Gentlemen, Start Your Plug-Ins

How does 500 miles a gallon sound to you?

by James Woolsey

An oil and security task force of the Council on Foreign Relations recently opined that “the voices that espouse ‘energy independence’ are doing the nation a disservice by focusing on a goal that is unachievable over the foreseeable future.” Others have also said, essentially, that other nations will control our transportation fuel–get used to it. Yet House Democrats have announced a push for “energy independence in 10 years,” and in November General Motors joined Toyota and perhaps other auto makers in a race to produce plug-in hybrid vehicles, hugely reducing the demand for oil. Who’s right–those who drive toward independence or those who shrug?

Bet on major progress toward independence, spurred by market forces and a portfolio of rapidly developing oil-replacing technologies.

In recent years a number of alternatives to conventional oil have come to the fore–oil sands, oil shale, coal-to-diesel and coal-to-methanol technologies. But their acceptability to a new Congress, quite possibly the next president, and a public increasingly concerned about global warming will depend on their demonstrating affordable and effective methods of sequestering the carbon they produce or otherwise avoiding carbon emissions.

Ethanol’s appeal rose a few years ago when it became clear that genetically modified biocatalysts could break down the cellulose in biomass and thus enable ethanol’s production from a wide range of plant life. This means that, compared with corn, little fossil fuel is needed during biomass cultivation and land use presents much less of a problem. Indeed two years ago the National Energy Policy Commission (NEPC), making reasonable assumptions about improved vehicle efficiency and biomass yields over the next 20 years, estimated that just 7% of U.S. farmland (the amount now in the Soil Bank) could produce enough biomass to provide half the fuel needed by U.S. passenger vehicles, and that production costs for cellulosic ethanol were headed downward toward around 70 cents per gallon. Further, conversion of only a portion of industrial, municipal and animal wastes–using thermal processes now coming into commercial operation–appears to be able to yield an additional several million barrels a day of diesel or, with some processes, methanol.

Wall St. Journal