Jim Lane

When the Biofuels Digest launched in July 2007, the industry was rocking along at high speed. Sure, the Energy Bill was stalled, but everyone thought it would get moving before the end of the year, and biofuels continued to inspire widespread admiration for the potential to improve farm incomes, achieve energy security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Today, biofuels find themselves attacked broadly for creating higher food prices, higher gas prices, doubling greenhouse gas emissions, and contributing almost nothing to energy security.

What happened?

What happened is that prices rose, and the industry and its critics found out that support for biofuels was very, very shallow.

When inflation was under control, not too many souls troubled themselves to think about building long term support for biofuels. How could you be against it? It was “good for the environment, good for jobs, good for security, good for trade, good for farmers”. It was all things to all people. For most people, that was good enough. “Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf?” was the generally giddy attitude, and it served the biofuels industry just as well as it served the first two Little Pigs.

An American Biofuels Council effort last fall to launch grassroots public education seminars and certification courses in consumer biofuels education found itself without major funding support from a single biofuels entity. Instead, it was funded in micro-donations from individual citizens.

The same groups that said no to consumer education last year will shell out millions to the Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy, in a rearguard effort to shore up political support in Washington. They want their subsidies and mandates and are prepared to play plenty to secure them. Now that their straw house and their wood house have blown down, they’re prepared to pay for a brick house.

They certainly will pay and they probably will get what they paid for: at the end of the day, every drop of biofuel is a better deal than a drop of imported oil. But then, that was always the case. Major agrienergy companies dropped the ball on education because they understand lobbying far better than consumer marketing. (Sigh) It’s the way of things.

They’ll find the political support they need in Washington, in all likelihood, although agribusiness is getting a good fright at the moment from all the negative headlines.  Political support has usually been there for biofuels in Washington, and in many state capitals - where energy security is part of the daily work discussion for many officials, the issues are better understood, and the prospect of job creation and pork spending is available.

The average American family and climate change

By contrast, for the average American family - busy working, raising families, preparing for retirement - the debate on biofuels, in the end, is about hard dollars.

If biofuels save money, people are for it.

If it costs money, they are for it … so long as China pays for it, by buying more US federal debt to fund subsidies and research.

If it means a hit in the pocketbook, they are against it.

All the hoo-hah about the impact of biofuels on climate change won’t mean much to most Americans, and to most people around the world…so long as biofuels save people money on energy bills.

After all, the lure of cheap fuel is how gasoline replaced ethanol in the first place, back in the days of the Model T.

All the other stuff - climate change, energy security - is background noise to the average American. In the end, “it’s the cost, stupid”. Particularly for fuel prices and food prices: they are vivid to us because grocery stores and gas stations fight for market share based on price.

That’s not to say that average Americans are not worried about climate change or energy security. They sure are - just look at the 81,707 registered members of the Pickens Plan online community, or surveys of consumer attitudes about climate change.

But the bottom line is that the average US family knows a lot more about American Idol than climate change, and their thin support for action on climate change will not create support for a tax hike to pay for it, or a cut in basic services to pay for it.

The average citizen is abandoning SUVs not because of concern for the environment, but concern over gas bills. And that’s OK. Prices often help us make good choices.

But hard, difficult, expensive choices are only made by people who have thought through the alternatives. And the American people are not there yet, not by a long shot. Too many are still looking to John McCain or Barack Obama to come up with a “Get Out of Jail Free Card” on climate change, energy security, high prices and international troubles.

In short, they like the idea of an Apollo program or a Manhattan Project, because someone else does the heavy lifting and it comes without added taxes.

Instead, the public will find that, after several regimes have come and gone in Washington, that our problems will not be solved by a “Man on the Moon” program. What is needed is nearly forgotten, down home, homespun, good old American virtues like thrift, frugality and self-help. The Latest Generation is going have to learn what the Greatest Generation always knew: “Victory begins at home.”

Want to do something for the environment, or energy security? Do some work. Make biodiesel, or grow vegetables in a personal “Victory Garden”. Don’t buy what you don’t need, keep the thermostat high and the car use low. Use one instead of two. You get the idea. Big movements are made of little steps by a lot of people.

For now, we need education, on the streets, soon, smartly run, and dedicated to a larger vision than “Biofuels means [fill in the blank] jobs for the community of [fill in the blank]“.

Education is important: shallow support is fickle support, and fickle support means uncertainty and instability. That’s bad for biofuels, bad for economic development, and bad for the Republic.

That’s one of the reasons why the Digest was started, to add a daily voice with hard, objective news, and it has become popular because it is free, and easy on the eyes. That’s enabled the Digest to relay 3400 stories - good and bad - about biofuels to more people than any other source.

But more is needed.  Organizations like the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council (EPIC) do good work, but nobody will give them credit for being objective, and the support they will create is likely to be, on the whole, pretty shallow.

What’s needed

An objective, non-partisan, non-profit Institute on Renewable Energy that focused on education would be helpful. College degree programs would be helpful. More certification of community leadership in renewable fuels would be useful.

As it stands, having no way to decide who is balanced and who is on an agenda-rant, the American public either tunes out the biofuels debate until prices rise, or until a fear-mongerer comes up with a new way to scare them into a blind panic.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt - the classic FUD strategy employed by opponents of progress. Biofuels have fallen victim to it, in part because industry leaders were focused on building support for production rather than distribution.

Industry leaders relied on a mandate and subsidies to carry them through to marketing success, instead of building customer belief, and it was never going to be enough. It’s far easier to get local support for a plant, comparatively, because communities want growth and jobs. It’s harder to build support and understanding at the retail level, and the biofuels industry has been hoping that the need to sell fuel the old-fashioned way, by creating and demonstrating value, door-by-door if necessary, would not be required. Here’s the news: it is required, and it always was.

As an official at Archer Daniels Midland said recently when asked to support a grassroots ethanol promotion, “we don’t want to associate ourselves with it”. Now they’ll pay millions to Washington lobbyists to avoid the consequences of that attitude, and rightly so, and it won’t nearly be enough.

Creating ethanol-friendly engines that will repair the perception that ethanol equals bad mileage, that’s a start. Spending on grassroots education to repair the perception that biofuels equals famine in Africa will be better. Creating a distribution channel that will provide lower-cost fuel to consumers instead of blending in low-cost ethanol and pocketing the profit - that’s the best. But that’s the hard work of retail marketing, and it needs to begin.

Jim Lane is editor of Biofuels Digest.

Biofuels Digest turns one year old officially on Sunday, July 27th, but since the Digest is published on weekdays, the celebration begins today with links to three cool stories worth a look.

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