Alcohols Considerably Cheaper Than Gas Already

In an article on CBS San Fransisco, Consumer Watch says:

With fuel prices on the rise, drivers are looking for ways to save. If you have a flex fuel vehicle, you can switch over from gasoline to cheaper alternative fuels such as ethanol or alcohol. And you may be already driving one... 

According to Scientist David Bloom, flex fuel is better for the environment than traditional gasoline and is also cost efficient. Currently the price of alcohol is 90 cents less then gasoline. 

And as the popularity rises for flex fuel, there are Apple and Android apps for consumers to locate the nearest station. There are currently less than 2,000 flex fuel stations nationwide. 

Automakers including General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Chrysler have committed to 50 percent flex fuel cars within the next couple of years. But according to industry insiders, there are 10 million flex fuel cars on the road and many drivers are unaware they are already in one.

When the Open Fuel Standard Act has passed, it will become commonplace for cars to be flex fuel, and fuel stations with choices will be ubiquitous. And because of the bigger market and greater amount of competition, fuel prices will be even lower than they are now. Let's make this happen quickly. Start here to find out what you can do.

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No Quick Fix for America's Rising Gas Prices? Think Again.

The comment below, from "Neil" on LinkedIn's Clean Energy Community, makes a good point about the speed with which things could change:

Did President Obama get it wrong when he just said that there is no “quick fix” for America’s problem of rising gasoline prices and vulnerability to spikes in the price of foreign oil?

Sorry, Mr. President, but you are simply wrong. There is a “quick fix” that can massively reduce U.S. oil consumption, and make our vulnerability to price spikes in the foreign oil market a relic of the past. To draw that solution into focus, we need to understand that 70% of the oil the industrialized world uses is needed for transportation and nearly none for generating electrical power. So, shocking as it may seem coal, nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal all have nothing to do with our dependence on oil.

What really matters is the amount of gasoline and diesel we use in cars, trucks and buses. We could reduce that amount cleanly and economically by turning natural gas to methanol and by turning non-food crops and cellulosic waste to ethanol or to synthetic gasoline and diesel – and then use these as a substitute to oil-based fuels. But that won’t happen until we put in place THE ONE POLICY THAT COULD CREATE A MARKET FOR THESE ALTERNATIVE FULES AND SPUR THE INVESTMENTS NEEDED TO BRING THEM TO MARKET: an “Open Fuel Standard” for autos.

To learn more about the Open Fuel Standard and how it could change the way in which we fuel transportation, I invite you to visit our website at http://www.ea-21.org. The Open Fuel Standard is the “quick fix” to America’s dependence on foreign oil.

One of the most encouraging things about the Open Fuel Standard is how quickly it could change things. Anne Korin, Gal Luft, and Marc Goldman state in their paper, Energy Independence Myths and Solutions:

The challenge with flex fuel is the difficulty in locating a station that pumps it...

That will change when all cars come flex fuel capable. At 10-12 million new cars per year in the U.S., it will take only about three years for flex fuel to reach the 30 million cars needed to justify most gas stations to invest in flex fuel pumps.

Our presidents have been struggling to make the United States independent from foreign oil for over thirty-five years. But with the passing of this bill, things will begin to change within three years. That's pretty quick.

If you'd like to help make this happen, there are a few simple actions you can take, and they won't even take much of your time. Go here to get started.

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