Henry Ford originally had planned his cars to run on ethanol.
After serious threats and other annoyance from the upcoming
oil barons he finally gave in and switched to petrol.
But his original idea was to use ethanol, as that could be produced
in a sustainable manner in any country.
In several South-American regions they've been using it for over 50 years now,
in large metropolitan areas. Works nicely, just gives off a bit of an alcohol smell.
But to be honest it is not really a solution to the multiple fuel-related problems,
in my opinion.
Yes, it is a more sustainable fuel than petroleum. Yes, it could significantly
decrease dependancy of middle-eastern oil and cut fuel costs. That is true.
But it will not help decrease CO2 levels structurally, it will increase the demand
for agricultural land which can have serious negative consequences for both
food and housing costs, the harvesting and refining processes are not very
efficient so a large part of the energy yield in the form of fuel is used in the
actual production process resulting in relatively low effective fuel yield.
I have said it several times before and I'll say it again: Fusion is the way to go.
Several years ago, when the "war on terror" hadn't started yet, there was a project
intended to build a working nuclear fusion power plant in France, with quite a number
of nations contributing funds and personnel. After a few decades of building test
reactors to study and test fusion processes, they had finally worked out a design
that promised a sustainable fusion reaction plus a viable way to extract the produced
energy in the form of electricity. The design involved a huge reactor plant, and something
like 10 billion Euros was gathered to complete the project.
Then the "war on terror" was called, a worldwide security panic hit, and most nations pulled
out the majority of the funds for that project, because now they had to invest in more
security personnel, more and newer scanners, and special measures to keep people
from bringing their deadly bottles of drinking water onboard airplanes, and more of those
extremely helpfull measures.
All of a sudden there was not enough money to actually build the fusion plant. Since they
had already started the preliminary construction work, they quickly pulled an older and simpler
design out of the box and built another test reactor from the little money they had left,
but the worlds first true fusion power plant was mothballed before it was even built,
because many governments under the enlightened leadership of George B decided
shooting Afganis and waterboarding hundreds of random arabs in concentration camps
was apparently much more important than ridding ourselves of the monetary ties
to the oil-hogging arab countries forever.
Now they're finally talking about starting such a project again, but with the current "crisis"
on the financial markets that appears to have been put on hold once again...
Just imagine what we can do when we have fusion plants?
And all we need to get the first one going is something like 10 to 20 billion Euros...
... that's what the US alone spends every couple of weeks they stay in Iraq!
Clearly someone has a crooked view somewhere; it is obvious that fusion can power our
respective countries for many centuries to come, much more advantageous than
securing a couple of oil fields in a desert country full of exploding maniacs.
