When Christopher Lloyd dropped the banana peel into the fuel tank of the DeLorean and sped off into the 21st century in one of the “Back to the Future” films, it all seemed so simple. Garbage as fuel: Just do it.
Looking back, it turns out Hollywood’s concept for alternative energy sources in 1985 was dead-on accurate in nearly every aspect but the timing.
If only we’d paid attention to Lloyd’s madcap time-traveling scientist, Dr. Emmett Brown.
Scientists have known for decades that fuel was trapped inside organic molecules. They just needed money so they could learn how to release it cost-effectively.
But as long as gasoline was $2 a gallon, the attitude of Americans was to live for today, fill up the Hummer, keep the tax cuts coming and let the kids worry about the future. So the budget at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory kept shrinking and the research kept stalling.
Now with gas prices hitting $3.50 a gallon in parts of the country, the future is back and not just the kids are worried.
Garbage is looking better all the time.
The scientists at the NREL in Golden are sought after in private industry both here and abroad, and they’re daring to hope that maybe they’ll finally get the resources they need to get the job done.
They’re already brewing ethanol out of cornstalks and just need to tweak the recipe of enzymes and bacteria to make the process commercially viable.
Sure, they could have done it 20 years ago if anybody had shown any interest in investing in the research, but now the mantra is “30 by 30,” said Michael Pacheco, director of the National Bioenergy Center. By 2030, the goal is to have 30 percent of the fuel needed for transportation in the U.S. come from ethanol produced from cornstalks, switchgrass or maybe even algae from the ocean.
With that and greater commercial acceptance of hybrids and other fuel-efficient vehicles, the country could achieve price stability and energy independence within 25 years.
Some of us don’t want to wait that long for relief from high gas prices though, and the politicians know it. So with elections looming in November, they’re proposing a whole raft of shortsighted ways to reduce fuel prices temporarily by draining the national treasury.
Which actually could be a setback.
Dale Gardner, associate director for renewable fuels at NREL, said the two factors necessary for the development of alternative energy sources are commitments from the corporate world and demand from consumers.
The corporate world is coming around, he said. BP Amoco and ConocoPhillips are keenly interested in the technology. And demand from consumers has been growing with each gas price increase.
“We don’t know what the break point is,” he said, but they know it’s out there. If $3-a-gallon gas doesn’t create demand for biofuel, surely $4-a-gallon gas will.
But there’s more reason to support the research than just to protect ourselves from continued extortion by OPEC and the billionaires in the oil industry.
Scientists all over the world are working to develop cellulose-based biofuels, fuel-efficient vehicles, hydrogen technologies, solar, wind and other energy alternatives. “If we let the rest of the world develop these energy sources, and we have to buy the technology from them, we compromise our economic competitiveness,” Gardner said.
We outsource the future.
But what about now? Realistically, what can we expect in the way of relief at the pump?
A lot, Pacheco said.
“Within the next five years, we could see E-85 (85 percent ethanol fuel) pumps at gas stations around the country. In five years, we’ll be able to buy E-85 hybrids and fill up at stations all over town.
“Hydrogen is still decades away,” he said, but garbage fuel is so close, you can almost smell it.
Suddenly he was grinning like Dr. Emmett Brown behind the wheel of the DeLorean.
He was Christopher Lloyd with a better haircut.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
