Luft, a tireless—and
independent—advocate of energy security). The current
crop of hybrid cars get around 50 miles per gallon.
Make it a plug-in and you can get 75 miles. Replace
the conventional fuel tank with a flexible-fuel tank
that can run on a combination of 15 percent petroleum
and 85 percent ethanol or methanol, and you get
between 400 and 500 miles per gallon of gasoline. (You
don't get 500 miles per gallon of fuel, but the
crucial task is to lessen the use of petroleum. And
ethanol and methanol are much cheaper than gasoline,
so fuel costs would drop dramatically.)

If things are already moving, why does the government
need to do anything? Because this is not a pure free
market. Large companies—in the oil and automotive
industry—have vested interests in not changing much.
There are transition costs—gas stations will need to
be fitted to pump methanol and ethanol (at a cost of
$20,000 to $60,000 per station). New technologies will
empower new industries, few of which have lobbies in
Washington.

Besides, the idea that the government should have
nothing to do with this problem is bizarre. It was
military funding and spending that produced much of
the technology that makes hybrids possible. (The
military is actually leading the hybrid trend. All new
naval surface ships are now electric-powered, as are
big diesel locomotives and mining trucks.) And the
West's reliance on foreign oil is not cost-free. Luft
estimates that a government plan that could accelerate
the move to a hybrid transport system would cost $12
billion dollars. That is what we spend in Iraq in
about three months.

Smart government intervention would include a
combination of targeted mandates, incentives and
spending. And it does not have to all happen at the
federal level. New York City, for example, could
require that all its new taxis be hybrids with
flexible-fuel tanks. Now that's a Manhattan Project
for the 21st century.

Write the author at comments at fareedzakaria.com

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
URL:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7037844/site/newsweek/page/2/

------------------------------------------------

Neocons for Conservation?
By Robert Bryce
Slate.msn.com | February 1, 2005


President Bush has a simple policy about energy:
produce more of it. The former oilman has packed his
administration with veterans of the oil and coal
industries. And for most of the first Bush term, his
energy policy and his foreign policy were joined at
the hip. Since the Bush administration believed that
controlling the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf was
critically important to the American economy, the
invasion of Iraq seemed to serve both the president's
energy goals and his foreign policy ones. 

But a curious transformation is occurring in
Washington, D.C., a split of foreign policy and energy
policy: Many of the leading neoconservatives who
pushed hard for the Iraq war are going green. James
Woolsey, the former director of the Central
Intelligence Agency and staunch backer of the Iraq
war, now drives a 58-miles-per-gallon Toyota Prius and
has two more hybrid vehicles on order. Frank Gaffney,
the president of the Center for Security Policy and
another neocon who championed the war, has been
speaking regularly in Washington about fuel efficiency
and plant-based bio-fuels. 

The alliance of hawks and environmentalists is new but
not entirely surprising. The environmentalists are
worried about global warming and air pollution. But
Woolsey and Gaffney—both members of the Project for
the New American Century, which began advocating
military action against Saddam Hussein back in
1998—are going green for geopolitical reasons, not
environmental ones. They seek to reduce the flow of
American dollars to oil-rich Islamic theocracies,
Saudi Arabia in particular. Petrodollars have made
Saudi Arabia too rich a source of terrorist funding
and Islamic radicals. Last month, Gaffney told a
conference in Washington that America has become
dependent on oil that is imported from countries that,
"by and large, are hostile to us." This fact, he said,
makes reducing oil imports "a national security
imperative." 

Neocons and greens first hitched up in the fall, when
they jointly backed a proposal put forward by the
Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a
Washington-based think tank that tracks energy and
security issues. (Woolsey is on the IAGS advisory
board.) The IAGS plan proposes that the federal
government invest $12 billion to: encourage auto
makers to build more efficient cars and consumers to
buy them; develop industrial facilities to produce
plant-based fuels like ethanol; and promote fuel cells
for commercial use. The IAGS plan is keen on "plug-in
hybrid vehicles," which use internal combustion
engines in conjunction with electric motors that are
powered by batteries charged by current from standard
electric outlets. 

The Natural Resources Defense Council and the American
Council on Renewable Energy (Woolsey is on the
latter's advisory board, too) both endorsed the IAGS
plan. The environmental groups, who have been in the
weeds ever since George W. Bush moved in at 1600
Pennsylvania, are happy for any help they can get.
"It's a wonderful confluence. We agree on the same
goals, even if it's for different reasons," says Deron
Lovaas, the NRDC's point-man on auto issues. 

For Woolsey and Gaffney, the fact that energy
efficiency and conservation might help the environment
is an unintended side benefit. They want to weaken the
Saudis, the Iranians, and the Syrians while also
strengthening the Israelis. Whether these ends are
achieved with M-16s or hybrid automobiles doesn't seem
to matter to them. 

They aren't the only Iraq hawks who have joined the
cause. The Hudson Institute's Meyrav Wurmser also
signed the IAGS plan. In 1996, she was one of the
authors—along with Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, of
a famous strategy paper for Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu that called for the overthrow of
Saddam Hussein and military assaults against Lebanon
and Syria. (Wurmser's married to fellow neocon David
Wurmser, an adviser to Dick Cheney, former AEI fellow,
and enthusiast for the Iraq war.) Clifford May, the
president of the Foundation for the Defense of
Democracies, endorsed the IAGS scheme, too. And the
Committee on the Present Danger is about to join the
Prius-and-ethanol crowd, as well. A driving force for
America's military buildup since the '50s now
reconstituted as an antiterror group, the CPD will
issue a paper in the next few months endorsing many
elements of the IAGS plan. CPD members include Midge
Decter, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Newt Gingrich, and Steve
Forbes, as well as Woolsey and Gaffney. 

So far, the neocons are the only ones on the right to
break with Bush on energy policy. They can do this
because opposing the energy policy doesn't cost them
anything—either politically or economically. The
neocons come mostly out of academia and government so,
unlike other conservative Republicans, they have few
ties to big business and no significant connections to
the energy lobbyists who are so influential with the
White House. 

Despite the setbacks in Iraq, the green neocons
believe they can convince Congress and the White House
to adopt their program. May, the head of the
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, predicts
that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will be "open to
arguments that we can increase and enhance national
security for a reasonable price." Gaffney won't name
names, but he too is confident, saying, "We continue
to enjoy access to and friendships with people who are
key policymakers." 

If they can convince Congress and the White House to
enact meaningful legislation on energy efficiency and
conservation—issues that have been marginalized since
the Carter administration—then perhaps the neocons
will finally have a success story that they can brag
about. Better still, it won't require the services of
the 82nd Airborne Division. 




--- R22RumRunner at aol.com wrote:
> Brad,
> Great article, but why is the amount added to
> gasoline so low? Why can't an  
> automobile engine burn a mixture let's say of 50/50
> mix or even higher? Roger, 
>  help.
>  
> Rummy
> __________________________________________________
> Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help?
> www.rhodes22.org/list
> 


		
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