The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 485
oil related fuels and electricity. Clearly, her book was written for a different, yet
similar universe.
In the universe that the book deals with there are no alternative fuels. Throughout the 300+ pages, she never uses the words/terms "alternative energy" or
"alternative fuels," nor their diminutive versions "alt-energy" and "alt-fuels." She
also makes no reference to "biofuels." The words "ethanol," "methanol," and
"algae" are not to be found anywhere. Ms. O'Sullivan omits any reference to
"propane," too.
In Ms. O'Sullivan's universe, her only substitutes for petroleum oil fuels are natural gas, electricity, and solar. She does frequently write about "renewable energy" in the book, but the sources for natural gas and most electricity are not
renewable(1). Additionally, most natural gas is a by-product of the oil refining
process (or obtained via oil exploration) thereby leaving solar as the only renewable source. As Ms. O'Sullivan states, electric energy is not cheap...in some
cases very expensive. Solar electricity is much more expensive. Electricity is
not yet ready to replace liquid or gaseous fuels to power personal passenger
vehicles, and it may not be ready for another century.
Regarding natural gas, because the oil industry treated natural gas like an ugly
step-child for so many years, they shot themselves in the foot: Lies invented
and disseminated about natural gas, similar to the lies they tell about ethanol/methanol, have soured the public's perception of natural gas, despite the
fact that much of the public relies on natural gas for home heating purposes.
The oil industry's efforts to defeat natural gas were so pervasive that America
no longer has any auto manufacturer mass producing natural gas passenger
cars, and their anti-compressed natural gas (CNG) lobbying efforts were so
successful that the EPA has priced engine conversion kits for existing vehicles
so far out of line that it's not sensible to do it. In California, our most populous
state, it's not even legal to do a CNG conversion to nearly all passenger vehicles, even if you wanted to spend the money to do it. What's more, if you purchase a vehicle from another state that had an aftermarket conversion to CNG
you can't register it in California. This paucity of new or converted CNG-powered vehicles means that the largest potential use of natural gas has been
wiped out. To my knowledge, no major automaker is mounting a renewed effort
to mass-produce CNG-powered passenger vehicles (Ford, GM, Chrysler, and
several other manufacturers did try mass-producing CNG vehicles a decade or
so ago). Ms. O'Sullivan spends considerable time extolling the new appreciation
for natural gas, but - as I've just explained - this new appreciation is DOA (dead
on arrival) for anything more than just a talking point.
