How I missed this piece, I’ll never know…
SAN FRANCISCO - DuPont and BP, riding the global wave of enthusiasm for bio-based fuels, announced today that the two companies have developed a new biofuel called biobutanol that they say has 30% more energy density than ethanol.It seems that they also plan to make big money from this innovation:
DuPont and BP aim to make the fuel competitive with gasoline, even when oil is priced as low as $30 to $40 a barrel.It’s unlikely that we will see that level of oil prices in our lifetime, at least until some sort of AltEnery is deployed universally.
This is exciting for many reasons. First, it’s not a startup or some whackjob theory (can anyone say the 200 MPG car?). Next, it is energy dense enough to compete with gasoline in the MPG arena and it does not require any gasoline be mixed in.
The biggest reason to be excited about this: It runs in existing equipment!
Cars can use close to 100% of the fuel without making any vehicle modifications, DuPont says. To use that high a concentration of ethanol, car engines have to be modified into something known as a “flex fuel vehicle.”I think this is one of the biggest problems that E85/Ethanol faces, it is why I advocate requiring all cars sold in the US to be FlexFuel.
There is one more point from the article I want to highlight:
“But I don’t think we should look at this and say, ‘Let’s stop ethanol.’ We are moving away from a world with one fuel source to one with a diversity of sources. The market will determine which are the winners and which are the losers.”We should be open to any AltFuel and I hope that we never again have to rely on a single fuel like we do today.
I will be following this very closely!
Update: More BioFuel news
US Automakers increase FlexFuel vehicle production
Kroger to offer E85 in Ohio (Joins Wal-Mart!)
Armed Liberal makes some good points.
