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Unsurprising news on alternative fuels
Posted by civil truth on July 9th, 2007
Headline on the front page of today’s Oakland Tribune:
And the feature article that follows once again details the inability of government to pick and choose winning technologies in the alternative energy supplies field – and how their bungling has cost the taxpayers millions of dollars without showing positive impact on the environment.
During the past two years, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration has sunk more than $17 million into a state fleet of cars and trucks designed to be environmentally friendly. So far, the 1,138 “flex-fuel” vehicles have traveled a collective 10 million miles and burned more than 413,202 gallons of gas. But not one drop has been high-grade ethanol — the fuel that promised to turn the passenger fleet into clean driving machines.
That’s because the vehicles have no access to ethanol pumping stations. There were none when the Chevrolet Impala sedans and Silverado trucks were purchased and none are scheduled to open until December 2009. That’s four years after the vehicles first hit the road.
Even worse, the flex-fuel vehicles are actually chugging out more smog and greenhouse gases than many vehicles in the state’s old fleet — as much as 2,000 extra tons annually. As a result, energy experts question whether the administration’s zest to “look green” has come at the expense of real environmental progress.
If they’re right, Schwarzenegger’s office isn’t the first to bungle with alternative fuel. The latest purchases are the state’s fifth attempt in two decades to shift the vehicles its employees use on the job to cleaner fuel. The failed moves have cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
The article then goes on to describe the state’s series of misadventures since 1981 investing in passenger cars that ran on methanol, electricity, propane, compressed natural gas, and E85 – all of them abject failures.
The same thing happens every time,” said Bob Sonnenfelt, president of the Northern California-based Public Fleet Supervisors Association and manager of Oakland’s municipal fleet. “The infrastructure isn’t there to support the vehicles. The program dies, like it did with methanol, and they start another one.”
Thus now, taking a leaf perhaps from Hugo Chavez, or perhaps Canute, the state has decided that the way to succeed this time is by executive fiat: the world’s first low carbon fuel standard, which requires a 10% or greater reduction in the amount of carbon released into the air from auto fuels.
What a brilliant stroke from the Terminator. I’m surprised nobody’s thought of this idea before.
But alas, every party has it’s pooper. The article goes on to note that not everyone is certain that Arnold’s decrees will succeed.
“There are a lot of these big, bravado moments. They put out an executive order, or pass a law, but they don’t follow through with the commitment,” said S. David Freeman, former energy adviser to President Jimmy Carter. “The journey to energy independence requires real, substantive change.”
Here’s a radical idea for real, substantive change: get government out of the way and let market forces find a solution. Indeed, by eliminating CO2 emissions from politician’s pronouncements, we’d be halfway there right at the onset!
July 10th, 2007 at 10:59 am
I think the Terminator (Arnold) has the right idea, he just doesn’t have the big business connections in place to build the infrastructure.
It’s in the big oil companies interest to not help out with these new fuel alternatives.
What Arnold needs to do is give huge taxes breaks to small upstart companies willing to supoort the new green fleet.
July 11th, 2007 at 12:59 am
CIG, did you read the whole article? California has had 25+ years to get this right, and all they’ve done is pour the taxpayers’ money down a rathole. The problem is that state bureaucrats don’t know how to create a viable business from the ground up especially when they evade the discipline of the market.
You don’t just go out and buy a bunch of experimental cars and then figure out how you’re going to refuel/recharge them when people are traveling all around the state. Just think what kind of massive operation it is to create a separate retail fuel distribution system, finding and buying land, building stations, manning the stations, finding a fuel distributor, figuring out how to get the fuel to the stations all over the state…No wonder all the efforts keep burning and crashing.
And your approach is to redouble the effort – and to throw more taxpayer money to subsidize this fleet that you’ve already paid a premium price to buy? And given California’s remarkable success (NOT) at previous technology contracts (such as computers), how could you possibly trust the folks to write sound contracts and to find competent companies that the money won’t simply run through their. We don’t need any more bottomless money pits, thank you!
Rather than reward incompetence and idiocy – I’d say to them You’re fired
July 11th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
“Rather than reward incompetence and idiocy – I’d say to them You’re fired!”
That is exactly what happens to people who perform thusly in the private sector.
Wittingly or not, government, unrestricted by cost efficiency agendas that are part of marketplace profit motive, make a specialty of playing “trial & error” with the taxpayers’ money.
Launching the spearhead elements of a program without first having the supporting infrastructure in place is the perfect example.
Good ol’ California, I remember it well. 8)