Biofuels to the rescue - Hey wait on, there he goes again.

Bush's Dangerous Energy Proposal
MIT Technology review via Future Pundit.

Moving too quickly on alternative fuels could backfire, says one expert on ethanol fuels.

By Kevin Bullis

In President Bush's State of the Union address this week, he announced several key energy proposals, most notably increasing the use of biofuels such as ethanol. But some critics are skeptical of the president's proposal to rely largely on ethanol to reduce gasoline consumption by 20 percent in a decade. Indeed, this could do more harm than good, says David Victor, director of Stanford University's Program on Energy and Sustainable Development. This week Victor is participating in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where climate change leads the agenda. Technology Review caught up with him by phone to get his views on the president's speech--and on what the United States should be doing.

Technology Review: At least superficially, President Bush's remarks on energy echo some of your own ideas. What parts of his speech did you applaud?

David Victor: The overall strategy, which is to rely on markets and encourage diversity in energy and to encourage efficiency, all of which he said in one way or another, is absolutely right. What was new last night was the goal of doubling the size of the strategic petroleum reserve. That's an extremely important thing to do.

His emphasis on technology is absolutely crucial. What he did say about climate change did emphasize technology. All of that is sound.

I thought the rest of the stuff was drifting off into the zone of unreality. The target that he sets of cutting down gasoline consumption by 20 percent in a decade is, I think, almost certainly unachievable.

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