Word: ethanol
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Gaffney and his cohorts have envisioned a clever solution: a hybrid car that combines gas-free plug-in technology with the boost of made-in-the-U.S., ethanol-based fuel to give it range. The plug-in hybrid could run for short distances on batteries charged by the same grid that powers our home appliances. On longer drives, it would use a fuel mix of 80% ethanol--alcohol, in the U.S. made mainly from corn--and 20% gas. Given that half the cars on the road travel fewer than 20 miles a day, such hybrids would travel mostly...
...m.p.g.-of-gas car may sound like a pie-in-the-sky dream. But in fact, it is technologically possible. Green-car enthusiasts in California are experimenting with innovative plug-in technology, while DaimlerChrysler will soon be testing its own plug-in van. And ethanol has long been used as a fuel. Indeed, Domenici's committee last month adopted a measure in the energy bill requiring gasoline refiners to increase the ethanol they use each year to 8 billion gal. by 2012, up from 5 billion gal. mandated by the House...
That's bound to raise hackles. Ethanol has always been controversial (see box). Most car companies, meanwhile, have little interest in any electric vehicles beyond the standard hybrid because they consider them too costly and limited in range for American tastes. "I don't think [electric cars] will ever be a significant percentage of the vehicles out there," says Sam Shelton of the Georgia Institute of Technology, citing such obstacles...
...Bauer. "He could have used the energy issue to actually build more political capital." Bauer has joined with other prominent conservatives to promote energy independence as a hard, dry national-security issue rather than as soft, wet environmentalism. These conservatives support a major federal push to promote alternative fuels--ethanol, biodiesel, liquefied natural gas--and hybrid-auto technologies. "This is not pie in the sky," says Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, as tough-minded a security hawk as can be found in Washington. "The technology is all there. But you need tax incentives to encourage the automobile...
...There is some enthusiasm within the White House for an alternative-energy push, although it doesn't quite match Gaffney's best-case euphoria. Karl Rove has educated himself on issues as arcane as the vagaries of ethanol transport, and there is a drizzle of funds for research into alternative fuels in Bush's big fat energy bill. But the President and Dick Cheney, who has been in charge of energy policy, remain oilmen at heart, skeptical about a major Manhattan Project-style national campaign to redirect the energy market, mindful of the time and expense necessary to build...