NEW YORK (Reuters Tue May 19, 2009 ) - President Barack Obama’s tough fuel economy program for vehicles could put another damper on the struggling ethanol business, because the alternative (biofuel) fuel packs a lower energy content than gasoline.

Obama on Tuesday introduced the most aggressive proposal yet to boost U.S. auto fuel economy standards — a bid to reduce vehicle emissions of climate-warming gases. [ID:nN19424837]. The proposal would require passenger vehicles to average 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016.

They have pushed for wider development of service station pumps that offer a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline.

But “flex fuel” cars typically get 20 to 30 percent fewer miles per gallon when they burn E85 due to ethanol’s lower energy content, according to the Web site www.fueleconomy.gov.

Obama’s plan could be another blow to the industry that had been a big part of former President George W. Bush’s strategy to begin to wean the country off foreign oil.

PORTFOLIO OF ALTERNATIVES

“It looks like they are going to lose out,” Sarah Emerson, director of consultant group Energy Security Analysis Inc in Boston, said about the effect on the ethanol industry of the Obama program. “I think the fuel economy (plan) trumps the biofuels.”

ZED COMMENT: A great majority of USA biofuel is made from food stocks, a source rightly condemned by human rights groups concerned with feeding the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. Internationally, in countries such as Indonesia, vast forests are being destroyed to grow biofuel plants. This exacerbates environment degradation instead of improving it. Second, innumerable studies indicate that the total energy consumed in growing biomass and processing it into fuel meets or exceeds the resultant energy of the fuel, a zero sum advantage. Third, it is now public knowledge that biofuel has only half the energy of gasoline or diesel, so twice as much must be burned to travel the same distance. In reality therefore, the energy in a $25 tank of gasoline costs $50 in E85 biofuel. From another perspective, if E85 biofuel has half the pollution of gasoline, but twice as much has to be burned, the net advantage is zero. Current biofuel practices are therefore arguably detrimental to the environmental, social and economic health of the planet.

DETROIT (Reuters Tue May 19, 2009) - The tough U.S. fuel economy standards announced by President Barack Obama on Tuesday represents a bonanza for companies that supply hybrid technology and other gas-conserving components needed to meet the new benchmarks.

To improve fuel efficiency by as much as 40 percent, major automakers will need to order a lot more turbochargers, more advanced lithium-ion batteries and more electric motors for cars and trucks already under development.

“There are a lot of suppliers out there with credentials that are lining up to get into this gold rush,” said Larry Rinek, an expert in fuel efficiency at consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. “This is going to be a drama to watch.”

Other analysts expect steel to be swapped for lighter aluminum and plastics. Copper demand could grow as electric motors are rolled out to meet the rising production of hybrids.

The hitch: analysts expect American consumers will pay more than projected and face sharply limited choices.

With General Motors Corp and Chrysler LLC operating under government funding, analysts also expect demands for large new subsidies to automakers and incentives to get consumers into greener and smaller cars.

S&P equity analyst Efraim Levy said he was keeping his “hold” recommendation on shares of Ford Motor Co, the only U.S. automaker to have steered clear of a bailout.

“We do think it will burden an already struggling industry,” Levy said in a note for clients.

Analyst Charles Bradford of Affiliated Research Group expected the steel content in vehicles to drop, while aluminum and plastic usage would rise.

ZED COMMENT: The “Gold Rush” really is on for increased fuel economy, but NONE of it is break-through technology which will replace the gasoline engine in all applications, which is the ultimate goal of alternate fuels. Only ZED can meet that criteria. The improvement in fuel economy comes at an estimated cost increase of $600 or more per vehicle, which may require government subsidy. Battery disposal at the end of use remains a growing and urgent environmental problem. Comparatively, with ZED the vehicle cost does not increase, no government subsidies are needed, fuel economy is irrelevant because petroleum is not used, and no environmentally damaging batteries or other components are used. If improving fuel economy is a gold rush, replacing petroleum should be rated platinum.

BRUSSELS (Reuters Wed May 13, 2009) - Eradicating greenhouse gases from power stations and cars, trucks and aviation must be Europe’s next policy move to tackle climate change, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Wednesday.

The statement gives the first glimpse of what the 27-country bloc might do next as it moves toward a greener economy.

The European Union last year agreed to cut emissions of the main global warming gas, carbon dioxide, to a fifth below 1990 levels by 2020 — the world’s most ambitious climate policy.

“We need to come up with concrete policies to decarbonize our electricity supply and transport fuels and to transform the grid,” Barroso told reporters.

Fast growing emissions from transport is one of Europe’s biggest challenges in the fight against climate change, Jos Delbeke, number two in the European Commission’s environment directorate, told a climate conference on Wednesday.

Dudley Curtis of environment group T&E said the Commission would have to do some “joined-up thinking” on the issue, as it was partly the liberalization efforts of the last few decades that had created the explosion in transport and its emissions.

ZED COMMENT: De-carbonize transport fuels? There is only one zero carbon fuel with the power to match gasoline and that is hydrogen.  The problem has been that no hydrogen fueled engine including the hydrogen fuel cell and the H2 internal combustion engine have been able to match the power of gasoline. The third iteration of the hydrogen fueled engine however, break-through ZED technology,  fully exploits the energy of hydrogen with over twice the power of gasoline in the same sized engine. As a result, the ZED engine can be used in any vehicle where petroleum based fuels are now used. With zero emissions, the ZED engine alone can deliver a change in the global transportation paradigm.