Editorial: One barrel at a time

Monday, July 16, 2007 | 7:14 a.m.

Starting next month, Ford Motor Co. will be reducing its carbon footprint at its Flat Rock, Mich., plant, where Mustangs will be rolling off the assembly line.

The automaker announced last week that the foam for seat backs and seat cushions in the 2008 Mustang will no longer be made from a process that uses pure petroleum.

Forty percent of the base mixture for making flexible foam for the Mustangs will now be oil derived from soybeans. A company news release said Ford researchers consider the soy-based cushions to be a technological breakthrough. In the past it has taken 100 percent petroleum-based cushions to meet automotive standards.

Ford partnered with the Lear Corp., which makes automotive seating systems, in developing the environmentally friendlier foam, which costs about the same as conventional foam.

With just the Mustangs sporting the new technology, there won't be more than a modest reduction in the use of regular oil. But we think any reduction in domestic or imported oil is important.

One of our country's most important goals should be to reduce its dependence on foreign oil and to curb the pollutants formed when oil is used in manufacturing or when refined and burned as fuel.

A top Ford official told the Associated Press that the company hopes to use the new foam in more models. Here is where the foam could make a huge difference.

Rough calculations show that if all 2.9 million vehicles that Ford makes in a year used the foam, more than 35,000 barrels of oil could be saved. If other auto manufacturers with a presence in the United States were to develop the same technology, the reduction in oil use could be significant.

Also, thousands of other companies use foam in their products. If they added their demand to that of the car makers, American-grown soybeans could make a real dent in the amount of oil we have to import.

Energy innovation has a multiplier effect, and we hope to see more of it from other companies.