Kansas and Missouri farmers can save us from this oil price chaos | Opinion
How much longer do we need to put up with the insanity of tolerating these wild swings in the price of crude oil, gasoline, diesel and fertilizer? The prices of fertilizer and diesel in particular are causing severe financial problems ($12 - $15,000 per grain farm) for Kansas and Missouri farmers, as well as raising food prices for consumers.
To stop this we could use the same strategy we used to get rid of lead in gasoline. In the 1970s, we decided we didn’t need to tolerate lead, a known powerful neurotoxin, in gasoline and decided to get rid of it. We didn’t ban the sale of leaded gasoline. Instead, we banned the sale of new cars that burned it and left existing vehicles alone to live out their lives on leaded fuel. This is the reason we had leaded and unleaded pumps for 20 years as existing vehicles wore out.
Gasoline accounts for roughly 50% of a barrel of crude and diesel for another 25%, so only 25% of crude oil is actually used for fertilizer, plastics, jet fuel A, medicines, lubricants and much more. Therefore, to make ourselves truly independent of the world price of oil, we simply need to ban the sale of new vehicles that burn gasoline or diesel as primary fuels. If such a ban were in place, car companies would immediately begin offering engines optimized for performance on renewable ethanol, E100 biofuel and RD100 renewable diesel, and that do not burn crude-oil based diesel or gasoline. This would be in addition to their electric vehicle offerings.
Only minor changes to the engine or fuel supply hardware on a vehicle need to be changed. E100 and RD100 can be made from all kinds of crop waste. The leftover plant matter from corn, wheat, rice, soybean and sunflower harvests can be turned into fuel ethanol and create a new revenue stream for Kansas and Missouri farmers, instead of allowing it to remain fallow. Michigan State University professor Bruce Dale proved years ago that biofuels can provide all the transportation fuel needed without interfering one iota with food production.
In addition, E100 and RD100 would use the existing infrastructure of trucks, storage tanks and pumps without the need to invest in an entirely new infrastructure for fuel supply. What this means in practice is that we could continue what we have now — the ability to buy 300 to 400 miles of range for five minutes of our precious life moments at a fuel pump instead of hours spent to purchase that same amount of range at a charging station. Now, the recharging time cost doesn’t matter if it can be done at night at a central depot as would be the case for local delivery trucks (which should go electric), but the time cost of obtaining those 300 to 400 miles at a charger during an ordinary work or travel day for most people matters a great deal.
It is really absurd for some states to mandate EVs. The better route is to ban what we don’t want — new gasoline and diesel fueled engines — and let the car companies and consumers figure it out. Twenty years from the date of that ban, we would have a mix of EVs and renewable fuel vehicles powering our economy, the turmoil of depending on the world price of crude oil would be a thing of the past, and Kansas, Missouri and other Midwest farmers would prosper as never before.
Don Siefkes is executive director of the domestic nonprofit Michigan corporation E100 Ethanol Group. He is a retired General Motors Design mid-level executive with an engineering and economics background. Ethanol Producer Magazine has called him “The E100 Evangelist.”