Energy Victory by bestselling author Robert Zubrin

With the Obama Administration and the 111th Congress settling in we have seen a burst of activity in support of fuel choice. This started with President Obama's decision to allocate $2.4 billion in taxpayer funds to develop advanced batteries and speed up the commercialization of plug in hybrids and electric cars, part of the Administration's plan to spur the sale of one million plug ins by 2015. If Congress is truly committed to breaking oil's virtual monopoly over transportation fuel, by the same year most of our new cars could also be capable of running on something other than gasoline. This can happen through the enactment of the bipartisan OPEN FUEL STANDARD ACT which was recently introduced in both the House (HR1476) and the Senate (S.835). The Open Fuel Standard (OFS) requires that starting in 2012, 50% of new automobiles powered by an internal combustion engine, and starting in 2015, 80% of such new automobiles, be flex fuel vehicles warranted to operate on gasoline, ethanol, and methanol, or be warranted to operate on biodiesel. It costs automakers an extra $100 per car to give us the insurance policy we need to prepare us for the next oil crisis that will surely come once we pull out of the recession. The CEOs of the Big Three auto companies have repeatedly stated their willingness to commit to making 50% of new cars flex fuel vehicles or warranted to operate on biodiesel by 2012. The OFS would buttress this commitment with law, thus providing certainty for investors in a variety of alternative fuels to ramp up production and fuel station owners to install pumps. By enacting the OFS Congress can break OPEC's hold on the international fuel market and insulate the global economy from the threat of future OPEC price manipulation. Original OFS co-sponsors in the Senate are Senators Brownback, Cantwell, Collins, Klobuchar, Lieberman and Thune. In the House the effort is led by Congressmen Engel, Bartlett, Inglis and Israel. Kudos to all of them.

The OFS idea is already becoming a key component of the energy agenda for many on the Hill and in the punditry. The National Energy Security Act (S.774) introduced by Sens. Dorgan and Voinovich also embraces the concept and former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich endorsed the OFS in a Newsweek article In addition, a report by the Oil Solutions Initiative, a collaborative effort of several think tanks, energy policy groups and leaders from the security, environmental and business communities, including the Brookings Institute, Rocky Mountain Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations, argued that the OFS should be one of the near term policy enablers needed to move the country toward energy independence.

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