Energizing American Security

By Dinneen, Bob

Ethanol can reduce the nation’s dangerous addiction to fossil fuels. The President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) concluded in 1999: “A plausible argument can be made that the security of the United States is at least as likely to be imperiled in the first half of the next century by the consequences of inadequacies in the energy options available to the world as by inadequacies in the capabilities of U.S. weapons system.”

Eight years later, our country is at war and our energy future is looking far less secure. The increasingly precarious situation we find ourselves in can be explained succinctly: America has a dangerous addiction to oil.

For more than 100 years, America has grown increasingly dependent on oil to power this country forward. To be sure, oil has been a valuable natural resource that provided the energy to make America the most prosperous, successful, and stable country in history. Today, with increasingly convincing evidence, America’s reliance upon oil, particularly from unstable regions of the world, is putting our nation at risk.

Every day, America imports more than 10 million barrels of oil, the majority of which is used to produce the gasoline, diesel, and other fuels required to keep America moving. More than half those imports come from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a number of whose members seek to do America harm. As a result, according to a Department of Defense (DoD) report, we spend $44 billion a year to protect the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf and put our young men and women directly in the line of fire.

Moreover, according to military and national intelligence experts such as former Central Intelligence Agency Director R. James Woolsey, the United States sends billions of dollars to these same nations for their oil, dollars that are then directly funneled into the schools and camps that are training the next generation of would- be-terrorists who want to do harm to Americans, both at home and abroad. Add to the equation that demand for energy in both America and around the world is expected to increase 50 percent by 2030 and that more than two-thirds of the world’s known oil reserves lie under the sands of these nations, it becomes crystal clear why America must make a U-turn with respect to its dependence on foreign sources of oil.

In the face of these problems and the formidable challenges they present, ingenious and hard-working Americans are feverishly working to provide our nation a partial antidote to foreign oil. Nestled in the corn fields and small communities of rural America today, an industry is rapidly developing that provides a good first step to ending our addiction to foreign oil.

Since 1979, the United States has been producing fuel ethanol for use in motor vehicles across the country. Ethanol is pure alcohol distilled from corn. It is a clean-burning, high octane, renewable alternative to gasoline. In the future, ethanol will be produced from waste materials like wood chips, switch grass, and municipal solid waste. Most importantly, it is made in America by Americans and not by hostile nations halfway around the globe.

All but a trickle in 1979, the U.S. ethanol industry has grown to include more than 130 biorefineries across the country with an annual capacity to produce in excess of seven billion gallons of this renewable fuel, more than 5 percent of the nation’s gasoline supply. The industry is expected to grow to more than 13 billion gallons of production, registering nearly 10 percent of our nation’s gasoline pool.

In 2006, U.S. ethanol producers churned out nearly five billion gallons of ethanol. This volume displaced the need to import 206 million barrels of oil. For perspective, that is more oil than we will import from Iraq in 2007 and nearly half of the oil we will get from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Additionally, displacing that much oil saved more than $11 billion that would have gone overseas to fund radicals bent on our destruction. Meanwhile, ethanol production helped create 160,000 new jobs here at home for returning Soldiers, veterans, and their families.

Equally important to the continued development of an ethanol and renewable fuels industry in this country is the impact robust domestic renewable fuel production can have on the dayto-day duties of America’s military. The U.S. military is the greatest this planet has ever known, in part because of its easy and reliable access to fossil fuels. Like the rest of the nation, as that access becomes harder, it begins to strain our military’s ability to carry out the important work for which it is tasked.

In World War II, the U.S. Armed Forces consumed roughly one gallon of fuel per Soldier per day to engage the enemy across the globe. That consumption increased 400 percent during the first Persian Gulf War. Just 15 years later, U.S. Soldiers were consuming 16 gallons of fuel per day to continue military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Without question, domestic renewable fuels must be part of the fuel mix to meet this increasing demand.

Indeed, the availability of stable, renewable sources of domestic energy is critical to the continued security of this country and its ability to defend itself around the globe. Fighting the shadow enemy we face today is a difficult task, and our men and women in uniform deserve every advantage we can provide them.

Together with the unparalleled ability of DoD to develop new technologies and the willingness of private industry to work with DoD hand in hand, we can begin to ensure that America’s fighting forces have the energy they need to succeed.

In 2006, U.S. ethanol producers churned out nearly five billion gallons of ethanol. .. more oil than we will import from Iraq.

Mr. Dinneen is president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, the national trade association for the U.S. ethanol industry promotingpolicies, regulations, and research and development initiatives that will lead to the increased use of fuel ethanol. For more information, visit www.EthanolRFA.org.

Copyright Reserve Officers Association Jan 2008

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