The 'oh yeah that's how we got here' alternative fuel news department brings you back to March 2007 -- NOTICE NOT A WORD ABOUT PLUG-IN EV's BACK THEN IN THE NOT-SO-DISTANT PAST
updated
3/28/2007 6:54:55 PM ET
President Bush enjoyed a high-profile photo-op Monday with the
heads of the Big Three automakers and their latest clean-car models. The
impressive lineup included a General Motors model that can run on
ethanol, a plug-in Ford powered by hydrogen, and a DaimlerChrysler Jeep
filled with a biodiesel blend.
It was smiles all around as the automakers announced they would make
half of America's vehicles ethanol-ready by 2012. "If you want to reduce
gasoline usage—like I believe we need to do so for national-security
reasons as well as for environmental concerns—the consumer has got to be
in a position to make a rational choice," said a beaming Bush.
But there's a dirty secret about clean cars. The policies for
flexible-fuel vehicles—those that can run on mixtures of gasoline and
more than 10 percent ethanol—are written in such a way that they result
in a number of unintended consequences. One result is that automakers
gain some leeway in meeting fuel-economy standards if they produce
flexible-fuel cars and trucks. So Detroit's automakers have been pumping
out hundreds of thousands of the vehicles, even though most consumers
have no access to alternative fuels because they're available at only a
fraction of U.S. gas stations.
Here's why that's an issue. Automakers need to meet certain
government standards for the fuel economy of their fleets. For flex-fuel
cars, fuel economy is calculated based on the assumption that their
owners use 50 percent gasoline and 50 percent ethanol. But the reality
is that just 1 percent of the nation's flexible-fuel vehicles actually
use what's known as E85—85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. The
remaining 99 percent are using good old-fashioned gasoline.
More greenhouse gases
The result is anything but green. The more flex-fuel cars
and trucks that are produced, the more gasoline is consumed—dramatically
increasing greenhouse gas emissions and deepening the country's
dependence on petroleum. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates
that without the policy in place, the U.S. would have burned 4 billion
fewer gallons of gasoline since 1998. "Automakers have an [economic]
incentive to sell cars less efficient than the law requires," says Don
MacKenzie, a vehicles engineer for the Union's clean vehicles program.
Environmental advocates aren't shy about voicing their outrage. "It's
a total scam," says Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global
warming program. "The automakers are trying to shield themselves from
having to make more efficient vehicles. They're avoiding the path to
cutting oil dependence, curbing global warming, saving consumers money,
and ultimately saving Detroit from competitors like Toyota."
The culprit is a 1988 law called the Alternative Motor Fuels Act,
which has been extended through 2008. It gives automakers extra credit
toward meeting fuel-economy standards for making cars that can run on
alternative fuels. It's cheap for automakers to make cars fuel-flexible;
it only costs them about $50 per vehicle, whereas actually meeting
fuel-economy standards (making cars travel more miles per gallon) can be
much more expensive. So in recent years auto companies have been
pouring out flexible-fuel, gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles without
worrying too much about fuel economy.
Shortage of ethanol pumps
But, as the Bush administration itself acknowledged in 2002, the
consumers who own flex-fuel cars aren't going for alternative fuels.
Ethanol-based fuels like E85 are hard to come by, and are only available
in certain regions of the country. Only 1,600 of the nation's 176,000
gas stations pump E85, the most popular and commercially viable
alternative fuel, says the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition. So the
more flexible-fuel vehicles that hit the road without an ethanol pump in
sight, the more pure gasoline Americans continue to guzzle.
Ethanol advocates say fuels like E85 are a right-here-right-now
solution to reducing oil dependence. "[T]here's nothing that can be done
which can reduce the curve of growth in imported oil and actually turn
it down like using E85, taking advantage of what's there today," said GM
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer G. Richard Wagoner Jr. at the
White House event.
They also argue that the mismatch between the size of the
flexible-fuel fleet and the availability of ethanol will be solved over
time. "You've got to get started somehow," says Phillip Lampert,
executive director of the NEVC. Lambert points out that the number of
gas stations providing E85 has doubled in the last year, and his
group—backed by automakers and ethanol producers—is pushing for bigger
tax incentives for fuel retailers.
Still, the conversation that Bush and the Big Three avoided was talk
of fuel economy. In the short term, it's far cheaper for car companies
to keep producing cars that seem environmentally friendly than to
re-engineer cars to squeeze out more miles per gallon. Until the U.S.
has much broader availability of alternative fuels, old-fashioned gas
guzzling will continue to rise into the not-so-green future.
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