Frank Gaffney in the Washington Times:
Tie the bailout to the adoption of a new “Open Fuel Standard” (OFS) that would have the effect of giving U.S. automakers a distinct, near-term competitive advantage, while making a giant leap on one of our most important national security challenges – energy security.
The idea is straightforward. The Big Three have produced approximately 6 million vehicles now on America’s highways that are equipped with what is known as a Flexible Fuel Vehicle (FFV) capability. FFVs can be configured to run on ethanol or methanol – fuels that can be manufactured from a variety of sources that we have here in abundance – or on gasoline, or some combination of the three.
The American auto manufacturers have also produced many more such vehicles for the Brazilian market where an OFS is effectively the law of the land, ensuring that all new cars offer consumers “fuel choice.”
Brazil’s experience is instructive. Where fuel competition is afforded and the monopoly gasoline currently enjoys in the United States is broken, the costs of powering the transportation sector are dramatically reduced. What’s more important, billions of dollars that might otherwise go to purchase oil from sources that are unstable at best and unfriendly at worst can be kept at home.
During the recent presidential campaign, both Barack Obama and John McCain endorsed the concept of an Open Fuel Standard. Legislation that would institute it has been introduced on a bipartisan basis in both the House and Senate (H.R. 6559 and S. 3303, respectively).
By incorporating the bills’ requirement that, by 2012, 50 percent of all new cars sold in this country be Flexible Fuel Vehicles – which Detroit’s auto companies have already committed and are planning to do – we can begin weaning America off of our cars’ current, absolute addiction to oil. The legislation would require that by 2015, a further 30 percent of these fleets be equipped with FFV technology, something that today costs less than $100 per car.
Imagine a President Obama as one of his first initiatives formally embracing the Open Fuel Standard, rewarding Detroit for taking a step that is highly desirable from both an environmental and national security perspective with a bailout tied to the imposition of such a standard on both domestic and foreign cars. The new chief executive could inspire his people and advance his stated agenda of achieving energy independence by calling on the American people to purchase a vehicle with FFV capability. Until foreign manufacturers retool and conform to the Open Fuel Standard, most of those FFVs will be sold by the Big Three – a shot in the arm for them, our economy and the national interest more generally.
An additional benefit for an Obama administration concerned with alleviating world poverty is that the adoption by this country of an Open Fuel Standard will have the effect of establishing it as a global standard. Car manufacturers will sell their FFVs all over the world, enabling about 100 countries to grow the fuels they need to power them, ending their dependence on foreign oil and reducing dramatically the petro-wealth transfers being used by freedom’s enemies to our collective detriment.
Set America Free Coalition member Zubrin was the keynote speaker at theÂ