There’s a lot to be said about Timothy Geithner, and little of it is complimentary at this point; many see him as the the banking/financial industry’s chief administrative finger puppet. But he’s also one of Obama’s point men in the president’s renewed drive to take his ideas on the road, which is why Geithner toured Minnesota’s much-touted “green economy” yesterday.

Indeed, the Land of 10,000 Lakes has capitalized on the fact that it’s essentially a desolate, windswept prairie by building turbines and developing a solid wind energy industry. It was also one of the first states to push ethanol as an additive for motor fuel, which surprises people who don’t realize that Minnesota is a progressive-minded state with high numbers of healthy, literate people, a demographic that tends to support renewables. And while no one’s immune to economic woes - the company Joe Biden endorsed as a triumph of stimulus spending laid off 300 people last year - hopes are still high that green jobs will prevail in 2010. Which, we imagine, is what Geithner was there to determine. Hopefully he’ll decide that funding growing companies is as important as eternally propping up their badly-run counterparts. Our hopes aren’t high - nor should they be, to judge by his performance as Treasury Secretary up to now - but both Obama and Joe Biden have pledged money towards green jobs and high-speed rail, so he can only backslide so far.

For more about high-speed rail plans, Click the Car. As a bonus, you’ll see a typically childish, obstructionist response from the Wisconsin GOP. Seeya next week!

Finally, some real ethanol news. It’s nice to find some actual news stories to comment on instead of cantankerous op-ed pieces that might as well have been written five years ago, for how relevant they are now. We’ve got cantankerous covered, thanks.

Anyway, auto supplier Ricardo Inc. has built an ethanol-burning engine that, they claim, has better fuel economy than a traditional gas engine. Using diesel engines as a model, Ricardo built one that runs on a 30% to 50% ethanol blend that tops off at 15 mpg and weighs between 400 and 500 pounds. Meant for heavy trucks, their engine costs less than a comparably-sized diesel engine. The problem, of course, is that Ricardo’s optimum blend isn’t available anywhere yet, but Oil Price Information Service’s Tom Kloza points out that “people are agnostic” when it comes to fuel prices, and we don’t see gas getting much cheaper any time soon. It also helps that the U.S. Energy Information Administration is projecting improvements for the ethanol industry this year, based on a reversal of gasoline consumption dips that will boost demand for biofuels, and the rising requirements of federal renewable fuels standards.

And for what it’s worth, 2004 presidential candidate Wesley Clark supports ethanol. In fact, he was on hand for Ricardo Inc.’s engine test at today’s Washington, D.C. Auto Show, where he talked up ethanol’s job creation and environmental benefits, as well as the role it could play in national security. Clark may have been the laziest presidential candidate this side of Fred Thompson, but at least something can stir him to action. We’re glad it’s ethanol.

We’ve been looking for ethanol news all afternoon, but unfortunately all we can turn up are cranky blog entries about corn being yanked from the mouths of starving orphans and ethanol is a waste of time and money and other Republican hand-waving. Same with electric cars, only that topic brings out the whiners who want their glorious electropia now now now and are pissed off that a magic wand hasn’t been waved over the energy grid yet. It’s maddening. So we decided to not completely bum ourselves out and find something fun to post on the blog instead, and it just so happens that we found a fun little cartoon about how ethanol is actually made. Bonus points for the use of clip art and ubiquitous 1950s instructional video music. Click the Car to watch it, and we’ll see you next week when, hopefully, there will be something besides meaningless conjecture on the Internet.

Hello? Is this thing on? We’ve been without Internet for a couple of days, but it looks like we’re back, and with a stronger Mbps rate, to boot. We’ve also been slacking on the cool, eco-friendly things Baltimore has been doing as of late, so let’s pause for an update.

Before Mayor Dixon resigned, the city introduced a fleet of DesignLine 2009 EcoSaver buses called the Charm City Circulator as part of an on-going plan to revitalize the city’s public trans., and there’s lots of rooftop gardening and urban sustainability projects going on locally, as well. B’More Green, the Baltimore Sun’s environmental blog, brought up a recent interview with Gov. O’Malley where he talked about doing more to strengthen solar power development and offer tax breaks for electric cars. The article also mentions the major budget crunch hampering many of the state’s green efforts, so who knows how far any of O’Malley’s plans will go. Hopefully he’ll do better for Baltimore as a governor than a mayor, not that we have much room to complain about his mayoral legacy in light of our current, rudderless City Hall.
But before we all go patting ourselves on the back about eco-friendliness, there’s also a story about how far the city still has to go: turns out local woman Maxine Taylor was cited last year for “having a driveway and parking pad made out of wood chips.” The city’s zoning codes still insist that parking areas have to be “dustless” asphalt, brick, concrete or stone block,” even as Baltimore’s Sustainability Plan hopes to engage residents in making the city a cleaner, greener place. Oops.

We’ll stop here, just short of jinxing our repaired Internet connection, but we’ll post again later in the week.

We’re back, as promised, with more book suggestions for our dedicated readership. Most fiction with an alt. fuels focus is sci-fi, so we’re not sure what to tell you if that’s not your thing. But if you’re reading a biofuels/alt. energy blog, you’re essentially telling the world that it is, so we’re not worried about insulting anyone with more traditionally literary tastes.

First up is Ben Bova’s Powersat; Bova has always been pro-space exploration, and this book’s plot hinges around “a terrorist conspiracy…to sabotage Astro [Corporation]’s plans to put satellites in geosynchronous orbit capable of beaming solar energy in microwave form to earth.” Bonus: the villains have ties to oil barons. Bova isn’t the most sophisticated writer on earth, but his science is plausible and he’s certainly a passionate environmentalist, to the point that he was hired as a consultant for Repo Men.

Along the same lines is Fallout!, by Lawrence Dunning; it’s about a disgruntled, drug addict scientist who plans to blow up a nuclear power plant near Denver. Yeah. Not exactly Gravity’s Rainbow, but what can ya do? Anyway, said scientist and another character discuss the pros of combined solar/wind energy around page 170, and lament the campaign against considering energy sources beyond petroleum and nuclear power. Don’t we know it.

Moving on, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Sixty Days and Counting has a plot devoted to the issue of global warming and resource scarcity - as Publisher’s Weekly puts it, “time will tell if the world has both the scientific know-how and the political will to reverse the ongoing rush toward an ecological precipice.” Discussions of environmental science abound without killing momentum in favor of a shiny hardware exhibition (an unfortunate tendency of hard sci-fi), and the idea that a Buddhist liberal eco-dork (the main character) could be elected president ever is just precious.

Finally, Lyle Estill’s Biodiesel Power: The Passion, the People, and the Politics of the Next Renewable Fuel isn’t a novel, but it does focus on the people in the biodiesel movement, exploring tensions between grass-roots activists/co-ops and their agribusiness counterparts. It also touches on ethanol’s technical properties, but this is much more of a Howard Zinn treatment of the subject than ethanol usually gets.

So there you have it. That oughta keep everyone busy for a while, us included. We’ll be back on Tuesday with some news updates, and maybe a movie recommendation or two if we can think of any.

We read a lot here at Corn Car, and there are a number of books out there that deal with the issues we blog about, from the specificities of ethanol and alternative fuels to more general issues like environmentalism and conservation. Many of them are textbooks, yes, and they’re by definition on the dry side, but these issues have wormed their way into novels as well. Hell, there’s been plenty of dystopian sci-fi set in the wake of unsustainable consumption at the expense of finite natural resources. Here, then, is a reading list for anyone interested in the greener side of edutainment. And in case you’ve still got holiday gift cards to burn, we’ve included links to buy the books online.

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, for example, is widely credited with bolstering the environmentalist movement. While there are occasional drawbacks to the book’s legacy, it got other authors thinking about ecological change and its consequences. Silent Spring focused on the use of pesticides and their role in pollution, and JFK directed his Science Advisory Committee to investigate her claims, which were found to be legitimate. Take THAT, American Cyanamid!

One of the books taking Carson’s work to heart was Dune, by Frank Herbert, often referred to as “the first planetary ecology novel.” Characters must compromise with the ecosystems they live in, and Herbert’s depiction of a planet as a complex mega-organism synced up with the first images of earth from space being published at that time. Because of this, Dune strongly influenced environmental movements and reportedly had a hand in establishing the international Earth Day. Modern conservation efforts owe a lot to Dune. More recently, the Dune franchise has broadened into a series of books, movies, TV shows, board games, and other stuff that will brand you as a nerd forever, but the original novel’s legacy is not to be shrugged aside.

More on the informative side (and more relevant to this blog), permaculturist David Blume’s Alcohol Can Be a Gas!: Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the 21st Century is one of the most readable textbooks on the subject. It is also one of the only textbooks on the subject. It lays out the process of building and maintaining an ethanol plant, and summarizes the history of ethanol from the Whiskey Rebellion to about three years ago, outlining the century-old struggle between ethanol advocates and their petroleum-soaked opposition in an entertaining and provocative fashion. We’re pretty sure he’s not related to Judy Blume, but if it turns out that he is, expect Are You There, God? It’s Me, Ethanol to hit bookshelves soon.

There, that should get you started. We’ll add more to our reading list on Friday. Stay tuned!

So Porsche has officially said no to proposed hybrid versions of the 911 or the Boxster - hybrid components, they claim, would add too much weight, and sports cars aren’t meant for city driving anyway. Debatable point, but whatever. The good news is that Porsche does want to make an all-electric sports car, assuming it could meet the performance standards of a regular engine. Or, more likely, when the corporate yuppie fartbags who drive Porsches can be convinced to go electric.

But hybrids are making progress elsewhere. Peugeot is still in production for its 2011 diesel-hybrid vehicle, the 3008 Hybrid4 Concept, and both Mercedes-Benz and GM are following suit. “Both cars are mild hybrids,” says Fox News’ website, “meaning the electric motor adds power to that of the combustion engine, as well as restarting it from stops. But they are not capable of running in all-electric mode, like…the Toyota Prius.” That was…surprisingly vitriol-free for Fox. Huh.

Anyway, hybrids and other green cars have been a hit for American automakers, whose finances are still delicate after Detroit’s 2007-08 freefalling crash - The Daily Green reports that “Ford’s hybrid sales were up 147% for the year,” adding that “the Ford Fusion Hybrid is a hit.” Ford has been recouping its losses, ending 2009 with a full percentage point gain in US market share, and their stock price is now 10 times improved. Their success could partly explain why GM is gunning for hybrid and diesel-hybrid vehicle production in the coming year - both GM and Chrysler are still struggling. Then again, Ford could go nowhere but up - owners of the ‘93 Taurus understand what we mean here.

Still, this is all promising news for 2010. Keep sending us stories, folks, and we’ll keep reporting ‘em. There might be a list in the works, too…

According to the Environmental Law Institute, energy subsidies are “black, not green.” Approximately $72 billion in fossil fuel subsidies was handed out over ELI’s seven-year study period; renewable fuels only got $29 billion. Half of the renewable subsidies went to corn ethanol production, interestingly enough, but that’s still only $15 billion or so compared to $72 billion for fossil fuels, despite overwhelming evidence that we need to cut our dependence on it for environmental and geopolitical reasons.

Little wonder, then, that ethanol plants keep losing money and shutting down. Articles like New American’s “The Ethanol Fiasco” miss the point because, clearly, the government hasn’t really invested much of anything in renewable fuels yet. But then again, pro-oil shills missed the point for most of 2009, and will continue missing it as long as they dismiss renewables out of hand without noticing how other countries - Brazil, China, India - are capitalizing on them.

But let’s not get too glum, here: Click the Car for an article about the Eco-Smart Zeta ethanol fireplace (which we wrote about last April) that’ll keep you warm during the record cold fronts sweeping the country right now.

Say what you want about Henry Ford (Hitler-admiring, right-wing extremist asshole is a good place to start), but the man knew cars. He practically invented them, in the American sense of it. And as it turns out, he was an early and passionate advocate of biofuels, according to the Examiner. An article about Ford’s support of biofuels, specifically hemp, was posted on their website back in September, and it links to excerpts of Ford’s fuel philosophies (provided by Hempcar).

“The fuel of the future,” Ford told a NYT reporter, “is going to come from…apples, weeds, sawdust — almost anything…there is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented.” Ford is talking about cellulosic ethanol here, and this interview was conducted back in 1925. That’s like hearing Clara Bow predicting celebrity sex tapes or something.

Similar sentiments (about hemp fuel, not sex tapes) have been espoused by ex-Dead Kennedys frontman and political gadfly Jello Biafra, whose “Grow More Pot” speech gives an entertaining summary of American hemp culture and highlights its use as a sustainable fuel source (pt. 1 and pt. 2, courtesy of Youtube).

Granted, the discourse has been hijacked by goofy stoners since Ford’s time and Jello panders to that element a little much, but the larger point is that sustainable fuels are not a trivial, passing fad; they were, in Ford’s time, part of a larger proposal for a broad movement for scientific research to revitalize a then-struggling economy on the verge, as it turned out, of a major depression. We’re kind of in the same position now. But it’s a new year, and that means new opportunities to promote biofuels and sustainable energy that were seriously considered even at the birth of the automobile.