WoodPeckr said:
Depends on how you look at it. Carter was just going by what many credible scientists were saying was out there back then, he really wasn't that far ahead of his time. Carter wanted that fuel cell back then, he saw how well it worked in the NASA Space program, and it would of been in place by now so GWB is really behind the curve here. As far as Oil goes, we really wouldn't need much of that either. Carter saw this also. Look at Brazil running 95% of there vehicles on fuel they grow, ethanol, we could have easily done that also. I just view all that money going to the Middle East for oil as a total waste. Had Carter's Project been followed up on, all that money would stay Stateside, instead of financing Arab fundamendalist zealots in the Middle East against us. Looking at it in that light Carter's vision wasn't that expensive at all.
Brazil does NOT run 95% of their vehicles on fuel they grow (ethanol from sugar cane) - but ethanol is a part of the petrol they sell (about 25%).
Brazil had a short attempt at ethanol in the 80s as oil prices were high and sugar prices low - when those reversed the program died (almost not ethanol cars sold from 1996-2002.
They are trying again, with credits they would get from Germany to help pay for it (save on emissions - Kyoto I would presume).
Some interesting discussion on ethanol in the US:
From January 15, 2004 Economist:
Is the politicians' favorite fuel bad for the environment and your pocket?
IT'S the one topic all presidential candidates agree on in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses: ethanol production is a very good thing and should be handsomely subsidized. Forget that this grain alcohol has always been something of an economic and environmental joke. It comes from corn (or maize), which is mostly what Iowa is famous for.
The current subsidy to the industry is worth around 50 cents a gallon—or around $1.4 billion a year. The fig-leaf covering this largesse is the idea that ethanol is a clean fuel. In the 1980s, it was touted as an alternative to leaded petrol. It got another push from the 1990 Clean Air Act; to cope with the requirement for cleaner emission standards, states made the petrol industry add more oxygenates to their fuel to make it burn better. Ethanol emerged as the main such additive.
Meanwhile, the economics of ethanol production have taken a turn for the better. Efficient enzymes have led to more cost-effective fermentation, and genetically modified high-starch corn has a better yield (and so needs less processing in the plant and fewer herbicides in the field). Today there are 75 plants distilling a record 2.8 billion gallons, with a dozen more facilities under construction.
But is ethanol really that green? A debate has been stirred up by David Pimentel, an entomologist, who argues that each gallon of ethanol takes 29% more energy to make than it eventually produces. In 2002 the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers the subsidies, released a report claiming the opposite: “Corn-ethanol yields 34% more energy than it takes to produce it, including growing the corn, harvesting it, transporting it, and distilling it into ethanol.�
This might have seemed the end of the matter. But Mr Pimentel claims that the USDA study is flawed. It omits about half the inputs in corn production, including the cost of water to grow the stuff, and by using averages it avoids pointing out that some ethanol plants are extremely ungreen. It may indeed be energy-efficient to distil ethanol in eastern Minnesota, which has lots of rain and is home to the nation's cheapest corn. But in dryer Nebraska around 80% of the corn has to be irrigated, normally by natural-gas powered pumps, and much of the water comes from the fast-dropping Ogallala aquifer.
Other scientists are now trying to poke holes in Mr Pimentel's numbers. But do not expect the scientific debate about the highly subsidised crop to make a blind bit of difference to the politicians. The hand-outs for ethanol will rise again if a new energy bill goes through Congress.
OTB
