Jim Lane

Now that the Energy Bill has become the Energy Independence Act of 2007, let’s not forget that there are a lot of people — friends, neighbors, competitors, adversaries — who think that 36 billion gallons is an awful lot of ethanol.

It’s right for them to feel troubled and worried about the journey we have set for ourselves. Where, exactly, are the technologies going to come from that allow us to attain these lofty goals?

The American way, for as long as anyone can remember, has been to set off on impossible journeys to far-flung destinations, and reach new worlds of possibility that other nations and peoples have been known to wonder at.

“How did the Americans get a hold of America?” goes the whisper. “They don’t deserve it!”

The Pilgrims knew. Lincoln knew. The doughboys of World War I and the GI Joes of World War Two knew. Lindbergh knew. NASA knew.

Or rather, they didn’t know anything, except that they had a destination to reach and, somehow, using good old American know-how, they were going to get there.

The American system, for all its failures and weaknesses, is built by, built on, and built for impossible journeys.

So, the debate over the Renewable Fuel Standard has ended. Now, as Pilgrims, we set out on “an impossible journey” to produce 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel in a safe, viable, and sustainable manner, and we have 15 years to get there.

The Renewable Fuel Standard is a lousy name, if you ask me, because there’s nothing in that term that implies how long, tough, and perilous the pilgrimage ahead of us will be.

But I don’t doubt for a second that we will reach our goal, and with time to spare.

But if the Standard has a terrible name, it is a beautiful thing. The Standard is good because it gets us focused on the future without dictating any more than absolutely necessary about how we will get there. The Standard is a goal-line that we have to reach, but like all great football games, the players and plays are up to the individual teams to decide.

Along the way to this decision, some of our fellow Americans opposed the Standard, and some of our friends in the renewable industry did not realize, this time around, a long-cherished Renewable Power Standard.

Not everyone, as a result, is in love with the bill. That’s understandable: it’s a compromise.

Historian Shelby Foote, in the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War, reflecting on the origin of the war, said: “We failed to do the thing we have a true genius for, compromise. Americans like to think of themselves as uncompromising, but it’s the basis of our democracy. Our government is founded on it; it failed.”

So we have done the thing that we do: we have compromised, set our goals, and now we set out on the journey to reach a shining city on a hill, whose light we have set ourselves to make in a sustainable manner from renewable resources.

What better way to make our beloved Republic permanent than to light it, heat it, and fuel it from sources that are renewable, and under our control?

The Renewable Fuel Standard is simply a beginning, for it does not address the means but rather the end. Like a market-maker in the stock markets, it provides a necessary base of assurance, but it is one moving part among many.

Without the Standard, how could the car makers invest in flex-fuel technologies without knowing if ethanol had a future? How could pipeline manufacturers invest $1 million per mile to build infrastructure? How could gas station owners take the plunge on pump conversion?

Without the Standard, there was too great a risk of too many trapped investments in too many industries.

So with the signing of the Act and the establishment of the Standard, much is accomplished, but much remains.

We need to move past the E10 “blend wall”. We aren’t going to use more than 14-15 billion gallons putting E10 in everyone’s car, and few people are really ready for E85. The Brazilians do it right in mandating an E22 minimum blend. That would use up 31 billion gallons right there, even if not one drop of E85 was sold.

We need a guaranteed loan program or grant program, for E85 pump installations. Gas stations make money on snacks and soda, not gasoline, and station owners have neither the capital, borrowing power, or compelling interest to make the conversion. We’re going to be mightily exposed if we have to sell 5-20 billion gallons of E85 and consumers have nowhere to get it.

We need to repeal the ethanol tariff and subsidies. The US biofuels industry is not going to succeed until it can compete head-to-head with Brazilian ethanol. We may as well get started now. It will require a hatful of technology breakthroughs, but so did walking on the moon. I have no doubt that we will get there, but we cannot simply lock in the profits for existing ethanol technologies and expect an economic miracle. That’s the Soviet way, it will take us all down the same path as the Soviets took, and to the same end.

What we need is not a Soviet end, but an American beginning. We have set the goal, now let us hitch ourselves to any wagon that will take us across the prairies of our dreams. Let us work cooperatively with all nations, our fellow pioneers, remembering that the best way to win a friend is to be a friend.

By all means, let us stop the squabbling about the suitability of ethanol. Quibbling about the wagon is no way to cross the frontier. Let us make the best of what we have, and get down to the work of finding the means, against all odds, to reach our destination.

Finding the means to reach impossible destinations against impossible odds is, after all, what we are good at. It is the very reason our forefathers made it here in the first place, and bequeathed this beautiful land to our care.

As Al Gore said “The way ahead is difficult. The outer boundary of what we currently believe is feasible is still far short of what we actually must do. Moreover, between here and there, across the unknown, falls the shadow. That is just another way of saying that we have to expand the boundaries of what is possible. In the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, “Pathwalker, there is no path. You must make the path as you walk.”
It is time for us to get moving, to cease the talking of the talk, and to begin the walking of the walk.

We’ve talked enough about America’s leadership role.

Now it is time to saddle up, pilgrims, and remind the world how we came to be in America in the first place.

We say that we’re the most stubborn, inventive, tough, competitive, sunny, die-hard, optimistic, inexplicable nation the world has ever known.

Let’s prove it.