SPEAKOUT: Flex-fuel cars can break OPEC

By Robert Zubrin

Friday, January 25, 2008

Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez recently joined Iranian president Mahmoud Amadinejad in threatening to raise oil prices to $200 per barrel. The threat should be taken quite seriously. With no practical transportation fuel alternative to petroleum available to the world market, the OPEC oil cartel has already been successful in raising prices an order of magnitude since 1999, with a 50 percent increase effected in 2007 alone.

Much of the money we are spending on oil is being used to fund an international network of front organizations and madrassas devoted to spreading terrorist ideology. Meanwhile, Iran is using its share of the take to fund the development of materials that can be used in nuclear weapons.

We are financing a war against ourselves, and the way things are going, we will soon be paying the enemy more than we are paying our own military.

In light of this, a top priority of U.S. national security policy should be to break the oil cartel. This imperative has been apparent since the 1973 oil embargo, but nothing effective has been done. However there is now a way to break OPEC.

What is needed is for the Congress to pass a law requiring that all new cars sold in the United States be flex-fueled - able to run on any combination of alcohol or gasoline fuel. Such cars are existing technology - in fact about 24 different models of flex-fuel cars were produced by the Detroit Big Three in 2007, and they only cost about $100 more than the same car in a gasoline-only version. But, since alcohol fuel pumps (such as E85, a fuel mix that is 85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline) are nearly as rare as unicorns, flex-fuel cars only command about 3 percent of the new-car market.

The reason E85 pumps are so rare is that gas station owners don't want to dedicate one of their pumps to a kind of fuel that only a few percent of the cars can use. If we had a flex-fuel requirement, however, then within three years of enactment there would be 50 million cars on the road capable of running on high-alcohol fuels. Under those conditions, E85 and M50 (a 50 percent methanol, 50 percent gasoline fuel mix; flex-fuel cars can use any alcohol, including methanol) pumps would start appearing everywhere.

But most important, this would not just be happening here. By requiring that all new cars sold in the United States be flex-fueled, we would be forcing all the foreign car manufacturers to switch their lines to flex-fuel as well, effectively making flex-fuel the international standard. So there would be hundreds of millions of cars worldwide capable of running on alcohol, forcing gasoline to compete everywhere against alcohol fuels that can be produced from numerous sources. This would effectively break the vertical monopoly that the oil cartel currently holds on the world's fuel supply and keep prices in the $50-a-barrel range, because that is where alcohol fuels become competitive.

It would also create a market that would mobilize tens of billions of dollars of private investment into areas such as cellulosic ethanol and other advanced alcohol production techniques that can cheapen alcohols further and radically expand their potential resource base (although methanol already can be produced from any kind of biomass, without exception, as well as from coal, natural gas and urban trash).

With such a production and distribution infrastructure in place, we could proceed to not merely contain the petrotyrants, but wipe them out at our discretion by implementing tax and tariff policies that favor alcohol over petroleum.

We could effectively take more than a trillion dollars a year that is now going to the oil cartel, and direct it toward the world agricultural sector instead. This would not only be of great benefit to farmers here, but an enormous boon to the Third World, which otherwise faces brutal looting through continued unconstrained OPEC price hikes.

Instead of financing terrorism, we could be funding world development. Instead of selling blocks of CNN to Saudi princes, we could be selling tractors to Africa. That is the way to win the war on terror.

Robert Zubrin is president of Pioneer Astronautics, an aerospace engineering research and development firm, and author of Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil.

• January 25, 2008

  7:50 a.m.

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  vudumom writes:

  Why can't we just send all the Hollyweird actors who love Chavez down to visit and talk some sense into him.They seem to have a bond with him. He such a nice guy.I'm sure he would agree not to hurt the U.S. dangling a barrel of oil over our heads.Now that he has become a Dicktator his buddy Sean Penn should go talk some sense into him.
  If not the U.S. could always make him an offer he can't refuse.
  Maybe a oops that slipped out bomb on his palace.

  This is a joke people.For those humorously challenged.

• January 25, 2008

  8:15 a.m.

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  CDee writes:

  All flex fuel vehicles do is change the need for fossil fuel for organic fuel. And what are we going to do with the huge toxic batteries on hybrids that will only last 10 years and cost about half of the cost of the new vehicle itself? I agree we need to find ways to lessen our dependence on foreign oil, but we need REAL ideas.

• January 25, 2008

  9:29 a.m.

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  Diff writes:

  The NET energy gained from producing ethanol from plant materials is not that great! A lot of agriculture land would need to be devoted to energy production and Food prices would soar! We would still be pollutting the planet esetially as much!
  Part of the solution for sure, but it is not the fix all being presented.

• January 25, 2008

  12:57 p.m.

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  jay writes:

  I find it laughable that the right believes that rehashing existing technology is going to break OPEC...or that this kind of "solution" is the best option from a country that put men on the moon.

• January 25, 2008

  12:57 p.m.

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  jay writes:

  I find it laughable that the right believes that rehashing existing technology is going to break OPEC...or that this kind of "solution" is the best option from a country that put men on the moon.

• January 25, 2008

  3:16 p.m.

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  CDee writes:

  OK Jay
  The concept of the internal combustion engine has not changed since the date of conception. I guess you are the only one smart enough to re-invent it over night. So please, enlighten us Oh Wise One.

• January 25, 2008

  3:37 p.m.

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  greenleaf writes:

  Ethanol is being brought to us ADM and Con Agra, the giants of corporate agriculture.Anything that sells corn and soy beans at inflated prices is just fine with them! Don't blame the environmentalists for this "feeding frenzy". Powerful lobbies are foisting it on a gullible public that would do almost anything to avoid giving up wasteful habits such as the internal combustion engine. Ethanol or bio-diesel made from switch grass, yard waste, tree thinning or, even, algae might someday be part of the solution, but only part! Conservation, in the form of more fuel efficient vehicles can also play a part. We are committed to a fossil fuel economy for a while longer. If we are smart about it, we will make it for as short a time as possible!

• January 28, 2008

  10:45 a.m.

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  yooper writes:

  For those who dislike ethanol read this.

  http://oblate-spheroid.blogspot.com/2...

• January 28, 2008

  11:11 a.m.

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  newscaper writes:

  Calm down guys!

  You need to read more on Zubrin's ideas.
  YES, subsidizing ADM on corn so food prices rise is a crazy, crooked boondoggle, but that's a separate battle. There is progress being made in ethanol from other sources -- prairie grass and other cellulose. One of Zubrin's key points is also making the flexfuel vehicle handle *methanol* -- methanol can be made more easily than ethanol from a lot o additional source -- get this -- including *coal* which the US has gigatons of (and methanol is much easier to get from coal than using it to make synthetic gasoline).

  It's all about enabling multiple options in the marketplace -- do NOT get Zubrin's scheme mixed up with the awful idea that is corn form ethanol.

• January 28, 2008

  11:39 a.m.

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  SamSam writes:

  Even with the Coskata method (linked to by yooper), we are still looking at a vast problem. If Coskata can get 100 gallons per dry ton of feedstock, to replace the gasoline use in the US will require at least 1.5 billion tons of dry stock annually (and I am rounding everything in Coskata's favor. Start with 10 million barrels of gasoline consumption per day, and work out the details, and double check to make sure I've done it correctly.)

  The question is - do you believe that is a good idea? Do you think that corn stover or those wood chips would be better put to use recycled into the soil? As a means of dealing with organic trash (say in a city) Coskata's approach is probably a win-win solution, but on a farm or in a forest it seems to run counter to wise agricultural practices.

  Also notes on methanol - 1 gallon of methanol contains only a fraction of the energy that 1 gallon of gasoline has (something like 60% from memory, but that needs to be checked.) So a tremendous amount of methanol will be needed, which if made from coal means we are taking carbon stored as a solid in the earth and putting it as CO2 into the atmosphere (if anybody here is concerned about that.)

  Suggest that rather than ethanol/methanol we look more towards electrifying our transportation, and build new generating capacity from nuclear, solar, and wind.

• January 28, 2008

  12:56 p.m.

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  newscaper writes:

  Agree abolsutely on expanding modern, safer nuclear power.

  I think plug-in hybrids that run on either diesel(biodiesel) or gasoline(w/alcohol flex) would be a good idea.

  Why am I not so big on all-electric, at least not across the board? The hybrids will work when the grid goes down -- I'm in hurricane country. All electric if fine for 2nd or 3rd family car, but not as a primary. All electric would be a serious *strategic* vulnerabilty, whether to attack or natural disaster. No one talks about that.

  I'd love the price of solar cells to keep sliding so people could more affordably reduce their home's dependence on the grid, but large scale solar and wind projects, where they actually work, are resulting in enviro-on-enviro friendly fire. It's as if the more doctrinaire sorts just don't like energy much, renewable or not (and technology, and human beings...)

  As Zubrin said, flexfuel capability is a CHEAP yet potentially high impact transitional step. To *not* do it while waiting for one's preferred pie in the sky is nuts. I am very leery of top-down, one-size-fits all "solutions" (boondoggles) forced by the government. Flexfuel provides real incremental advantages, harnesses the marketplace, is highly compatible with existing distribution mechansisms and fosters interoperability in supply.

• January 28, 2008

  1:15 p.m.

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  JimmyH writes:

  I did an article for GreenOptions.com back in march that addresses most of the problems mentioned in the comments.

  http://jimmyhogan.greenoptions.com/20...

• January 28, 2008

  2:25 p.m.

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  Theoldguy writes:

  Electrify everything via solar energy. Homes should become the primary generating stations with the power companies being the back-up and router. Ethanol will become another Savings and Loan/Penny Stock/sub-prime mortgage fiasco. And as usual the politicians have been sold another pig in a poke.

  Hopefully Stuckey's will reemerge along the Interstate as a place for food and a quick recharge. Maybe we can then wean ourselves from junk food at the corner stop n' robs and get back to healthier eating habits.

  Hey, two birds.......one stone.

• January 28, 2008

  4:29 p.m.

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  mockmook writes:

  What about all the fragile ecosystems (like rain forests) that will be devastated when biomass conversion to alcohol is profitable?

  I say nuke, clean coal, ANWR, etc.

• January 29, 2008

  9:37 a.m.

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  windbourne writes:

  Hmmm. Well, Dr. Zubrin, I certainly agree with you about doing this. I am not a big fan of oil burning based machines, but there is no getting past the fact that we will be on it for at least another decade. I am amazed that the dems did not force this one simple issue into law. While the manufacturers will scream about it, it costs less than 200 to a car. Since near all cars costs more than 20K, this is a trivial amount to add to the cost.
  The good news is that later this year, Tesla will have their top end electrical car in production, and will introduce another that is suppose to be in production by 2010. The white star is suppose to cost about 30-40K, and be a sedan. The tesla is the reason why Chevy is finally introducing the Volt. Otherwise, GM was content to stay with Gas/Diesel cars. None of these will change America overnight, but by 2012, we will see the bulk of new cars being at least hybrids, and possibly pure electrical. In the mean time, the flex fuel would certainly keep America from being strangled by Iran, Venezuela, etc.