Indeed where are the media articles on what we need as an energy policy. For the media everything needs to be fair and balance by having truth on one side along with oil company and Ag (corn) interest telling partial truth lies as the other side. But a Dem podition paper could let folks know that gasifying the coal and converting it to methanol is a much more energy efficient route than the indirect and heavily subsidized method of converting to ethanol via corn? In any case, the media says nothing to indicate to the public that the wheels have come off of our energy policy because of the incompetence of the Bush administration.
This chart www.neo.ne.gov / statshtml/images/ 66.jpg which shows May 2, 2006 price as $2.45 vs. $2.22. But we care more about the before subsidy cost in terms of usable energy content in today's standard V-6:
Assume $2.22 / gallon (wholesale price of ethanol) then we remove
+ $0.51 / gallon (VEETC tax benefit)
+ $0.16 / gallon (federal corn subsidy)
+ $0.10 / gallon (small ethanol producer incentive)
+ $0.20 / gallon (state subsidies)
= $3.19/gallon effective real cost of ethanol- and then -$3.19/gallon times (1/.85) because Ethanol gives about 85% the heat-value of regular gasoline per gallon (your mileage goes down 15% approximately) and we get = $3.76/gallon equivalent price for a drive in country or to work. Would it not be easier to add an excise tax to oil if the energy route we take does not reduce our fossil fuel use? And corn to ethanol does not greatly reduce fossil fuel use because of the oil inputs needed to grow and process corn, and because the current corn crop if 100% converted to ethanol could not replace more than 15% of our current oil usage.
Of course imposing a $50/barrel excise tax on all imports of oil and oil products, giving those dollars back to the public via some payable in cash credit on the income tax, would make us be energy independent in a few years! But that would be a tax and for the media and for Bush that would be wrong.
The Dems should write about Bio diesel
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/03/biodiesel-king-of-alternative-fuels.html and Berzin’s idea that is at
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2005/06/university_of_n.html (A Berzin 1,000 megawatt power plant could produce more than 40 million gallons of bio-diesel and 50 million gallons of ethanol a year, requiring a 2,000-acre "farm" of algae-filled tubes near the power plant. There are nearly 1,000 power plants nationwide with enough space nearby for a few hundred to a few thousand acres to grow algae and make a good profit).
Conservation via hybrid plug in electric cars and other quick fix ideas are our #1 response for next few yrs - but why is the Dem party letting the Bush Administration play with hydrogen and corn ethanol when it is obvious those routes are not the way to go?
Remember the days when the Clinton administration's budget proposal had $2.1 billion to help promote bio-fuels during the next decade?
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