GoodFuels

Zubrin: Break up OPEC, Pump Ethanol

Robert Zubrin, a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and aerospace engineer, called on the United States to break up the OPEC oil cartel which “is taxing the United States into a depression.”  How do we do it? “We need to break the cartel’s vertical monopoly by creating fuel choice on a global scale,” and that means putting more alternative fuels in our cars like ethanol.

Congress can make this happen with a stroke of the pen, by passing a law requiring that all new cars sold in the United States be flex-fuel vehicles that can run on any combination of gasoline, ethanol or methanol. The technology is readily available and it only costs about $100 per vehicle.

By making America a flex-fuel vehicle market, we will effectively make flex fuel the international standard, as all significant foreign car makers would be impelled to convert their lines over as well. Around the world, gasoline would be forced to compete at the pump against alcohol fuels made from any number of sources: This includes current commercial crops like corn and sugar; cellulosic ethanol made from crop residues and weeds; methanol, which can be made from any kind of biomass without exception as well as coal, natural gas, and recycled urban trash.