Editorial: Seeing ethanol as the future

Monday, March 13, 2006 | 7:17 a.m.

What the United States is attempting to do in replacing gasoline with ethanol has already been accomplished in Brazil - and then some. President Bush, in his State of the Union speech, set 2025 as the target date for cutting Middle East oil imports by three-quarters through increased domestic production of ethanol. Brazil is already long past that stage. It no longer imports any oil and is using the resultant savings to revitalize its rural areas.

Brazil's accomplishment serves as an example of what can be done if a nation is serious about energy change. The beginnings were not especially enviable - its dictatorial government ordered the revving up of an ethanol industry and its population was forced to drive ethanol-only vehicles.

Nearly 30 years later, though, under a more democratic government, ethanol is a booming free-market industry in Brazil, a South American country with a population exceeding 185 million. According to a recent Associated Press story, seven of every 10 new Brazilian cars have flex-fuel technology, enabling them to use either gasoline or ethanol. The story quoted experts as saying 90 percent of the new cars in Brazil will have that technology within several years.

In the United States, only about 5 million vehicles out of more than 240 million on the road have the flex-fuel technology. But all indications are that this statistic will change soon and for a much saner reason than governmental dictate - a profit motive.

Brazil has the advantage of having the most perfect climate and soil in the world for sugar cane, the best plant on Earth for distilling into ethanol. But the United States is no slouch - we have corn, prairie grass, wood chips and other organic materials in abundance that are also ideal for producing ethanol.

The American ethanol plants in operation today, especially the one in Decatur, Ill., run by Archer Daniels Midland, are in full production mode. Investors are pouring money into ethanol, as they see it someday becoming the dominant automotive fuel. And with today's technology, which combines it with 15 percent regular gasoline, consumers are finding that it is easy on their vehicles and pocketbooks.

Ethanol is also easy on the environment, as it emits a fraction of the greenhouse gases that gasoline does, and can be produced using steam generated by the clean burning of waste plant material. If American consumers can dream of a day when the hazards of oil - its expense, environmental damage and largely Middle East origins - are no longer major issues, then our country can meet or hopefully even beat the 2025 goal.