How many times have we heard a president say that he’s going to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil? Richard Nixon made the promise in the early 1970s during the first oil embargo. Jimmy Carter did it in the mid to late 1970s during the second oil embargo. Finally, George W. Bush echoed his predecessors when the price of gasoline was $4 a gallon.Well, you can add President Barack Obama to the list.
Obama announced a host of new initiatives to strangle U.S. oil dependency. For example, he calls for a more than tripling of the production of ethanol and other biofuels from 11 billion gallons in 2009 to 36 billion gallons by 2022. And Environmental Protection Agency just announced new guidelines that calls for the use of biofuels in up to 8.25 percent of the nation’s gasoline sales in 2010. That’s 13 billion gallons of biofuel. It says that if the guidelines are met, then we could reduce our use of foreign oil by more than 328 million barrels a year starting in 2022.
The Obama Administration also intends to create a new task force to advance research and development of technologies that can capture and store carbon dioxide produced by the burning of coal. And there are also plans to offer federal grants and loans to companies to help them make energy out of wood chips and other biomass.
Of course, there’s opposition. Refiners say that the 2010 mandate could increase the cost of gasoline at the pump. And most of today’s available biofuels is ethanol made from corn. But a government working group says that we will have to find another source other than food crops to make the biofuel necessary to meet the mandate.
Finally, environmentalists are showing tepid support for the plan. And many are opposed to any program that says it can create “clean coal” technology.
via Chronicle
Most Active