Update:
Since Energy Victory was published, Brazil's full flex mandate has now gone into effect. As a result, new model-year gas-using cars sold in the USA, though they have the feature turned off, are already designed and certified to be fully flex. So a mandate here in America would no longer add anything to the price of a new car, not even the few hundred originally estimated. The car companies' major stakeholders tend to own stakes in oil companies, too, so while they give lip service to fully flex fuel cars here, they will not switch the feature on for all new cars unless we force them. The software and hardware already exists and you are being deprived of a choice of fuel.
Lester Brown and David Pimentel originated the claims that ethanol is bad for the environment and costs too much. As if the fact both their claims have been debunked now in peer-reviewed lit isn't enough or that methanol is in many ways superior and would likely dominate the market, both of them want governments around the world engaged in population control. No joke. The left and Obama have been duped by a lot of phony claims being thrown around, including by academics who have no expertise in this field and have opinions decent people find objectionable.
If a mandate happened today, the futures markets would adjust overnight in anticipation. Gas prices would begin falling to below $3/gal, as even now methanol can be produced at that energy-equivalent rate from natural gas. And that's not even getting into new technologies or simple economies-of-scale that methanol currently does not enjoy. Flex fuel opens your vehicle to all alcohols, certain synthetics, in addition to the gas it now burns.
Support the Open Fuel Standard Act.
Original Review:
Energy Victory outlines the first step towards an energy solution for the United States, the path to energy development for the world, and a 1-2 punch to the Gulf States that are funding terror against us. Bob Zubrin has shown us the way in one swoop. He's totally convinced me. It's not everyday you read a book that changes your mind on so many key issues and leaves little to disagree on of import. I understood the situation with Saudi Arabia & the rest of the OPEC "cartel" states, terrorism, etc, as well as the stinking red-herring of hydrogen. But alcohols and mandating flex-fuel cars at an additional cost of almost zero on the consumer end? Potentially allowing the poor of the world to also pull themselves up by their own bootstraps (or sandal straps, in this case) by participating in a world alcohol economy? This is just downright genius. Really, I don't know how else to put it.
Fusion power, probably from a massive Manhattan Project-level effort, will need government funding at some point to free us of fossil fuels for power generation in general. I still believe that and Zubrin does not attempt to refute Fusion or the eventual desirability of pure electric cars. However, he's convinced me to be realistic about the engineering hurdles of Fusion and pure electric's unrealistic short-term prospects in the marketplace, especially considering car companies resistance to the latter. That is a global climate change solution. Yes, biofuels still produce some carbon. Certainly it is an improvement in the right direction. This, however, is a strategic security & economic issue, and flex-fuel can deliver.
Bringing the troops home, invading the west coast of the Persian Gulf, saving the rain forest, hybrid cars, and yes, even health care...everything else is frankly secondary. FLEX-FUEL VEHICALS MUST BE MANDATED AS OUTLINED BY ZUBRIN. You want a flex-fuel plug-in hybrid-electric? Great, but voluntary. Have the money and want to buy a Tesla-motor full electric sports car? Be my guest! Love the kick standard petrol gives? Fine! Again, totally optional. But the competition that results from a simple flex-fuel mandate on liquid fuel cars, which would still be the vast majority of those people can afford, will put us on our way towards this victory, a victory for the entire world against terror and the cartel. Get this book, read it, spread the word. If it doesn't get you excited about this solution in an era of growing despondence and despair, either you're an idiot or you're part of the elites of this country (or another) who are benefiting from the current oil monopoly.
Post Scripts:
There's been a lot of talk lately about biofuel subsidies. The crux here is that all subsidies & tariffs artificially affect the marketplace. Subsidies are counterproductive and will never allow market forces and innovation to move things forward naturally. Tariffs are usually only appropriate to counteract another country's poor behavior, such as inadequate worker rights or...you guessed it...subsidies. Oh, but the oil companies (such as BP) love subsidies, even the biofuel ones. Take a moment to think about why they might be in favor of corn growers taking perfectly good edible corn, converting it to ethanol, causing the price of food to rise (actually most of this is caused by over-fishing & the move to more grains or meat in coastal areas, people around the world eating more, and higher oil prices), and getting essentially a kick back for doing this. Hmm...why might BP like that, and then go out and fund research on biofuel's effects on food prices? Subsidies are not the free market in action, and don't let anyone tell you different. Do we even need to get into the psychology for why the U.S. farm lobby might like ethanol import tariffs?
A Flex-Fuel Mandate plus ZERO Fuel Subsidies & fewer tariffs would allow things to work out on their own. Be wary of propaganda to the contrary.
There is no need for mandating on the supply end. That's supply-side economics. A form of demand-side economics is what Zubrin envisions here. Requiring gas stations to include at least one pump of alcohol or mandating gas contain a certain percentage of ethanol is an outdated mode of thinking. The brilliance of a single-mandate, demand-side strategy is how the inherent power of capitalism does the rest. Supply-side economics is actually not the free market at its best, which is why it's so inefficient and ineffective. It's closer to Marxism than capitalism, which is rather ironic if you think about it. It takes away choice from the consumer.
At this very moment, states across America are mandating 10% ethanol in petrol. Some are about to ban the pure stuff. That is not the solution. Let the market decide. Let the consumers choose. BUT STANDARDIZE ON CAPABILITY. I talked to several gas station attendants and managers. Guess what? There are a massive number of small business owners who are wildly upset with alcohol fuels because their two-strokes and other small engines are malfunctioning on it. Some of them have to drive out of town to get the pure petrol. Soon they'll have to either drive out of state or buy new lawnmowers and weedwhackers. All it's doing is creating more dislike for biofuels and is a worthless nickel & diming technique, anyway.
DO NOT REMOVE CHOICE. A flex-fuel mandate creates the opportunity for demand cheaply and simply by expanding on economy-of-scale levels the mass option to use alcohols, but it does not force the supply-side. Are there really any sane economists left who'd even attempt to promote Reaganomics in the 21st century? My understanding is the issue was debunked over a decade ago in a great many peer-reviewed journal articles, with games theory and numbers to back it up. Japan's state-subsidized halcyon bubble popping was the final nail on voodoo economics' coffin.
Detroit, Detroit, Detroit! With all this talk about auto sales and the health of the Big Three, need I say more? Would this not give people an incentive to buy a new car?
Speculation does cause prices to rise in the short and mid-term, but assuming everything else stays the same, it tends to help reduce prices in the long run compared to what they would have been otherwise (in the long run, that is) by "preparing" the supply to meet the expected demand.
As soon as a mandate occurs, whatever the pre-mandate futures-induced part of that price was would almost immediately evaporate as speculators dump their hedges. You will only find out exactly how much of a speculation price increase there has been within the first few months of the mandate as it quickly disappears.
Recently, I heard one guy on simhq.com go off on me about how people in Alaska wouldn't be able to use methanol without it freezing and making their life miserable in the long winter. I'll address the logic of this statement separate from the facts. If this were a centrally-controlled communist government in their infinite wisdom mandating that every pump in America stock something that froze in that region & season, then indeed it would be a problem. But in a free market system where only the capability has been mandated on the demand-end, pumps can stock whatever they think people will want to buy. If a pump manager were dumb enough to stock only fuel that people didn't want that time of year when there were other alternatives, him going out of business would be good for the market. The market is smart. A government controlling it on the supply-end is inherently stupid and inefficient in comparison. However, the equally good news here is that alcohols in fact have lower melting/freezing points than petrol. Methanol, after all, is commonly used in antifreeze. It also has a safer, higher flash point, which is why it is so commonly used in racing.
There are two other issues being brought against alcohols and alcohol-petrol mixes. The first is methanol's corrosive properties. But it is primarily a problem with aluminum and certain polymers. Cheaper fuel lines & seals are actually immune to it and aluminum is already diminishing in use in engines and fuel tanks. Again, methanol is already used in antifreezes. Any tri-fuel flexible car that is sold new on the market will already be easily anti-corrosive. Certainly any gas station investing in more alcohol fuels would be doing so at their own expense, that is, the station's. This as the market creates economic incentive through natural profit expectations as demand increases with more of these vehicles on the road, that is, as a result of the mandate. Such station infrastructure improvements are therefore not a hurdle since they are carried out voluntarily and corrosion resistance is an understood necessity. Again, pretty much just no rubber and aluminum. Many racing circuits around the world rely on methanol already without much complaint. For the record, IndyCar switched to ethanol from methanol because they got a special marketing deal in 2006.
Then we have T. Boone Pickens' Liquid or Compressed Natural Gas idea (LNG/CNG). It's in the right direction, but natural gas is not liquid at room temperatures or normal pressures. LNG requires cryogenics. CNG requires pressurized canisters. It costs extra to have your vehicle outfitted with this capability and you have to deal with either canisters or a cooling system, usually filling up your trunk. The thought consumers would have to go through to choose that upgrade route, refuel, and mechanically flip a switch between petrol and natural gas lacks the transparency & elegance of the flex-fuel mandate. With Zubrin, new cars under the mandate happen to give you the option of using the cheapest fuel at the local pump...whatever that may be. Keep it simple. Furthermore, the most common means of producing methanol is already from natural gas. So even before methanol-producing microbes come on-line or ethanol from the developing world is produced in quantity, methanol from natural gas is already competitive with petrol RIGHT NOW. Thus natural gas already has a role in flex-fuel without needing compression canisters, cryogenics, or relying on the education of consumers on the subject.
And did I actually hear Pickens mention his LNG idea as a "bridge" to hydrogen fuel-cells? Exsqueeze me? I hope he's planning himself on paying for those $100,000 cars for all of us, the expensive required hydrogen infrastructure since you again wouldn't have fuel choice, and offsetting the fact that it is far more wasteful than just using batteries to store energy. Space vehicles often use hydrogen fuel cells because price is no object in such exotic situations and they need as much energy as they can carry. Personally, I think Pickens' ideas on powering the electrical grid are more promising than his fuel proposals.
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