Today in Biofuels Opinion: “Why can’t the US get it together?”

Paul Wickoff, in a circular letter to media and industry: “I have submitted[a] request to the panel researching the Low Carbon Fuel Standard outcome for corn ethanol (California’s Air Resource Board).  This legislation will be crucial not only in California, but also as it relates to many other Western states and likely the rest of the nation.   Please also note that the only link on this website for land use changes is the very controversial and negative one from Science Magazine claiming that U.S. biofuel use is responsible for deforestation in other countries.”

Joelle Brink, Biofuels Digest correspondent: “Why Can’t They (the US) Get it Together?” With the World Economic Forum due to start this week, it’s time to look again at biofuels from the international policy perspective, and particularly at the contrast between India and the United States.

India is a democracy with one quarter the land area and almost four times the population of the US. Nevertheless it is committed to biodiesel and ethanol as well as to other forms of renewable energy. Any American who lives or travels there cannot fail to notice the solar water heaters and power panels on rooftops, the wind farms, the biodiesel railway trains, the fields planted with sugar cane and Jatropha, and the cable dishes, cell phone towers and solar panels sprouting even in remote villages.
It’s not as though Indians are easily led. This writer personally believes that Americans are less than half as fractious and opinionated as most Indians, who live in an ancient melting pot with 22 official languages, 17 major religious faiths and countless political parties. That’s probably why they do so well in the US.

And it’s not as though India hasn’t helped the US. Every major US railroad from its president on down has received free training and technical assistance from the Indian Railways’ biodiesel team.
So why can’t the US get it together?

Certainly one factor is the constantly reiterated myth that US has the best and most innovative technology in the world. Anyone landing at a US international airport these days can vouch that this hasn’t been true for some time. And superior, isolationist attitudes have become embarrassing and counterproductive in today’s interdependent, globally connected world. As Benjamin Franklin put it, “We have a choice. We can hang together, or we can hang separately.”

But the most important factor is surely policy. Years of laissez faire government in the US have spawned a hornets’ net of competing lobbies and interest groups intent on expanding their own funding and influence at the expense of others. Irresponsible allegations and viral marketing have become commonplace, while scientific truth and accountability are hard to find. All this while the money wasted on interest group infighting could have funded a national, science-based renewable energy policy.
The new administration seems intent on reining in lobbyists and creating a culture of responsible public service with a focus on renewable energy. This is very good news indeed, and hopefully it will produce a unified and consistent biofuels policy.

But equally important is the courage to keep working and weighing alternatives when policies don’t immediately succeed. Indian Railways’ biodiesel program went five years before proving itself at the national level and obtaining significant national government support. Similarly, the national ethanol mandate had many ups and downs before the recent agreement on a 10% mandate and multi-state private investment in networks of hybrid ethanol/electric power plants.

It is often said that successful people fail more often than those who are unsuccessful, and the same is even more true of scientific research, which depends on understanding a chain of failures to in order to make new discoveries. Let’s hope the US learns to fail creatively and accept the help of those like India who wish it well.

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