For another year, the Clean Fuels Development Coalition (CFDC), the Ethanol Across America education campaign, and the FlexFuel Vehicle (FFV) Club paid homage to U.S. Military Vetarans on Memorial Day. The groups teamed with Volunteers of Underage Military Service (VUMS) at the national Memorial Day parade in Washington D.C. to highlight the role of energy and national security.

According to the Ethanol Across America press release, more than 20,000 attended the parade through the nation’s capitol and honored hundreds of veterans.

“Our slogan is There is no National Security without Energy Security,” said Marine Lt. Col. (ret) William C. Holmberg, a VUM and a board member of the American Council On Renewable Energy. “Groups like CFDC, Ethanol Across America, the Flexible Fuel Vehicle Club, the Renewable Fuels Association, and ACORE work every day to increase that awareness. Marching together in the shadow of the Washington Monument, the Capitol, and the memorials helps people get the connection that much of the unrest around the globe has links to oil. Increasing our supply of domestic fuels makes our nation safer and more secure, plain and simple.”

The procession included the CFDC/Ethanol Across America FlexFuel Chevy Avalanche and the Flexible Fuel Vehicle Club’s Chevy Tahoe, the Renewable Fuels Association’s Ford E85-Electric Hybrid Escape, and several electric hybrid vehicles.

According to FlexFuel Vehicle Club President Burl Haigwood, the parade provided an opportunity to increase public awareness that we can do something about it, right now. “With nearly 8 million flex fuel vehicles on the road today, if we ran those vehicles on clean, domestic fuels like ethanol we could reduce our reliance on unstable regimes and reduce the military costs of protecting our oil interests. Consumers can utilize the flex fuel vehicles they already own and look at the flex fuel vehicle option for future purchases,” said Haigwood.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Indy car drivers from several countries extolled the virtues of sugarcane ethanol from Brazil in ads that aired during the telecast of the 2010 Indianapolis 500 on Sunday.

The parade of Indy spokesdrivers in two 30-second Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) television ads that debuted on Sunday include Ryan Hunter-Reay, who briefly served as spokesman for the U.S. ethanol industry and drove the #17 Team Ethanol car to victory for the first time in 2008. Takuma Sato of Japan, Davey Hamilton of the U.S., E.J. Viso of Venezuela, join Brazilians Ana Beatriz, Vitor Meira and three-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves in proudly proclaiming “I compete with sugarcane ethanol.” Castroneves, who was the 2007 Dancing with the Stars winner, even croons a sweet tune to sugarcane ethanol. “Fast and Sweet and Clean and Lovely, the fuel from sugarcane goes racing,” he sings to the tune of “The Girl from Ipenema,” then says he can dance but he can’t sing. The winner of Sunday’s race, Dario Franchitti of Scotland, was not featured in the spots.

“For the first time ever, we are taking our message about sugarcane ethanol to national network television during one of the most prestigious sporting events in the world,” said Joel Velasco, UNICA’s Chief Representative in North America. “These commercials seek to educate American consumers about sugarcane ethanol and how it can benefit their pockets, the environment and the market, by promoting competition on and off the track.”

The ads are well done and definitely worth watching – see them here on UNICA’s sweeteralternative.com website.

Popularity: unranked [?]

First it was the unprovable Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) theory. Now ethanol is being challenged by a new “what goes around comes around” hypothesis called the “Global Rebound Effect.”

Earlier this week, the Clean Air Task Force filed suit against the Environmental Protection Agency over the Renewable Fuel Standard for failing “to account for the “global rebound effect” when analyzing the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from biofuels.”

This theory goes on the assumption that, “By displacing some gasoline from the US market, the RFS reduces overall demand for petroleum, which in turn leads to lower prices, increased consumption, and higher greenhouse gas emissions in other countries. If EPA had considered the “global rebound effect” in its analysis of different biofuels, only a few of those fuels would have met Congress’s emissions reduction requirements.”

Using this theory, ANY action the United States might take to reduce gasoline consumption – from using more ethanol to increasing vehicle fuel efficiency – will result in INCREASED gasoline use elsewhere in the world. As Renewable Fuels Association president Bob Dinneen puts it, “Whatever environmentalist activists call this new theory, I call it nonsense.”

RFA is is challenging the lawsuit and the whole concept of Global Rebound Effect. “To penalize a technology, any technology, that reduces American oil consumption for any potential oil use in other nations is asinine,” said Dinneen. “Environmentalists are in favor of precious little these days, but by applying their new logic even efforts to improve efficiencies such as gas mileage must suffer a carbon penalty. It simply defies logic.”

That is indeed what the theory says, according to Steven Stoft, founder of the Global Economic Policy Center. In something he wrote last year called, “Corn Whiskey vs. the Climate,” Stoft said, “More ethanol use causes less oil to be imported, which causes a lower world “oil” price, which causes more liquid-fuel use worldwide. This same effect applies to conserving oil as well as to replacing it with ethanol, or even to pumping more oil from Alaska.”

RFA is also challenging the lawsuit claims that EPA is using overly optimistic assumptions about the nature of ethanol production in 2022, implicitly implying little improvement will occur in ethanol production technology between now and then. “To assume that no further innovation will occur in America’s ethanol industry is akin to believing the iPad is the final product from Apple,” said Dinneen.

The case, and RFA’s challenge to it, has been filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Popularity: unranked [?]