Ethanol is now the fuel of choice in Brazil, while gasoline is the alternative, and one advocate believes that with one simple law passed by Congress the same thing could happen in the United States.
According to Dr. Robert Zubrin, author of “Energy Victory,” who was the keynote speaker at the opening session of the 2008 Fuel Ethanol Workshop Tuesday in Nashville, mandating that all new vehicles sold in the U.S. be flex fuel would effectively break the economic stranglehold the oil cartel has on the country and the world.
Zubrin made his point by using the analogy of a card game where there is a trump suit that defeats all others and the strategy is for your side to hold most the cards in that trump suit. “It’s the same way in energy,” Zubrin said. “There’s four suits, there’s oil, coal, natural gas and biomass. And right now oil is the trump suit.”
That’s because right now there is mainly one way to power vehicles and that is petroleum products. The key is to change that trump suit, he says, and biomass is the best alternative. The question is how to change the trump suit and Zubrin contends that the answer is to mandate the sale of flex fuel vehicles, which would cost at most $100 per vehicle. “If we had a standard that all new cars sold in this country had to be flex fuel, within three years we’d have 50 million cars on the road in the United States capable of running on alternate fuels,” and Zubrin says that would ultimately result in flex fuel vehicles being sold all over the world.
The reason Zubrin is so passionate about this simple idea is because he believes, and can back up with facts, that we are being held hostage by OPEC countries and are funding terrorism by our daily habit of foreign oil. “We have to win,” he says. “Let’s knock ’em flat!”
To find out more about Zubrin’s book “Energy Victory,” go to energyvictory.net.
Listen to Zubrin’s address to the 2008 FEW here – it’s 45 minutes long but guaranteed to fire you up!:
[audio:http://www.zimmcomm.biz/few08/few08-zubrin.mp3]
“In the beginning of February of this year, ethanol consumption surpassed that of gasoline,” Joel Velasco of the Brazilian Sugar Cane Industry Association said during an update on Brazil’s ethanol industry at the 2008 Fuel Ethanol Workshop in Nashville Tuesday. “My friends, that is a big victory. The oil company now is in a corner.”
“One, would be to take pen to paper and write your own op-ed to your local paper and let them know what ethanol means to your company and your local community and begin to fight back,” said 
The ethanol industry is mad and they’re not going to take it anymore. 
With a ribbon cutting by ethanol industry representatives from the United States and Russia, the 2008 International Fuel Ethanol Workshop officially opened Monday evening in Nashville. 
What debuted as a concept vehicle just three years ago will soon be driving on American roads, running on hydrogen and producing nothing but water for exhaust.
The ethanol plant of the future will produce both fuel and food with new technology from 
The process separates the corn kernel into its three main components – endosperm, germ and bran. Optimizing the whole kernel allows for the production of a number of food and feed grade co-products as well as another alternate fuel source to power the plant itself.
A European power company has struck a record-breaking deal for wind power in Europe and North America.