Beyond Obama: a Biofuel Stimulus for President
Earlier this month, Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama outlined an ambitious energy plan to drive the United States toward a self-sufficient green economy. From fuel rebates to carbon cap-and-trade to vehicle fuel efficiency, the Obama plan has been widely accepted as the most comprehensive energy package released by a Presidential candidate to date. There is one specific section of the Obama energy plan which has the biofuel community abuzz: a flex fuel mandate for all new vehicles in the United States.
“Sustainably‐produced biofuels can create jobs, protect the environment and help end oil addiction – but only if Americans drive cars that will take such fuels. Obama will work with Congress and auto companies to ensure that all new vehicles have FFV capability – the capability by the end of his first term in office.”
Obama’s mandate would require that every new vehicle sold in the United States would be capable of running on gasoline, ethanol, methanol and other alcohol-based fuels. While this is exciting news to the biofuel world, Obama’s plan only effects new vehicles– leaving only a tiny portion of the 250,851,833 cars on the road in the US ready for Biofuels. This mandate would only stimulate biofuel production as new cars are sold, ignoring the opportunity of converting the existing fleet to flex fuel ready vehicles.
A Flex Fuel Stimulus, Not Just a Mandate
In his energy plan, Obama calls for an emergency energy rebate providing $500+ per tax payer for “relief at the pump”. While gasoline prices remain fixed near the $4.00 mark throughout the U.S., this rebate would provide temporary relief before gas prices continue their skyward climb. An alternative investment of that rebate by the US government could provide long-term fuel price relief to the US– as well as a major step toward energy independence and a shot in the arm for a failing, petroleum-based economy.
Senator Obama should amend his plan to provide a $500 rebate to tax payers who install flex fuel conversion kits in their vehicles, allowing them to run on gasoline and biofuels alike. At cost, these conversion kits start at $250 for 4-cylinder engines and increase from there. Installation is as easy as replacing an air filter, but can be done by certified mechanics for a small fee. In short, flex fuel installation is cheap, easy, and can provide immediate benefit for both consumers and the US economy at large. Here are just a few of the benefits:
- A stimulus to the biofuel industry
- Beyond the nation-wide ethanol fuel blend, this stimulus would have consumers at the pump choosing E85 over gasoline due to the large price disparity.
- The result in E85 use would be a boon for existing ethanol producers.
- Increased advancement in 2nd gen biofuels
- An existing, biofuel capable auto market would increase investment in 2nd gen biofuels like “Celluline“, aglae biofuel and others.
- When a new biofuel is ready for production, it has an auto market ready to pump it.
- Lower oil prices
- Lowered demand for petroleum fuel would lower oil prices across the globe, bumping out speculators and bringing the price of petroleum fuel down to a reasonable range.
- True relief at the pump
- The option between a range of biofuels and cheaper gasoline would make the consumer the true winner in the next generation gas war.
- Lower consumer product and commodity prices
- As transportation fuel prices drop, so will the increase in food prices, commodity prices and consumer goods prices.
The Obama flex fuel mandate could be a magic bullet for the biofuel industry, but it misses the greatest opportunity to develop the biofuel economy. Our existing fleet can be converted to flex fuel on the cheap, and a government stimulus could manage this conversion on its own. Senator Obama’s flex fuel mandate is a strong step in the right direction, one that he should be applauded for. In the next President of the United States, we need not only a flex fuel mandate– we need a flex fuel stimulus to help us achieve all the promise of a smart, clean biofuel economy.
Image Credit: Photo from Radiospike Photography’s flickr photostream. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Mike,
Thanks for the plug on “Celluline” — and you’re right, we need a solution for all the cars on our roads, not just the new ones. Conversion is a cheap and quick way to do that and can easily be subsidized for a relatively small amount of taxpayer money. I like your thinking!
Thanks for the comment, Nick- and as I mentioned before, I love your coining of the “celluline” term.
Beyond the national level, a flex fuel conversion rebate or tax credit might be achievable at the state level. That’s my next line of research, starting in my current home state here in Iowa. In a farming state such as this, I doubt my questions will fall on deaf ears with local policy-makers…
Whee does one get a flex fuel conversion kit?
http://www.atlah.org/broadcast/ndnr07-28-08.html
Please watch this video on You Tube… It tells and exposes more about this election, no matter who you want to win..
Subject: Look and Listen Closely….and pass it on to all on your e-mail list..
I don’t know how everyone is voting but this is worth
the time to listen to what this man says..
This is serious, serious, business…….
Better listen…
http://www.atlah.org/broadcast/ndnr07-28-08.html
Obama is an empty suit. From the day he was sworn in to the Senate to the date he declared his run for the presidency, is only 145 days on the job. He has literally no experience. (Not figuratively, literally!) He’s not qualified to run a Dairy Queen.
Proven Obama has most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate. Obama is to the left of Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Russ Feingold, Pat Leahy and Barbara Boxer. That’s extremely difficult to do. Obama is a textbook big-government, tax-and-spend liberal. He plans to raise income tax rates, capital gains tax rates, Social Security taxes (by virtue of eliminating the cap), dividend taxes, inheritance taxes, and introduce a slew of new taxes. His plan will destroy this country
To ALL the obamakins and of course the bias CNN & MSNBC I have one simple request. Please spare me the hope and the change bull, and the Bush’s third term, McSame etc… Please just tell American voters what qualifies Barack Obama to run this country. What qualifies him to oversee our $14 trillion economy, the largest on earth? What qualifies him to be commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces in a time of war? Please just give me one single solid qualification. And race does not qualify!! That would be one more than anyone including cable media has provided to date. WE ALL HAVE GROWN EXTREMLY TIRED OF MEDIA SAINTED OBAMA….
Obama keeps reaching back to Chicago political past for policy advisers, and pulling one despicable, vile, and even evil “rabbit” after another out of his hat.
The list of Barack Obama’s radical associations is long and it keeps getting longer. Some are now well-known, but many are not. They need to be.
23 years at TUCC with Jeremiah Wright and James Meeks. racist sermons on Youtube.
He chose the most radical church in the country; chose to immerse himself in hard-core ideological radicalism. Never before has this country considered such a radical leftist for its chief executive.
Michael Pfleger and his hateful and race-hating ramblings, Obama met while carrying out his own radical social activism as community organizer at ACORN, (radical organization)
Penny Pritzker, heads Obama camp National Finance Committee was president of Superior Bank - massively failed and she literally bought her way out of jail paying $460 MILLION fine; was the very epicenter of subprime loan scandal” that would come to eat this nation’s financial system alive.
Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson, former head of Obama’s vice presidential selection committee, discovered he benefited from sweetheart loans from subprime king Countrywide.
Tony Rezko certainly and his federal indictments and financial dealing with Obamas of course and William Ayers, US terrorist bomber, Obama-co-lecturer, fellow board member, neighbor, and friend.
Communist Frank Marshall Davis, obama mentor; Saul Alinsky and Gerald Kellman (Kellman’s Woods Fund is how Obama hooked up with terrorist William Ayers)
Chicago lawyer Mazen Asbahi, appointed as Obama camp national coord for Muslim n affairs also stepped down after news about his stint on the fund’s board - which includes fundamentalist imam - prompting The Wall Street Journal inquiries about relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and his long personal relationship with Hamas Jamal Said.
Obama desperately needs voters to forget hes the son of a Muslim father who served an incredibly brutal and corrupt Kenyan government; to forget he attended a madrassa in Indonesia and practiced Islam; forget that he campaigned in Kenya on behalf of Raila Odinga, who relied upon chaos, corruption, and violence in his campaign; numerous associations with radical Muslims; forget the photographs of Obama in traditional Muslim clothes, hanging with Muslim radicals such as Mazen Asbahi and anti-Semite Rashid Khalidi.
The mainstream media has frankly put the security of our great country at risk with an Obama coronation media like CNN & MSNBC is the only way Obama managed to steal the Dem nom. It’s extremely concerning that so many Americans could care less about who their candidate really is?? simply amazing and frankly scarey.
We need to conserve the energy spent on politics and put the science into action.
[...] REGISTER TO VOTE NOW! (not later, right this minute) Robert Zubrin and His Book An Electric Car You Can Make that Works Just Fine (Even though the body is older than Flex Fuel Technology) Energy and Policy Barackin’ For Biofuels [...]
Mike,
Just wanted to say that I did read your article when writing my own (and I linked it under another title, Barackin’ For Biofuels). And yes things are starting to get better. Innovation just needs to be poured into this whole project. I’m thinking along the lines of what we used to get into space. Space was just a milestone of man, energy is integral to how we live (and I don’t mean to belittle space travel, we need to keep exploring that too!).
I also find it funny that this post is attracting more negative attention than positive. At least Obama’s plan for our energy future doesn’t rely on technology that’s older than John McCain (I didn’t know there was anything older than him, but gasoline is composted carbon). Everyone’s fear of Obama is funny because it’s not like we all don’t have a couple of skeletons in our closets (McCain has plenty, but there is no time for slander when we are worrying about the future).
And yes my friend, to an alcohol fueled America for now, and hopefully something even better in the future.
~anthony
Mike,
I actually linked to your post for my article, I just changed the title to something that I thought was a lot less practical but a little more entertaining (the economics on that don’t check out so don’t worry about them). I enjoyed your writing and it’s good to see someone stand up for Obama in the energy sector. I feel that things are only getting started with all these alternate fuels. If we focus on alternate energy like we did space, imagine what could be accomplished!
Sorry that this post is attracting negative attention from people who are just too afraid of progress to accept where we are headed. I find it funny that people don’t like him because he doesn’t have experience, but has so much experience. Maybe he doesn’t have the right experience they are looking for? Or maybe he isn’t enough of a maverick? So he has a few skeletons in his closet, who doesn’t. Sarah Palin does and she ran a small town in Alaska. John McCain has his issues to, but slander just brings down the process of progress.
And yes, to an alcohol fueled America! And it really shouldn’t stop there. Hopefully we will be writing about something else that’s even better in the future.
~anthony
McCain also supports FFVs.
Ihttp://tinyurl.com/6fwnyw
John McCain Supports Flex-Fuel Vehicles (FFVs) And Believes They Should Play A Greater Role In Our Transportation Sector.
In just three years, Brazil went from new cars sales that were about 5 percent FFVs to over 70 percent of new vehicles that were FFVs. American automakers have committed to make 50 percent of their cars FFVs by 2012. John McCain calls on automakers to make a more rapid and complete switch to FFVs.
John McCain Believes Alcohol-Based Fuels Hold Great Promise As Both An Alternative To Gasoline And As A Means of Expanding Consumers’ Choices.
Some choices such as ethanol are on the market right now. The second generation of alcohol-based fuels like cellulosic ethanol, which won’t compete with food crops, are showing great potential.
Today, Isolationist Tariffs And Wasteful Special Interest Subsidies Are Not Moving Us Toward An Energy Solution.
We need to level the playing field and eliminate mandates, subsidies, tariffs and price supports that focus exclusively on corn-based ethanol and prevent the development of market-based solutions which would provide us with better options for our fuel needs.
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Meanwhile, Obama stubbornly insists on clinging to our counter-productive, self-hurting tariffs on Brazilian ethanol:
If you want to take some of the pressure off this market, the obvious thing to do is lower that tariff and let some Brazilian ethanol come in,” said C. Ford Runge, an economist specializing in commodities and trade policy at the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy at the University of Minnesota. “But one of the fundamental reasons biofuels policy is so out of whack with markets and reality is that interest group politics have been so dominant in the construction of the subsidies that support it.”
Corn ethanol generates less than two units of energy for every unit of energy used to produce it, while the energy ratio for sugar cane is more than 8 to 1. With lower production costs and cheaper land prices in the tropical countries where it is grown, sugar cane is a more efficient source.
[...]
On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama has not explained his opposition to imported sugar cane ethanol. But in remarks last year, made as President Bush was about to sign an ethanol cooperation agreement with his Brazilian counterpart, Mr. Obama argued that “our country’s drive toward energy independence” could suffer if Mr. Bush relaxed restrictions, as Mr. McCain now proposes.
“It does not serve our national and economic security to replace imported oil with Brazilian ethanol,” he argued.
—
Me again here.
Unlike Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Venezuela, Brazil is not an enemy of the United States nor a state sponsor of terror. And unlike Russia, Brazil is not an aggressive authoritarian enemy seeking to reconquer an empire and challenge our nation. Who cares if some sugarcane farmers in the Third World earn more money rather than Saudis funding radical madrassas in Pakistan? Apparently Obama does.
Besides, there’s NO way domestic ethanol production can possibly meet the demand necessary for a switchover from gasoline. Our corn farmers will have more than enough of a market. Methanol can help, but ethanol’s higher energy content makes it an important part of the picture.
Unfortunately rather than educate corn farmers that they’ll do just fine if the tariffs are dropped (as long as we have an FFV mandate) Obama prefers to pander to them. Thus prolonging the years in which we fund our enemies in the War on Terror.