High Noon for energy supply at the Strait of Hormuz

This is Part 1 of our two-part series, Part 2 is here.

It’s High Noon at the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s parliament has voted to close it, and while the final decision now rests with its national security council, the message is already echoing through global oil markets. One-fifth of the world’s oil moves through that narrow channel. And now? President Trump has signaled that a cease-fire is imminent between the warring parties. Yet, supply looks fragile at the O.K. Corral. The headlines are full of geopolitical brinksmanship. Prices are twitching. And suddenly, every domestic molecule starts to matter.

Think: dress rehearsal. The real performance, if it occurs, is likely to take place at the Strait of Malacca, or in the South China Sea. Which makes the timing of this next part almost surreal.

Just days ago—before the Strait crisis broke—the World Resources Institute issued a report condemning renewable fuels. It called them harmful to land and water, accused them of displacing food production, and claimed their benefits flow to a privileged few.

Are these the issues? Humans are harmful to land and water. Humans displace food and concentrate wealth. By that standard, should we all just jump off a cliff to satisfy the virtue metrics of the World Resources Institute?

Renewable fuels aren’t perfect. They’re not glamorous. But they’re here. Domestic. Deployable. Real. And in a moment of where resilience counts, they may be the only thing standing between us and a fuel system too brittle to bend.

Because what we need now aren’t just fuels that are clean or cheap. We need fuels that are scalable, fleet-compliant, affordable and available.

And that means we need more than just price and supply curves. Because in all the fierce debate around EVs, ethanol, and gasoline, one truth quietly endures: Our energy system doesn’t run on fuel alone. It runs on belief.

To understand why renewable fuels like ethanol remain marginalized—despite strong economic and environmental performance—we have to look deeper than market signals or policy briefs. We need a diagnostic lens that sees what the numbers can’t: how symbols persist, how systems resist, and why belief keeps outrunning reality.

Today, let’s use that lens to examine the so-called “pure plays” at the ends of the fuel spectrum—straight gasoline and electric vehicles. Why does gasoline still resonate with those who crave “freedom from mandates and high prices”? Why do EVs appeal to those who want “freedom from emissions and high consequence”? Why does an optimal middle path—renewable fuels—struggle to connect, symbolically, with the public?

Let’s find out.

Seeing with GTESI: A Lens for What Lingers and What Doesn’t

We need a way to see how belief takes hold—and why some ideas stick while better ones stall.

That’s what the GTESI framework was built to do, as a diagnostic lens—not for engines, but for systems. It doesn’t tell us which technology is better in theory. It tells us which ideas survive, spread, and shape reality. And more importantly, why.

It does this by tracing four forces:

• Information Persistence Rate (IPR): How long a belief stays alive. Whether it’s “premium gas is better” or “EVs are clean,” IPR measures which narratives endure—and why some refuse to die.
• Structural Continuity Density (SCD): The strength of the scaffolding. This is the physical and institutional infrastructure—fuel pumps, grid access, distribution networks—that either makes a solution easy to adopt or pushes it to the margins.
• Thermodynamic Response Friction Index (TRFI): The resistance to change. Sometimes the best idea meets a wall—consumer habits, outdated rules, or mechanical incompatibility. TRFI measures how hard it is to shift.
• Entropy Export Delta (EED):  The system’s real-world payoff—how much disorder it reduces, how cleanly it runs, how much waste it avoids. EED is where the thermodynamics show up, stripped of illusion.

GTESI doesn’t rank technologies. It reveals why some take root and others wither—even when the data says they shouldn’t. It’s a tool for cutting through the noise and seeing the deeper pattern.

Gasoline: The Illusion of Choice

To see GTESI in action, we don’t need to look to the future. We can start at the pump. Three options, three nozzles, three flavors of belief:

• E0, the “pure” gasoline with no ethanol.
• E10, the standard blend most drivers use.
• And Premium, the top-shelf fuel with a high price and a slick name.

According to national price averages:

• E10 clocks in around $3.02 per gallon.
• Premium sells for $4.05.
• And E0—ethanol-free “freedom gas”—sits at $3.76.

But something strange happens when you follow the math. That last 10% of “pure gasoline” in E0? It costs nearly three times more per unit than the other 90%. Supplying octane with aromatics is vastly more expensive than, say, using E30 to produce an affordable premium fuel.

It’s a profound price signal distortion—a case where belief, not performance, sets the value.  Not because it’s cleaner. Not because it’s more efficient. But because it feels like freedom. Like tradition. Like control. In GTESI terms, that’s high IPR—Information Persistence Rate—where belief outperforms physics.

GTESI at the Pump

• E0 (“Freedom Gas”):
  High IPR, built on nostalgia and identity—”pure” fuel, unblended and elite.
  High TRFI, resisting change both symbolically and mechanically.
  Low EED: Despite the premium, it burns dirtier and adapts poorly.
• E10/E15 (“The Adaptive Default”):
  Quiet, omnipresent, invisible.
  Moderate IPR—it’s not loved, it’s just there.
  But structurally and thermodynamically, it works. That’s adaptive persistence.
• Premium Gasoline (“The Prestige Illusion”):
  Most vehicles don’t need it.
  But thanks to branding, tuning, and habit, it sells—at $1.00+ over base fuels.
  This is symbolic inflation, where “premium” equals “better” regardless of need.
  GTESI sees very high IPR and SCD (branding, pump layout, vehicle settings) but low EED, as premium fuels rely on aromatics that pollute more and accomplish less.

What emerges isn’t a free market of performance—it’s a symbolic caste system, where each nozzle sells a story, and the stories endure because they fit the structures we’ve already built. This is GTESI’s insight: Gasoline persists not because it’s better, but because it feels like a choice. And choice—real or not—is the most persistent fuel of all.

Electric Vehicles: Clean, Cool, and Complicated

Electric vehicles have become more than machines. They’re statements—about identity, climate, technology, even taste. In just over a decade, EVs have gone from fringe to fashionable, powered less by combustion and more by narrative: clean, modern, silent, smooth. Tesla didn’t just sell cars—it sold arrival. And across the EV market, that story has stuck.

But GTESI offers a more layered view. It’s not about liking or disliking EVs. It’s about understanding why their story rose so quickly—and why their reality is more complicated.

• Belief First, Battery Second:
  EVs enjoy a high Information Persistence Rate (IPR). The association with “clean” energy and climate virtue is powerful. But the reality depends heavily on context—specifically, the carbon intensity of the grid. A coal-powered Tesla is not the same as a wind-powered one. Still, the story persists, because it’s so appealing.
• Friction Hidden in the Frame:
  EVs face real hurdles—charger access, grid upgrades, battery supply chains—but these are often softened by policy and incentive design. That’s what GTESI would call masked TRFI: friction exists, but it’s temporarily cushioned by subsidies and sentiment.
• Variable Payoff:
  In GTESI terms, the Entropy Export Delta (EED) for EVs is mixed. Some reduce emissions dramatically; others simply shift the footprint to different parts of the system—mines, grids, landfills. It’s not a reason to reject them, but it is a reason to stay clear-eyed.
• Freedom, Reimagined:
  Gasoline sells freedom as independence. EVs repackage it as emancipation—from oil, from tailpipes, from yesterday. That symbolic frame works—brilliantly. But like all symbols, it can oversimplify what it cannot fully solve.

What EVs prove is that symbols can sprint ahead of substance—and sometimes that’s how progress starts. But if we want that progress to last, we have to keep asking hard questions about the systems beneath the surface.

Renewable Fuels: The Overlooked Contender

If gasoline runs on identity and EVs rise on status, renewable fuels like ethanol suffer from something harder to overcome: invisibility.

E85, E30, E15—blends like these often offer better emissions profiles, better costs per mile, and better thermodynamic efficiency than their more glamorous rivals. But try to find E30 at a typical fuel station. Try to see it advertised. Try to hear a story about it that doesn’t begin with “subsidy.”

That’s the problem. Not performance. Not price. Perception.

In GTESI terms, ethanol blends often score high on Entropy Export Delta (EED)—they burn cleaner, run cheaper, and are made close to home. But they score low on Information Persistence Rate (IPR), because no one’s telling their story. There’s no Tesla mystique. No Super Bowl ad. Just the quiet hum of Midwestern yield. Meanwhile, the system they’re trying to enter is locked.

Let’s take one example: E30. It can deliver the same octane as premium gasoline—91—but for about $0.76 less per gallon, if priced fairly. Yet premium sells everywhere, and E30 is nearly impossible to find. Why?

The structures that control blending, branding, and distribution don’t just happen to favor petroleum. They were engineered to serve it.

And the profit margins that arise—captured by refiners and middlemen—lock the public into a symbolic fuel caste system, not through performance, but through narrative monopolization.

GTESI Snapshot

In short, E30 offers better outcomes. But in the public mind, it barely exists. The system is shaped to reinforce what’s already known. Premium gasoline has identity. EVs have aspiration. Renewable fuels have neither—and no space to build one. Even their “freedom from foreign oil” story has faded into the noise. They are the thermodynamic stronghold hidden in a fuel caste system. Not because they failed the science—but because they never got their narrative shot.

What We Value—and What We Miss

When we step back, a pattern emerges. Whether it’s gasoline, EVs, or renewable fuels, the public doesn’t always reward what works. It rewards what feels right.

GTESI helps map that disconnect. Across the board, we tend to:

• Overvalue IPR: We stick with what we know. Gasoline is “normal,” premium is “better,” EVs are “clean.”
• Lean on SCD: We trust what fits into the world we’ve already built—stations, chargers, brands.
• Misread TRFI: We assume change is easy, or blame consumers when it’s not.
• Undervalue EED: The hardest one—true systemic benefit. The cleaner burn. The quieter cost. The long-term payoff. It’s there, but hidden. And ignored.

Here’s the real irony: the best-performing fuels from a thermodynamic and environmental standpoint—like E30—are often the least supported. Not because they don’t work, but because they don’t shine in the symbolic theater.

What we’ve built is a system optimized for signal, not substance. And that’s a dangerous way to manage energy, climate, or adaptation.

If we want to change that, we’ll need more than better fuels. We’ll need better stories, better structures, and a deeper understanding of what makes persistence possible.

If the Strait of Hormuz remains the O.K. Corral, then we need to ask a deeper question: In a moment of global stress, who shows up? And if renewable fuels are already here—already scalable, already persistent—why aren’t we treating them as our strategic swing barrel? That’s where we’ll turn next.

In Part II, “The Swing Producer,” tomorrow in the Digest, we’ll examine how renewable fuels operate as the liquidity lever of our energy system—quiet first responders in a world where volatility tests what truly persists.