Methanol is a different type of fuel alcohol, not pushed by Durbin, because it is more easily

produced from natural gas. Its economics are better than that of ethanol (though at present
not competitive with gasoline). Its high octane rating permits high compression ratios and
more efficient engines. It seems to be favored over ethanol by the automobile companies
and other ex-perts, and small fleets of methanol-driven cars are now in use in California and
elsewhere, mainly due to the support given by local and state governments in heavily
polluted cities. Most often a mix-ture of 85% methanol and 15% gasoline is used. Apart from
cost, its drawback is very low volatility, and on cool nights starting the engine is a problem
even in tropical Brazil. In addition, it is more toxic than gasoline, more easily absorbed
through the skin, has no taste (natural warning), and is soluble in water¾a real boon to the
.environment

But in case you thought I run down everything on principle, take a look at natural gas (I leave
out electric cars this time). As one who has not fallen for the greenhouse hoax (natural gas is
mostly methane, an absorber of infrared), I look at the plentiful supply in the US and other
politically stable countries, at the comparatively low cost (with a $2,000 retrofit per vehicle,
large fleets break even on the lower fuel cost already), the comparatively good perfor-
mance (10% below gasoline), the easy starts (gas needs no car-buretor), and above all the
comparatively wide use that natural gas is already enjoying: 300,000 vehicles in Italy,
250,000 in the USSR, 100,000 in Australia, 15,000 in Canada. An official in the gas industry
tells me that Argentina is now converting at the rate of 10,000 cars a month voluntarily,
without government support. And because I am a true environmentalist, not a Sierra-Club
.impostor, I note that unlike gasoline, gas is neither toxic, nor carcinogenic, nor caustic

The US now has 30,000 gas-powered vehicles, all in large fleets such as owned by utilities.
Both GM and Ford are coming out with a 1991 gas-driven truck that costs about $500 more
than the gasoline-driven model; however, this is a dedicated model, not one switchable
.between gas and gasoline, whose price would be con-siderably higher

The two great disadvantages are low range and lack of an infra-structure for distribution.
There are also smaller bugs such as at least double the time for filling up compared with
gasoline. A con-verted car has only a 100 mile range between refills (the two trucks above
.have a flat tank under the bed and attain a range of 200 miles)

At present this makes it suitable only for cars of company fleets that drive around town, but
that could change in a few years in some places. If gasoline prices go up substantially, the
home tank and compressor could make an appearance to form the beginning of an
.infrastructure, and the small range might not dissuade short-distance commuters
There are two systems of storing the gas in a tank: compressed and liquid (cooled), and I will
.return to this subject in future

In the meantime I note that natural gas as an automobile fuel has no Dick Durbin in the
House, and probably never will have a comparable pressure lobby. The reason is that the
market amounts to only 10 billion cubic feet for every 100,000 cars¾peanuts for the gas
industry, which counts on a demand of six trillion cubic feet by the year 2,000 for electric
.power generation alone

And there you have another advantage of government in the economy if the alcohol fuels
win, we will never know whether this was due to their superiority or just to the absence of a
.gas-fuel lobby

More: "Replacing gasoline: Alternative fuels for light-duty vehicles," OTA Report OTA-E-364, [
September 1990, 148 pp., $7 from GPO, Washington, DC 20402 (stock no. 052-003-01260-5).
When you ignore the long litanies about what which fuel does to global warming and the
ozone layer, there is still plenty left to make this a useful report. see also L. Frank Pitts, "How
to survive the Rock Fight in the Greenhouse," The Landman (4100 Fossil Creek Blvd., Ft.
].Worth, TX 76137), Sept./Oct. 1990
 Ethanol is far and away the most ideal gasoline substitute; not for drivers, cars, clean air or
low cost, but for Democratic Con-gessman Richard Durbin of Illinois and the corn belt farming
interests he represents. Its economy, either as a gasoline additive or as a neat automobile
fuel, is poor in the general sense; but it is superb in providing Durbin's constituency with a
triple subsidy.

Ethanol (ethyl alcohol) is made from corn by fermentation and distillation. Its advantage
compared with methanol is its high volatility, better than that of gasoline, so that there are no
problems with cold starts. Indeed, its volatility is such that accord-ing to a magazine report
from Brazil (where it is manufactured from sugar cane and widely used) its fumes in parking
lots and garages make people feel drunk. Its impact on air quality is probably not too different
from that of gasoline: its seems to produce more ozone, but this may be offset by its cleaner
burn due to the oxygen contained in the fuel.

Engines would have to be redesigned to make them run effi-ciently. The air/fuel ratio for
ethanol is 6.4:1, compared with gasoline's 14.5:1. This can be taken care of by a different (or
even a double) carburetor, but the optimum compression ratio is at least 13:1, which is way
too large for even high-octane gasoline.

But ethanol's most severe disadvantage is its poor economy. This is not easy to ascertain
with subsidy-distorted prices, but the case of Brazil, also imprinted by the heavy hand of
government, is instructive. There the government hoped to reduce oil imports by switching
cars to methanol and ethanol made from sugar cane. But as of last year (reported the
Financial Times) sugar prices were up, crude prices down, a painful shortage of alcohol fuel
developed, and the government now pressed manufacturers to produce more gasoline
burning models. Experts estimate that when the subsidies and other costs are counted in,
Brazil is paying three times the cost of crude oil for its sugar-based alcohol, while losing the
sugar cane and still importing 45% of its oil.

The Hon. Durbin is heading the same way. The current federal subsidy to ethanol use in
gasohol is 60 cents a gallon at the pump; to this add the indirect subsidy of increased corn
prices and pos-sibly other grain-feed if large-scale ethanol production gets under way, and a
third indirect subsidy to the already heavily subsidized agriculture would result from increased
food pricesthe Con-gressional Office of Technology Assessment estimates no less than $4
to $5 per gallon once production exceeds 2 to 4 billion gal-lons/year.

At that level, however, it might be more efficient to burn the corn in steam driven automobiles,
for according to the OTA's report, a negative energy balance may set in: more oil and gas
would be used to produce the ethanol than would be saved by the replaced gasoline.

Then there is the question of byproducts, such as the corn stil-lage, which can be sold as a
high-protein substitute for soybean meal as a livestock feed. This now optimistically figures in
the predictions of ethanol costs, but if that market is saturated, the net production costs would
increase drastically.

Fortunately a "window of opportunity" is now opening to take care of such frivolities in the
market. Tens of thousands of experts in government-run economies will soon be looking for
jobs in Central and Eastern Europe, and probably in the USSR as well. This is a splendid
opportunity to exploit their considerable diligence and decades of experience in fine-tuning a
centrally planned economy for decreeing automobile fuels by subsidy and legislation as
proposed by the Hon. Durbin.

How could they possibly fail?