Interesting Facts About Alcohol Fuels

1. Since at least 1791, most American farmers used their own alcohol stills to turn crop waste into ethanol for stove fuel. In the 1830's, whale oil became expensive, so using alcohol for light became increasingly popular.

2. In 1860 Nikolaus Otto built an early internal combustion engine. It was fueled by ethanol.

3. By 1900, alcohol fuel (ethanol) was used for lighting and many other uses including cars, farm machinery, stoves, laundry irons, heaters, coffee roasters, hair curlers, etc.

4. Around the same time, most cars on the road used gasoline because it was abundant and inexpensive. But racing cars used alcohol for fuel because it could generate more power in a lighter engine. There was a tax on the industrial use of alcohol, and Henry Ford helped American farmers stop the tax because he was familiar with experiments on alcohol fuels in Germany.

5. In 1906, the alcohol tax was lifted and alcohol became cheaper than gas — 14 cents versus 22 cents per gallon. Bills were also passed that exempted farm stills from government control. When he endorsed the bill, President Teddy Roosevelt said, "The Standard Oil Company has, largely by unfair or unlawful methods, crushed out the competition...It is highly desirable that an element of competition should be introduced by the passage of some such law as that which has already passed in the House, putting alcohol used in the arts and manufacturers upon the [tax] free list."

6. In 1908, the Model T Ford began coming off the assembly line. It had a built-in adjustable carburetor so it could burn either alcohol or gas. In other words, it was a flex fuel car. At the time, of course, gas stations weren't everywhere, but most farms had stills, so it made the car more practical to be able to burn both fuels.

7. In 1917, Alexander Graham Bell said, "Alcohol makes a beautiful, clean and efficient fuel… Alcohol can be manufactured from corn stalks, and in fact from almost any vegetable matter capable of fermentation…We need never fear the exhaustion of our present fuel supplies so long as we can produce an annual crop of alcohol to any extent desired." He was ahead of his time.

8. In 1920, Prohibition began and lasted for 13 years. John D. Rockefeller, the owner of Standard Oil Company, had backed the Eighteenth Amendment to ban alcohol. Farmers were no longer allowed to have a still.

9. In 1925, Henry Ford said: "The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust — almost anything. There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years."

10. In 1964, there was a seven-car crash at the Indianapolis 500, killing two drivers because 150 gallons of gasoline caught fire. One of the drivers involved in the crash survived because his car was running on methanol, which didn't ignite. So the United States Auto Club banned gasoline. The cars ran on methanol exclusively for the next 41 years. In 2007, they switched to ethanol, which is still much safer than gasoline.

11. In 1971, American farmers were producing enormous grain surpluses, which threatened to put them out of business (because the price of grain sank too low because there was so much of it), so the Nebraska APIU Committee was formed to find new uses for the surplus grain. They tested gasoline-ethanol blends extensively and discovered ethanol could be used to boost octane, and could potentially replace lead in gasoline (to prevent knocking).

12. In 1973, OPEC initiated the first oil embargo (as a retaliation for America's support of Israel during the Yom Kippur war). The member countries of OPEC drastically reduced their oil production, which raised world oil prices catastrophically. It threw the whole world into an "energy crisis" and seriously hurt the American economy.

13. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter created government incentives to help develop alcohol-fuel production, and by 1984 the United States had 163 ethanol refineries producing almost 600 million gallons of ethanol fuel that year.

14. In the late 80s and early 90s a global oil surplus drove gasoline prices very low, putting many American ethanol plants into bankruptcy. By the end of 1985, only 74 American ethanol refineries remained in business.

15. From the late 90s until now, the ethanol and methanol industries have been making a comeback. Ethanol alone employs 400,000 Americans today, and that's with only a very small percentage of flex fuel cars on the road. Imagine what could happen with the passing of an Open Fuel Standard.

The list above was edited from the more complete article, Timeline of Alcohol Fuels.

What OPEC Does is Illegal

What OPEC does to control the world price of oil is illegal. They all agree to raise or lower their oil production for the purpose of keeping the price of oil high.

As Robert Zubrin notes in Energy Victory, "Collusion by suppliers to fix prices is not only a crime under US law, it is banned by international law as well. The rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) contain antitrust provisions that prohibit member nations from setting quota restrictions on import and exports. The WTO outlaws conspiracies to fix markets, and permits member nations to prosecute all parties to such conspiracies. The US Justice Department would thus be entirely within its rights to initiate prosecutions against OPEC principals with interests in the United States (for example, Saudi royals), as well as against corporations, such as international oil companies, found to be acting in concert with OPEC. In addition, the imposition of retaliatory trade measures against OPEC nations would be fully justifiable."

Maintaining the Monopoly

The oil industry has actively blocked our access to competing fuel. We have 160,000 stations today with gasoline pumps and only 2,900 stations with at least one E85 pump (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline), and not one station selling M85 (85% methanol, 15% gasoline).

Most of the 2,900 E85 pumps are at independent stations because oil companies have tried to block E85 being sold at their stations. They’ve used several tactics according to a report by the Consumer Federation of America. One is a requirement that the franchise owners must buy all their fuel from the oil company. Another is requiring franchise owners to sign a contract that limits how much they can advertise E85. Some contracts dictate that if a station owner puts in an E85 pump, it must be on a separate island and not under the main canopy.

Loren Beard, senior manager for energy planning and policy for Chrysler put it succinctly: “Big Oil is at the top of the list for blocking the spread of ethanol acceptance by consumers and the marketplace.”

- Excerpted from the book, Fill Your Tank With Freedom

Agave is a Promising Fuel Feedstock

"Scientists found that in 14 independent studies, the yields of two Agave species greatly exceeded the yields of other biofuel feedstocks, such as corn, soybean, sorghum, and wheat," says Science Daily. "Agave is a unique feedstock because of its high water use efficiency and ability to survive without water between rainfalls."

"Also, abandoned Agave plantations in Mexico and Africa that previously supported the natural fiber market could be reclaimed as bioenergy cropland...Agave is not only an exciting new bioenergy crop, but its economically and environmentally sustainable production could prove to successfully stimulate economies in Africa, Australia, and Mexico..." Or the American Southwest?

"Agave has a huge advantage, as it can grow in marginal or desert land, not on arable land," said Oliver Inderwildi, at the University of Oxford, in an article in guardian.co.uk.

A new study published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science found that "agave-derived ethanol could produce good yields on hot, dry land and with relatively little environmental impact. The agave plant, large rosettes of fleshy leaves, produces high levels of sugar and the scientists modeled a hypothetical facility in the tequila state of Jalisco in Mexico which converts the sugars to alcohol for use as a fuel," writes Damian Carrington in The Guardian.

Does Ethanol Production Raise the Price of Meat?

Since most of the corn grown in the United States is feed for animals, wouldn't the ethanol industry raise meat prices? According to the studies, the answer is yes, but only slightly. Part of the reason for this is that making ethanol out of corn only removes the starch. The protein, fat and fiber is not used, and is then sold for animal feed — a very high-quality animal feed, called distillers grains.

Not only is the protein and fat left over, but the fermentation process actually adds to the protein and vitamin content. The fermenting process adds protein and B vitamins (yeast is high in both, and during fermentation, the number of yeast cells increases rapidly — they multiply and convert some of the sugars into protein).

There's another factor many people are unaware of. Most of the corn that goes to feed animals goes to beef. And cows don't digest starch very well. It gives them acidosis. Ethanol production removes the starch and leaves the protein, fats, vitamins and minerals, and then that is fed to the cows, who thrive better on distillers grains than they do on corn.

Most of the rise in food prices has come from the rise in oil prices. The purpose of giving our cars flex fuel capability is to give gasoline some competition at the pump which will force the price down, which will actually make food cheaper because a surprisingly large percentage of the cost of food is the cost of fuel.

And it will boost the U.S. economy, create less pollution, and lengthen the life of our cars (since ethanol burns much cleaner and doesn't heat the engine as much).

Adam Khan is the co-author with Klassy Evans of Fill Your Tank With Freedom and the author of Slotralogy and Self-Reliance, Translated. Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb. You can email him here.

American Oil Independence

When significant competition happens in the fuel market, one of two things will happen — either gas prices will go down, or the producers of alcohol fuels will get our money, and that money will go into our own economy.

Americans have an enterprising and innovative culture. Especially when there is profit to be made, this enterprising, innovating culture expresses itself with zeal. We're also an idealistic culture and express our zeal when there is some good to be done for the planet. So once the fuel market is open, Americans will go into overdrive finding ways to make fuels ever cleaner and cheaper, which will force gas prices lower and lower in order to compete.

And if fuel prices rise, as they have lately, what will happen? Domestic producers of ethanol and methanol will work overtime to provide us with less expensive fuels, whether those fuels come from algae or municipal waste or corn stover or sugar beets or whatever. Whole industries will be scrambling as fast as they can to make and deliver fuels that cost less than gas.

What happens now (with our lack of competition at the pump) when fuel prices rise? Do our enterprising, innovating industries kick it into gear and scramble to do anything? No. There is nothing for them to do. Our cars can't burn their fuel. They stand by, completely helpless as more than a billion dollars a day floods out of our economy to foreign nations to pay for transportation fuel.

When we have fuels freely competing at the pump, we will see the dawning of a new day. We will see the beginning of the end of oil's strategic status. And we will have a new birth of American independence.

Adam Khan is the co-author with Klassy Evans of Fill Your Tank With Freedom and the author of Slotralogy and Self-Reliance, Translated. Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb. You can email him here.

Burning E85 Without a Conversion Kit (in a Non-Flex-Fuel Vehicle)

Most cars may be already capable of burning ethanol. This first part is a letter by John Kolak:

I thought about this a lot, and realized I will never be in a position financially to buy a new vehicle to enjoy flex fuel, but I found out there are flex fuel conversion kits.

Forgive me if I got these links from you. Once I started searching, I learned so much from so many sources, that I have forgotten whether you provided the initial idea, or if I found out about kits elsewhere.

This technology is all so new that there is a lack of reviews from the mainstream sources we normally trust for our auto technology news, but White Lightening seems to be the main kit out there with the best reputation and lowest price. It also seems the developer is well-connected with the real world in Brazil's flex fuel auto program.

Of course, I also noted with interest your post yesterday about regular non-flex fuel cars sometimes also getting better fuel economy. The main reason I've always been told that I cannot use ethanol in my car is because fuel system plastics and rubbers have to be chosen for alcohol resistance and because the oxygen content of alcohol puts it beyond the ability of fuel injection computers to compensate, and if you have a carburetor, there's nothing at all you can do unless you rejet to run exclusively on ethanol, though I did find your video link to Henry Ford's flex fuel Model T very interesting with its manually-controlled and adjustable variable mixture carburetor jet and manually-controlled distributor advance.

White Lightening solves the mixture issue by adding an auxiliary circuit board that increases the fuel injector pulse so it stays open longer. Then the car's onboard computer is able to reduce the flow when regular gasoline is used. They say this only works on modern cars with an OBD II compliant ECU computer. Their website says that they encourage questions, so I wrote them a letter to ask about their experience with rubbers and plastics, and also whether the car's OBD II ECU is capable of advancing the timing, or whether we are essentially running alcohol on a gasoline ignition advance curve. After seeing their website encourage questions, I was very disappointed to receive no response.

But the issue of rubbers and plastics, and potential engine damage by ethanol in non-flex fuel cars is thoroughly addressed in this web page at Ohio Bio Systems.

The second frame has a video showing a tear-down of a non-flex fuel Chevy Tahoe owned by an ethanol industry executive who ran it on E85 for over 100,000 miles. The video interviews the technician who did the tear-down and discusses the various components of the engine and fuel system as the camera shows them. No ethanol related damage was found, and the plastic parts actually looked better than the the ones in gasoline cars. The additional frames analyzes and compares the part numbers in flex fuel vehicles and their corresponding non-flex fuel versions and finds that in some cases 100% of the part numbers are the same, and at most in other cases only 3 or 4% of the part numbers are different. And even in these cases, in some years and models, the part numbers are the same, but then different in a different year.

So I might try asking a White Lightening vendor the same questions the manufacturer would not answer for me. E85 is still 400 miles away for me, but E20 has just arrived in town, so I might take a chance and see if my car will tolerate it. I hope it doesn't cost me in damage and repairs to my plastic and rubber components. My 1998 Hyundai Accent owners manual says my car can use gasohol, but I'm sure that's only talking about the lower ethanol content gasohol 91 and 95 octanes that were available at that time. Plus I'm a little worried that plastic and rubber in an older car like mine might be more prone to breakdown than in a newer car.

All for now,

John

. . . 

The letter below is a response to John Kolak's article, On Using Ethanol Fuels In Unmodified Vehicles. The letter was written by Marc Rauch, the Executive Vice President and Co-Publisher of The Auto Channel:

Hi John -

I just finished reading your article on the Open Fuel Standard website and I wanted to add my personal experiences to your compendium of information.

For a few years, whenever I would rent a car or get a new vehicle from a manufacturer to test drive and review, I would manually fill the tank with a blend of regular gasoline (e10) and e85, if e85 was available to me. Depending upon how much fuel I needed to fill the tank, sometimes the blend would give me only about 30-40% ethanol, and sometimes I might have 60-80% ethanol. I did this with almost every make and model vehicle you can think of, and almost none of them were "flex-fuel" vehicles. I did this specifically to see what, if anything, would happen.

Other than the "check engine" light illuminating in some instances, I never encountered a starting, driving or acceleration problem. Knowing that the "check engine" light illuminated merely because the cars' sensors detected something different, I knew that there was no problem with the vehicle. Often, if the test drive or rental period was long enough, and I had the need to fill the tank again — and only had access to regular gasoline — the check engine light would go off, confirming that there was no problem with the engine.

Of course, because the test or rental period was of rather short duration, I knew that my experiments were not really conclusive since I wasn't able to witness what ill effects, if any, might occur from longer, more sustained usage.

With this in mind, about a year and a half ago I purchased a used 2002 Ford Taurus non-flex-fuel sedan to be able to go all out on my test of e85. Because I've never had a situation in which my tank was completely empty, I've never had the opportunity to fill the Taurus fully with e85. However, I've run the vehicle on virtually all other blend levels. Similar to the short duration tests, I have run the Taurus on straight e10 gasoline to as high as 65-80%. Keep in mind that because even e85 might contain only about 70% ethanol (according to the label on the pump), it's hard to really get a blend that's much higher than 80%.

When I bought the vehicle, my friend David Blume — perhaps the world's leading expert on ethanol production and use — sent me one of the conversion kits that he endorses and sells for use on non-flex fuel fuel-injector vehicles. The purpose was for me to test the device and to maximize my vehicle's ability to handle e85. To date I have not installed the device. I've been waiting to push the car to the point where it screams "I can't take any more ethanol." That point is nowhere in sight. This isn't to say that the device is not necessary, it's to illustrate just how well an un-modified non-flex fuel vehicle can perform with e85.

Long before I purchased the Taurus, David and his associates alerted me to the need to transition into using a lot of e85, rather than going cold-turkey and make the immediate shift. The reason, they explained, is that the ethanol will loosen (and clean) the deposits left by the gasoline and that the gunk could clog the system. Because of this, I did transition to high ethanol blends through the first 3 or 4 fill-ups. I don't know if I would have experienced any problems if I didn't heed the advice, but I have not had any fuel line clogs.

In the nearly 18 months, I have driven the vehicle a little less than 25,000 miles  —  enough time and enough miles to make a more enlightened evaluation. I can report that the results are what they were in the short-term evaluations: my car runs fine, as good  —  I think  —  as any 10 year-old car should run. And I have noticed no difference in how the vehicle runs regardless of how much ethanol I use.

At an early stage I did have an interesting experience with Meineke. After watching one of their TV commercials about bringing your car in for a free test if the engine light goes on, I brought the Taurus in for the free check-up. After the test was completed the service manager told me that my O2 sensor had gone out and that it needed replacing (for a cost of about $200). I knew the light was on because I was using e85, I just wanted to see if the test system could discern the reason.

I declined the O2 replacement and told the service manager why I thought the engine light was illuminated. He reacted as if I was speaking Martian; not comprehending what I was saying about using ethanol in a gasoline-optimized engine. He argued a bit with me and warned that if I didn't get the O2 sensor replaced that I was driving an illegal vehicle. For the heck of it, I went through a couple of fill-up cycles where I only used e10 gasoline. As expected, the light went off. I brought the vehicle back into the same shop and told them that I had been experiencing an intermittent check-engine light, although the light wasn't on at that moment. They put the test through what I assume was the same computer test and told me that the vehicle was okay (with no mention of an O2 sensor problem).

Incidentally, I have to tell you that I have never experienced the huge mpg reduction that is typically cited by both ethanol critics and advocates. In my experience I lose only 5-10%. Considering that the e85 costs less 15-30% less than regular gasoline I still get a respectable net savings. Earlier today, May 12, 2012, when I drove past one of the Shell stations that I use to get my e85, I noticed that e85 was selling for just under one dollar less than premium gasoline. That represents nearly 25% savings per gallon.

In closing, I will admit that there is one major drawback to using ethanol, but fortunately it's not my problem, it's the oil companies' problem: They make less money!

Thanks for your time. I hope that this case study helps your efforts.

Sincerely yours,

Marc J. Rauch
Exec. Vice President/Co-Publisher
THE AUTO CHANNEL
www.theautochannel.com

There were some comments on the articles above that I think are worth noting too:

Comment number one: When my wife & I visit relatives in North Dakota we always fill up with E-85. Our car is a 1996 Chevy Lumina...Not a flex fuel car. We do not notice any difference in performance or mileage. Our visits don't last long enough to really get much more than 1 or 2 fill ups during those visits, so the alcohol percentage doesn't get up to 85% for very long. It does save us about a dollar per gallon for fuel.

Comment number two: Modern OBD-2 vehicles should automatically adjust for up to E35 without any running issues. I have tried this with Honda, VW, Jeep, Subaru & Chevrolet vehicles from 02+ (First year of ethanol blending). I experience < 5-10% drop in mileage.

I have also used a plug in conversion kit to run E85. While it does drive flawlessly around town, I was not satisfied with its fueling under hard acceleration. The engine does not receive the additional ~30% fuel that is required, and tends to run around 15% lean. For long periods of time and lead footing, this could lead to engine failure. For 99% of your drive, it's a cheap & easy way to convert to E85. Shame the boxes can't change the timing to really get the most out of E85.

Freedom through choice at the pumps!

Comment number three: John, I too have used E30 in both a 1997 Ford and a 2007 Volvo without any problems whatsoever. My mileage change is negligible.

I converted my Volvo using a Fuel Flex International kit(White Lightning is apparently out of business) made specifically for the car. I have been using E85 exclusively for the past 2500 miles. I did have to adjust the kit so that the car's fuel would not "run lean". It now works perfectly. I do have access to E 85 in my local community. I notice a 10-20% drop in mileage since I have been running exclusive E85.

I have been running E85 since the conversion for a few reasons. One, the potential security of our country by supporting Americans and creating jobs. Secondly, the E85 has less pollutants as it is vegetable based. Lastly, our national security by not having to buy as much oil from the Middle Eastern countries which do not like the US. Oh yeah, it is cheaper as well.

The real price of a gallon of gas when you take all things considered is estimated to be (in early 2000 dollars) between $5-$15/gallon when you potentially subtract tax benefits to oil companies and what we pay to keep our troops in the Middle East to protect our oil interests. Read "Energy Victory" by Robert Zubrin for other important information.

We need Fuel choice now and then can use whatever fuel is the best. Options are important whether it is cellulosic ethanol, methanol, butanol or anything else or a combination of all of them.

I think these two articles by Robert Zubrin are relevant here. He discovered that cars are already designed for flex fuel cars, including having the software installed in the onboard computer, but the software is disabled. Check it out:

A Fuel-Efficiency Wager

Methanol Wins

The following paper from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is also interesting: It's about using "intermediate blends" of ethanol. Apparently normal fuel injector computers handle up to half ethanol before the car starts running poorly (if it is going to run poorly at all). What happens is that the injector automatically adds more fuel if the fuel is partly alcohol, and most cars can do up to 50% E85 with no problems. Every little bit makes a difference. Anyway, here's the link to the PDF file: Effects of Intermediate Ethanol Blends.

Marc Rauch at the American Coalition for Ethanol Conference

The video below is a speech by Marc J. Rauch, the Executive Vice President and Co-Publisher of The Auto Channel. His talk is very relaxed, but he makes a lot of good points about alcohol fuels. He is an expert on the internal combustion engine and he makes some surprising observations about flex fuel vehicles. The video is 43 minutes long.



If you liked that, here's part two (below), which is 18 minutes long.

We Don't Have a Free Market in Transportation Fuel

When thinking about the "mandate issue" (wanting to preserve a free market and not encumber it with government regulation) on the open fuel standard, it is important to realize that right now petroleum does not exist in a free market.

Some oil production operations produce oil for much cheaper than others, so they could sell theirs on the market at a price lower than anyone else, and thus gain a larger market share.

But they don't. They all sell barrels of oil for the same exorbitant price. Why?

Because they can sell every drop they have at top dollar.

Why? Because OPEC keeps oil artificially scarce. OPEC is large enough and keeps oil scarce enough that all the oil that becomes available on the world market is snatched up. There is no competition. It's an unprecedented (and illegally-created) seller's market.

But OPEC's price-fixing, economy-devastating scheme (and its destructive effects) can be bypassed with the simple introduction of an Open Fuel Standard bill in Congress. With the passing of the bill, cars would become a platform upon which different fuels would compete against petroleum in a free market.

Prices for fuel would quickly drop, and the economy — no longer dragged down by the crushing, encumbering, onerous fuel prices — would boom.

Adam Khan is the co-author with Klassy Evans of Fill Your Tank With Freedom and the author of Slotralogy and Self-Reliance, Translated. Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb. You can email him here.

Are You Outraged About High Gas Prices? It May Depend on What You Know

 In an article in the LA Times, columnist Jerry Hirsch points out that although gas prices show every indication of rising higher than they did during the price spike in 2008, people aren't as upset about it now as they were then. Hirsch writes:

Having already seen prices cross the $4 barrier, motorists are less likely to become outraged when they see it happen again, said Michael Sivak, who heads the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute. And because the costs of other items have risen — notably food — it stands out less as a household budget buster.

What if people knew that the rise in food prices is largely the result of a rise in oil prices? And what if people knew that the rise in oil prices is being driven by to the urgent need of the leaders of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela to gain enough money to stay in power? They're raising the world price of oil through OPEC so they can rake in enough money to appease their populations. Would that cause outrage?

And perhaps it is somewhat misleading to say people aren't as upset about it as they have been, because people don't know there is anything they can do about it. Most people have no idea that OPEC is the fundamental cause, and even when they do, they don't know the Open Fuel Standard could solve the problem.

It might be more accurate to say people are more used to rising gas prices, and more resigned to its inevitability.

Hirsch says The Washington Post did a recent survey:

Asked whether "recent price increases in gasoline caused any financial hardship for you or others in your household," 63% of the respondents said yes.

But that percentage was higher during the surge in gas prices in 2008. "Back in 2005," writes Hirsch, "when California gas prices were in the low-to-mid-$2 range, both consumers and politicians were more vociferous with their complaints..."

I can imagine the OPEC leaders reading about this and smiling smugly. Americans are like frogs put into a pot of cold water and heated up slowly. If the water is heated gradually enough, the story goes, the frogs won't notice and they won't bother to jump out until the water is so hot they can't jump any more.

The LA Times article ends with a quote by a man who is clearly resigned after filling up his car: "We have gotten to the point of acceptance," he said, "whether we like it or not."

High fives all around at OPEC headquarters.

OPEC leaders desperately need Americans to accept these high gas prices. Their survival depends on it. Gal Luft wrote recently that the population of Saudi Arabia, the country with the most control over OPEC, is growing very quickly. Writes Luft:

Because Saudis pay no income tax, the House of Saud will need more and more money to keep its citizens happy, and avoid the fate of toppled leaders in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere.

Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, Saudi King Abdullah almost doubled his Kingdom's budget, committing billions in subsidies, pensions and pay raises in an effort to keep his subjects from storming the palaces.

This expensive response effectively raised the price of oil needed for the Saudis to balance their budget from under $70 a barrel before 2011 to at least $110 a barrel by 2015.

Like it or not, the bill for keeping the Persian Gulf monarchies in power is now being footed by every American. Every time we fuel our car we send an extra 35 cents per gallon, or roughly $6 per fill up, to the Save the King Foundation. Since oil goes into everything we buy from food to plastics, this adds about $1,500 annually to the expenditures of the average American family.

I think most Americans would feel outrage over this, especially if they knew we could change the whole dynamic with the simple, subsidy-free OFS bill. But people don't know this. They are treated to all kinds of complex explanations about what causes high gas prices. In Hirsch's article, he writes:

In 2006, the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation to look at whether rising gas prices were the result of antitrust violations by oil companies or refiners. It eventually concluded that the increases were based on supply and market conditions.

That same year, the California Energy Commission launched its own investigation, eventually finding that unplanned refinery outages, unusually high fuel exports and tanker troubles — not misdeeds by the oil industry — were the primary drivers behind a springtime price surge.

As prices soared in 2007, state attorneys general jumped into the fray. Florida's Bill McCollum said his office was looking at more than 200 complaints about price gouging at gas stations. That same year, the House approved a bill that made gasoline price gouging a federal offense.

Talk about missing the forest for the trees! Could it be nobody talks about OPEC because they don't realize we could do something about it? After all, we can't make them produce more oil. Prices are rising and most people feel helpless about changing it.

The elegant solution that can solve this problem is to strip oil of its strategic status.

The Open Fuel Standard does exactly that — cheaply, cleanly, and quickly.

Adam Khan is the co-author with Klassy Evans of Fill Your Tank With Freedom and the author of Slotralogy and Self-Reliance, Translated. Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb. You can email him here.

Power Plays

The following is an excerpt from a new book by Robert Rapier entitled Power Plays: Energy Options in the Age of Peak Oil. Reprinted with permission.

It wasn't as if there have never been economic alternatives to oil. Compressed natural gas and methanol, for instance, have both been cheaper than oil on an energy equivalent basis for many years...

The problem lies in the fact that consumers don't have the option of filling up with methanol, ethanol, or any of the other contenders to replace gasoline...because the transportation infrastructure is incompatible and, more importantly, the cars on the roads are not designed to handle these fuels.

Thus, my third proposal calls for support of the Open Fuel Standard that would require that a growing percentage of vehicles sold in the U.S. must be capable of running on fuels other than gasoline. I am not usually a big fan of mandates, because of the potential for unintended consequences, but in this case the additional cost to produce a vehicle that is flex-fuel capable is reported to be between $100 and $200. This would therefore only add 0.5% to the cost of the average new car.

The availability of more flex-fuel vehicles would remove one of the major obstacles for new fuels attempting to break into the transportation fuel market. Currently, there is no demand for methanol or mixed alcohols as transportation fuel primarily because the vehicles on the roads are not entirely compatible. If more vehicles were capable of operating on a wide variety of fuels with little added production cost, the market for domestically produced fuels would grow.

Anne Korin and Gal Luft, in their excellent book Turning Oil Into Salt: Energy Independence Through Fuel Choice, compare the situation today with oil to the situation with salt hundreds of years ago. Salt held a monopoly on food preservation, and was thus an important strategic commodity. Countries with salt mines derived wealth from their salt exports, and sometimes wars were fought over access to salt. But eventually salt evolved from a strategic commodity into simply a commodity, because refrigeration broke salt's monopoly on food preservation. That is the goal of the Open Fuel Standard: to break oil's monopoly on the transportation system and convert it from its present status as a strategic commodity into simply a commodity.

Robert Rapier is the Chief Technology Officer for Merica International, a renewable energy company, which is involved in a wide variety of projects, with a core focus on the localized use of biomass to energy for the benefit of local populations. Rapier's whole career has been devoted to energy issues. He's worked on cellulosic ethanol, butanol production, oil refining, natural gas production, and gas-to-liquids. And he is the author of Power Plays.

Experimenting With Alcohol

The letter below is a response to John Kolak's article, On Using Ethanol Fuels In Unmodified Vehicles. The letter was written by Marc Rauch, the Executive Vice President and Co-Publisher of The Auto Channel, who, by the way, just launched a television station earlier this month (which you can read about here). Anyway, here is Marc's letter:

Hi John -

I just finished reading your article on the Open Fuel Standard website and I wanted to add my personal experiences to your compendium of information.

For a few years, whenever I would rent a car or get a new vehicle from a manufacturer to test drive and review, I would manually fill the tank with a blend of regular gasoline (e10) and e85, if e85 was available to me. Depending upon how much fuel I needed to fill the tank, sometimes the blend would give me only about 30-40% ethanol, and sometimes I might have 60-80% ethanol. I did this with almost every make and model vehicle you can think of, and almost none of them were "flex-fuel" vehicles. I did this specifically to see what, if anything, would happen.

Other than the "check engine" light illuminating in some instances, I never encountered a starting, driving or acceleration problem. Knowing that the "check engine" light illuminated merely because the cars' sensors detected something different, I knew that there was no problem with the vehicle. Often, if the test drive or rental period was long enough, and I had the need to fill the tank again — and only had access to regular gasoline — the check engine light would go off, confirming that there was no problem with the engine.

Of course, because the test or rental period was of rather short duration, I knew that my experiments were not really conclusive since I wasn't able to witness what ill effects, if any, might occur from longer, more sustained usage.

With this in mind, about a year and a half ago I purchased a used 2002 Ford Taurus non-flex-fuel sedan to be able to go all out on my test of e85. Because I've never had a situation in which my tank was completely empty, I've never had the opportunity to fill the Taurus fully with e85. However, I've run the vehicle on virtually all other blend levels. Similar to the short duration tests, I have run the Taurus on straight e10 gasoline to as high as 65-80%. Keep in mind that because even e85 might contain only about 70% ethanol (according to the label on the pump), it's hard to really get a blend that's much higher than 80%.

When I bought the vehicle, my friend David Blume — perhaps the world's leading expert on ethanol production and use — sent me one of the conversion kits that he endorses and sells for use on non-flex fuel fuel-injector vehicles. The purpose was for me to test the device and to maximize my vehicle's ability to handle e85. To date I have not installed the device. I've been waiting to push the car to the point where it screams "I can't take any more ethanol." That point is nowhere in sight. This isn't to say that the device is not necessary, it's to illustrate just how well an un-modified non-flex fuel vehicle can perform with e85.

Long before I purchased the Taurus, David and his associates alerted me to the need to transition into using a lot of e85, rather than going cold-turkey and make the immediate shift. The reason, they explained, is that the ethanol will loosen (and clean) the deposits left by the gasoline and that the gunk could clog the system. Because of this, I did transition to high ethanol blends through the first 3 or 4 fill-ups. I don't know if I would have experienced any problems if I didn't heed the advice, but I have not had any fuel line clogs.

In the nearly 18 months, I have driven the vehicle a little less than 25,000 miles  —  enough time and enough miles to make a more enlightened evaluation. I can report that the results are what they were in the short-term evaluations: my car runs fine, as good  —  I think  —  as any 10 year-old car should run. And I have noticed no difference in how the vehicle runs regardless of how much ethanol I use.

At an early stage I did have an interesting experience with Meineke. After watching one of their TV commercials about bringing your car in for a free test if the engine light goes on, I brought the Taurus in for the free check-up. After the test was completed the service manager told me that my O2 sensor had gone out and that it needed replacing (for a cost of about $200). I knew the light was on because I was using e85, I just wanted to see if the test system could discern the reason.

I declined the O2 replacement and told the service manager why I thought the engine light was illuminated. He reacted as if I was speaking Martian; not comprehending what I was saying about using ethanol in a gasoline-optimized engine. He argued a bit with me and warned that if I didn't get the O2 sensor replaced that I was driving an illegal vehicle. For the heck of it, I went through a couple of fill-up cycles where I only used e10 gasoline. As expected, the light went off. I brought the vehicle back into the same shop and told them that I had been experiencing an intermittent check-engine light, although the light wasn't on at that moment. They put the test through what I assume was the same computer test and told me that the vehicle was okay (with no mention of an O2 sensor problem).

Incidentally, I have to tell you that I have never experienced the huge mpg reduction that is typically cited by both ethanol critics and advocates. In my experience I lose only 5-10%. Considering that the e85 costs less 15-30% less than regular gasoline I still get a respectable net savings. Earlier today, May 12, 2012, when I drove past one of the Shell stations that I use to get my e85, I noticed that e85 was selling for just under one dollar less than premium gasoline. That represents nearly 25% savings per gallon.

In closing, I will admit that there is one major drawback to using ethanol, but fortunately it's not my problem, it's the oil companies' problem: They make less money!

Thanks for your time. I hope that this case study helps your efforts.

Sincerely yours,

Marc J. Rauch
Exec. Vice President/Co-Publisher
THE AUTO CHANNEL
www.theautochannel.com

Watch a video on this same subject: E85 Does Not Harm Non-Flex-Fuel Engines. This ten-minute video shows you a test done on a non-flex-fuel car that burned mostly E85 for over a hundred thousand miles. Not only did it not harm the car, it actually harmed it much less than burning gasoline would have.

I think these two articles by Robert Zubrin are relevant as well. He discovered that cars are already designed for flex fuel cars, including having the software installed in the onboard computer, but the software is disabled. Check it out:

A Fuel-Efficiency Wager
Methanol Wins

The following paper from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is also interesting: It's about using "intermediate blends" of ethanol. Apparently normal fuel injector computers handle up to half ethanol before the car starts running poorly (if it is going to run poorly at all). What happens is that the injector automatically adds more fuel if the fuel is partly alcohol, and most cars can do up to 50% E85 with no problems. Every little bit makes a difference. Anyway, here's the link to the PDF file: Effects of Intermediate Ethanol Blends. 

What the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791 Has to Teach Us About the Food Versus Fuel Issue

The famous Whiskey Rebellion occurred in 1791. Farmers were rebelling against a tax on their whiskey making — a tax they perceived as unfair and that harmed their businesses.

Back then, farmers "out West" (western Pennsylvania) had solved a problem in an ingenious way, and they didn't want it taken away from them. The problem they had was surplus corn. What can a farmer do with surplus corn? They could try to ship it back east to sell it, but it's bulky and expensive to ship. And it can rot, it gets eaten by bugs and mice, etc. Their solution was to turn it into whiskey (ethanol). So most farmers had a still. They transformed their excess corn into whiskey, which was valuable and condensed (easy to ship). It didn't go bad. Mice couldn't destroy it.

They turned their surplus corn into something wanted and valuable.

Flash forward to the 20th century. American farmers were continually suffering from massive surpluses which flooded the world market with cheap grain. There was so much surplus, grain prices around the world dropped out the bottom. Many farmers went bankrupt. They were so successful at increasing their crop yields that they were putting themselves out of business!

So what did they do? They tried to find other markets for their excess grain. One of the things they came up with was high-fructose corn syrup.

And another market they found was fuel. They began doing what their predecessors were doing back in the Whiskey Rebellion days — they turned their excess grain into ethanol.

But (music changes to a sinister tone) their success began to eat into the gasoline market. Because ethanol burns cleaner and has a higher octane rating, many states mandated its use as a small percentage of all gasoline sold. And as ethanol became better known, people wanted to use it more and more. So the oil industry went on a propaganda rampage against ethanol. And when food prices rose sharply in 2008, they exploited that fact by implicating the ethanol industry in raising food prices.

In fact, ethanol had almost no influence on the steep rise of food prices. In an ironic twist, the biggest culprit was oil prices! Turns out, the price of a barrel of oil has a large influence on the price of food because fertilizers and pesticides are petroleum products, farm equipment runs on petroleum, packaging often relies on petroleum (plastic is made from petroleum), and shipping the food relies on petroleum.

But the oil industry has been on a campaign to convince people ethanol production raises food prices. Another irony is that the ethanol industry was created because food prices were too low!

Pundits were crying out a warning that because of ethanol, food would get too expensive. People in poor countries would starve because of our greedy need for fuel, etc. But this is so far from the mark, it would be laughable if so many people hadn't fallen for it.

For someone who doesn't know anything about how it all works, it makes sense that higher food prices would lead to hunger. But in fact, in many ways, just the opposite is true. Most of the criticism about food-versus-fuel is centered on corn, so let's look at that.

Most of the corn America exports isn't purchased by poor countries. They don't have the money to buy it, no matter how cheap it is. Japan often purchases more U.S. corn than any other country. And when U.S. grain is cheap enough that poorer countries can buy it, the grain is so cheap, it puts local farmers from the poorer country out of business. This isn't good for local economies and can worsen their poverty.

This is a bigger deal than we might think. The vast majority of people in developing nations don't live in cities. They live in the countryside, and most of them are small farmers. Agricultural products are a large part of their country's economy. So when grain prices drop too low, rather than helping poor people, it can and does make them even poorer. Alexandra Spieldoch of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy said, "Research shows that domestic food productivity is more effective in stabilizing developing-country food security than the reliance on inexpensive food imports. A fair price for the farmer's production will also help stabilize demand for wage labor in the local economy."

Jeffrey and Adrian Goettemoeller, experts in environmental remediation and sustainable agriculture, said, "Keeping grain prices quite low might seem like a good way to fight poverty, but the opposite result can come about when economies based largely on agriculture are damaged. Ironically, then, a reduction in U.S. exports resulting from increased corn ethanol production might help alleviate poverty-driven hunger in some places when coupled with efforts to enhance food production within developing countries."

Many people fear that fuel competition will cause food shortage or raise food prices. This fear was deliberately cultivated by the oil industry because it rightly sees ethanol as a competitor. But not only is ethanol from corn unlikely to raise food prices, but even if it does, it may very well be good news for developing countries.

Beyond that, fuel competition is not ethanol-specific. Cars could be capable of burning methanol too, and methanol can be made from renewable resources like forest thinnings and agricultural waste as well as natural gas and coal. It can even be made directly from CO2 captured from power plant and factory emissions.

And fuel competition is not limited to even these. Anything goes except cars that can burn nothing but gasoline. It will give us a wide choice of alternatives, which can then compete with each other for our transportation dollars, lowering the price for consumers and boosting the American economy.

Let's make it happen. The best place to start is an open fuel standard.

Adam Khan is the co-author with Klassy Evans of Fill Your Tank With Freedom and the author of Slotralogy and Self-Reliance, Translated. Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb. You can email him here.

Super Grass

A new hybrid grass has been recently developed that is not an invasive species, is not genetically modified, can be grown on marginal lands (land not suitable for regular agriculture) and yields more biomass per acre than any crop ever cultivated. It is called Giant King Grass and it grows 15-18 feet tall.

This is a fast-growing, low-cost feedstock that can be used to create ethanol and butanol, as well as what are known as “bioplastics” — a renewable replacement for petroleum-based plastics.

Read more: 

Giant King Grass: The New Biomass for Green Energy

Giant King Grass Growing Successfully in Cali

Alliance BioEnergy Establishes Giant King Grass Test Plot

New Butanol Production

Several big companies, including Gevo and Butamax, have found a way to convert ethanol production facilities into butanol plants. Butanol is an alcohol with an energy density (that is, BTUs per gallon) closer to gasoline, and it’s made in a similar way, using fermentation, and it can be made from the same feedstocks, including corn and switchgrass.

The technology is already developed and there is a ready market — oil companies are willing to blend it with gasoline in higher percentages than ethanol, it doesn’t evaporate as easily, so it can be more easily transported via pipelines, and it doesn’t have a tendency to take up water, as ethanol does. It is a promising renewable fuel.

Read more about it: Corn Ethanol Makers Weigh Switch to Butanol.

We Don't Have a Free Market in Transportation Fuel

Petroleum does not exist in a free market. Some oil production operations produce oil for much cheaper than others, so they could sell theirs on the market at a price lower than anyone else, and thus gain a larger market share.

But they don't. They all sell barrels of oil for the same exorbitant price. Why?

Because they can sell everything they have at top dollar.

Why? Because OPEC keeps oil artificially scarce. They keep it scarce enough that all the oil that becomes available on the world market is snatched up. There is no competition. It's an unprecedented seller's market.

OPEC's price-fixing, economy-devastating scheme (and its destructive effects) can be bypassed with the simple introduction of fuel competition. Cars would become a platform upon which different fuels would compete against petroleum in a free market.

And then what would happen? Prices for fuel would drop, and the economy — no longer dragged down by crushing, encumbering, onerous fuel prices — would boom. Let's make it happen now. First step: Add a conversion kit to your car.

We Converted Our Car to a Flex-Fuel Vehicle

We converted our car and it feels great! We broke free. It’s been a long time since I did something that made me so happy. We just filled up our tank with E85. For the first time in my life, I had a choice at the pump and I got to buy American-made alcohol, which means OPEC got next to nothing from me.

We support fuel competition because dependence on foreign oil threatens our national security. Our economy depends on a fuel controlled by men who seek to rule the world. Sounds so dramatic, I know, but it’s still true. The military understands this. Nearly every military facility, at least around here, has an E85 station.

I think one way to help others get the message about fuel competition is by actually changing our own world as a demonstration of what needs to be done; and maybe even more importantly, to show people how good it feels to drive a flex fuel car. And I’m here to tell you, it feels good to have choice.

I know it’s maybe a bit silly to talk about the emotions of all this, but that’s been the biggest shift for me. Now it doesn't bring me down every time I fill the tank. In fact, now, when I fill the tank it makes me happy! In a world where I often feel helpless, having done something that makes me feel in charge gives me a kind of strength, a sense of power. I actually did something real and concrete to stop the flow of money from the free world to OPEC. It gives me a real sense of satisfaction. I stopped a terrible thing from happening in my world. I stopped funding those who hate our freedoms, especially my freedom as a woman.

I asked Adam to let me install the conversion kit. I’d watched some video clips showing how easy it was. One showed two young boys doing it, ages 13 and 9. Another one showed a pretty woman installing it in maybe five minutes. I saw another one of a movie star who did it in seven minutes. "If they can do it," I thought, "I can do it."

When I looked around online for conversion kits I met a great group of guys. I called and talked with Ian Crawford at AlcoholCanBeAGas.com and others. They not only answered my questions, but offered to let me call them when it was time to install it so they could coach me through it!

I chose to buy ours from the people at AlcoholCanBeAGas.com because they've been around since the 1970’s and David Blume and Ian Crawford know a lot about cars.

When it came time to install the conversion kit (which I did without any coaching on the phone), nothing seemed to go right. I needed a 10mm socket and I couldn’t find one. So I found a neighbor who works on cars and he lent me one.

I needed the socket because in our car the air filter housing prevents access to the fuel injectors. But it was pretty easy to get the housing off. Then I could see the fuel injectors. But then I dropped a little plastic part down between the radiator and the grill. I couldn't reach it from above. I couldn't reach it from below. Grrrr. It took some time, but I eventually was able to get that part out. Then I was back to the installation.

The conversion kit is a little black box about the size of a long pack of cigarettes. There’s a computer inside. I attached it to a good spot inside the engine compartment with some Velcro strips. There are wires that go from the conversion box to each one of the fuel injectors. The actual installation is pretty straightforward. At the end of each wire there’s a little connector. All you have to do is unplug the wire that goes into the fuel injector and plug it into the converter connector and then plug the converter wire into the fuel injector. We have four cylinders, so I did this four times. Then when the car's computer sends a signal to the fuel injector to inject fuel, the signal goes to the converter box first, which adds the appropriate adjustment so the car can use alcohols as well as gasoline.

That’s it. Oh, then I used some of those little plastic jobbers to bind up the wires all nice and neat and out of the way. Then I put the air filter housing back in place. Three bolts. Done. And even with my lack of tools, and my clumsiness, and having never installed one before, and even though I didn’t do it in seven minutes, the whole thing, start-to-finish was less than a half hour. And I didn’t even hurt my manicure.

The car started right up. No engine light. All the gauges work the same. We drove around. No difference. Slick! I felt more than a bit smug that I could now say I did it myself. Just to complete the process, we bought an emblem online that says "flex fuel" and put it on our car. Big smile.

But the real thrill was at the pump. That was truly one of the happiest moments I’ve had in awhile. I have a sense of ownership of my life I didn’t have before. All the times I’ve bought gas knowing I’m paying Wahhabi fanatics who hate my rights as a woman, all the times I felt like a victim to a horrible situation, all the times I felt defeated and beaten by the system, all that stopped.

I think some day we will pass an Open Fuel Standard into law, making most of the new cars on the road flex fuel vehicles, but that won’t change my car. Whether the OFS bill passes or not, we still need to convert the cars already on the road, which have an average lifespan of sixteen years. There are more than 200 million cars in America already on the roads that can only burn petroleum fuels. Nearly all those could be easily converted in less than a half hour and for less than a hundred dollars a cylinder.

What are you waiting for? All of us can be driving flex fuel cars right now. And the more cars we convert and the faster we do it, the quicker we can feel safe and secure as a nation.

As my dad used to say: Put your money where your mouth is.

At a time when we often feel like there’s nothing we can do, here’s something we can do. Every car that only burns gas is a slave to OPEC. Every car you convert not only buys your freedom of choice at the pump, but all the money that used to flow out of our free world will now stay in our country. With one simple, practical action, I have accomplished a small part of what we're trying to bring about with fuel competition — national security, economic vitality, environmental health, and energy independence. A better world. And that feels good.

Klassy Evans is the co-author with Adam Khan of Fill Your Tank With Freedom, What Difference Does It Make?: How the Sexes Differ and What You Can Do About It, and How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English).

E85 Does Not harm Non-Flex-Fuel Engines

This ten-minute video shows you a test done on a non-flex-fuel car that burned mostly E85 for over a hundred thousand miles. Not only did it not harm the car, it actually harmed it much less than burning gasoline would have. Check it out:

Boosting Food and Fuel Simultaneously

Researchers at the University of Minnesota fed algae meal (what's left over after algae is used to make biofuels) to dairy cows and discovered that this by-product of algae biofuel production worked as well or better than the high-protein alfalfa normally fed dairy cattle.

Do you know what this means? We can grow algae for fuel on land unsuitable for crops, feed it CO2 exhaust that would normally be sent into the atmosphere (extra CO2 makes algae grow very fast), and with the leftovers, we can replace some or all of the feed now being grown on croplands (alfalfa) to produce food.

Algae can be made into ethanol, methanol, biodiesel, and green crude.

Innovations like these come across my desk every day. And all this innovation at the moment is occurring in an economic environment without a big market. If you'd like to see an explosion of this kind of innovation, help us pass an open fuel standard. It will provide an enormous economic incentive to find ways to successfully compete with petroleum for the fuel market. Who knows what kind of breakthroughs are possible?

The Purpose of an Open Fuel Standard

An open fuel standard would make a huge difference to everyone. Fuels available right now could be sold for substantially less than the current price of gasoline. These fuels burn cleaner, produce less CO2, and can be made locally. And the cars we are driving right now are perfectly capable of burning these fuels.

But we can't put them in our tanks.

Our cars are not warranted to burn them. Oil has a virtual monopoly over transportation fuel. That gives oil tremendous strategic status in the world, and it has an especially high status in the United States, the top consumer of oil in the world. The main power behind oil's monopoly is OPEC.

OPEC is a cartel that employs illegal price-fixing tactics to restrict supply and keep the price of oil high. This drains America's economy. Legal action could be taken against OPEC, but they would probably retaliate with an oil embargo worse that the one in 1973 that crippled America's economy. Transportation fuel is excessively important to our economic health, but its price has been outside of our control.

So what can we do?

We could make an end-run around oil’s monopoly and its economic threat by making each vehicle capable of burning gasoline AND the other fuels. This is surprisingly easy to do.

The internal combustion engine sitting in your driveway can burn ethanol and methanol very well. With a very small tweak to the fuel system and onboard computer, your car could burn three fuels in any mix or proportion. This is a super-flex-fuel car, and is known as a GEM vehicle (gasoline, ethanol and methanol).

A gasoline-only car maintains oil's monopoly, which leaves our economy a victim of OPEC's whims. A GEM car brings freedom to the fuel market through fuel choice and competition, getting around the monopoly and rendering OPEC incapable of controlling fuel prices any longer (or exerting so much influence on America's economy).

With an inexpensive change amounting to no more than $100 per car, automakers can manufacture GEM cars, and thus introduce fuel competition for the first time in a hundred years.

And it wouldn’t be merely three fuels competing. There are many different feedstocks ethanol can be made from, and the same goes with methanol.

An open fuel standard would do for fuel what the iPhone did for cell phones — it would become a platform for innovation. The iPhone enabled anyone to make apps for the phone, generating a bloom of innovation.

The same could happen with fuel. The market is there. If people had cars that could burn the fuels, innovators and entrepreneurs would be vying to get in on it, constantly coming up with new and better fuels — cleaner, cheaper, more local, whatever people were attracted to and were willing to buy. All of this could come about if car manufacturers could be persuaded to do it.

Automakers are reluctant to make these simple changes for several reasons, but with a small push, they could bring forth a new era. And it would be good for car sales because lower fuel prices almost always increase car sales.

An open fuel standard has been proposed several times in Congress. The law would require that all new internal combustion engine powered vehicles sold in this country must be capable of allowing fuel competition. They would have to be GEM vehicles. And for the first time in our lives, we would enjoy as much choice in our fuels as we enjoy with everything else, from televisions to breakfast cereals. It would be the end of a one-fuel economy.

Adam Khan is the co-author with Klassy Evans of Fill Your Tank With Freedom and the author of Slotralogy and Self-Reliance, Translated. Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb. You can email him here.