Zubrin: Flexing nation's muscle

The U.S. Congress can make America energy independent within eight years at the stroke of a pen. All that is required is to pass a law stating that starting in 2008, all new cars sold in the United States must be flexible fuel vehicles.
Flexible fuel vehicles are cars that can use as fuel any combination of gasoline and alcohol. The alcohols so employed can be either methanol or ethanol.

Flex-fuel cars are not a futuristic dream. In fact, this year Detroit will offer some 24 models of standard cars with a flex-fuel option available for purchase. The engineering difference between the flex-fuel units and the standards models is in one sensor and a computer chip that controls the fuel-air mixture, and the employment of a corrosion resistant fuel line. The difference in price from standard units ranges from zero to $800, with $100 being typical.

U.S. production potential

The largest producers of both ethanol and methanol are all in the Western Hemisphere, with the United States having by far the greatest production potential for both.

Ethanol is made from agricultural products. Methanol can also be made from such biomass materials, as well as natural gas and coal. American coal reserves alone are sufficient to power every car in the country on methanol for more than 500 years.

Currently, ethanol can be produced for about $1.50 a gallon, without any subsidy. Methanol, which has no subsidy, is currently selling for 90 cents a gallon. It is 105 octane fuel. A methanol/gasoline fuel mixture that is 85 percent methanol (known as M85, and 40 percent ethanol mixture in gasoline would be E40, etc.) could be made right now for about $1.30 a gallon. E85 can currently be produced for less than $2 per gallon, without any subsidy.

If American cars were made flexible fueled so they could use such fuels, the shift to their utilization would be immediate, as they offer dramatic economy compared to $3-a-gallon gasoline.

Unleashing market forces

Seventeen million news cars are sold each year in the United States. So within three years of enactment of a flex-fuel mandate, there would be more than 50 million cars on the road in the United States capable of burning high-alcohol fuels. This would unleash market forces that would quickly call into being high-alcohol fuel pumps across the nation, and mobilize large amounts of private capital to support vigorous research programs to develop ever cheaper ways of synthesizing alcohol fuels.

If it were mandated that all cars sold in the United States had to be flex-fueled, foreign car manufacturers would mass produce such units as well. This would create a large market in Europe and Asia for American methanol and ethanol, as well as that produced in Brazil and other tropical agricultural countries. This would reverse our trade deficit, improve conditions in the Third World, and cause a global shift in world economic power in favor of the West.

A boon to environment

By promoting agriculture, flexible-fueled vehicles act as global cooling agents. This is so because plants draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and because the large surface areas of the leaves of plants increases water evaporation at the Earth's surface.

The water vapor thus produced transports heat from the surface to the upper atmosphere, where most of it is released to space. In addition, the use of alcohol also reduces air pollution.

Methanol can be used as the raw material to produce dimethyl ether, which is a completely clean-burning diesel fuel. Such fuel could be used by ships (thereby securing the vital fuel supply for the U.S. Navy), railroads and trucks, and eventually automobiles. Diesel engines offer efficiencies greater than 50 percent, substantially higher than is possible with internal combustion engines, and equal to anything realistically possible from far more expensive, and as yet impractical, fuel cells.

To liberate ourselves from the threat of foreign economic domination, to destroy the economic power of the terrorist's financiers, and to give ourselves the free hand necessary to deal as forcefully as required with oil tyrannies funding worldwide jihad, we must take action that radically devalues their resources and increases the value of our own.

The necessary policy may be summed up in a single sentence: We must take the world off the petroleum standard, and put it on the alcohol standard.

We can do this by passing a law requiring all new cars to be flex-fueled.



Robert Zubrin is president of Pioneer Astronautics, an aerospace engineering research and development firm. He is also the author of several books including the nonfiction The Case for Mars and The Holy Land, a satire on the war on terrorism. His feature article on making America energy independent appears in the March 2006 issue of The American Enterprise (www.tae mag.com). He is a resident of Indian Hills.
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