Can Everyone Grow Her or His Own Fuel?
By
5/30/2006
The dawn of summer 2006 finds the price of gasoline hovering around three dollars a gallon. The media would have us believe that our government is impotent to do anything to alleviate these high prices. Also speculators appear to have enchanted the oil industry into forgetting two fundamental principles of business – high prices draw in substitute products and lower market entry barriers portend highly competitive environments where price erosion becomes your Achilles heel.
Let us assume that the
Companies like Archer-Daniels-Midland are gearing up to produce ethanol. While they will take some market share from the big oil companies, ADM may not be big oil’s real long term threat in the marketplace. Today’s oil industry’s real threat may come from the fruition of Henry Ford’s dream on automobile fuel.
Dogwood Energy is on a mission to make Henry Ford’s dream today’s reality. Their website www.ethanolstill.com highlights Ford’s dream. “Henry Ford’s vision was for everyone to be able to grow their own fuel. That's why his Model “A” was designed to run on either alcohol or gasoline... because Gasoline wasn't readily available.”
This Ford dream today means not only energy independence from unstable Middle Eastern oil supplies, but it will allow single individuals or small groups to band together to produce their own fuel. This self-production model is nightmarish for the convenience stores that rely on low price gasoline to entice their customers. Convenience stores’ foot traffic may drop substantially because local people will no longer need to visit these stores. New cooperative stores may dominate tomorrow’s car fuel market and cater to their membership similar to what BJs does for its membership. What is really a nightmare is these cooperative stores may elect not to carry so-called sin items such as cigarettes, lottery tickets, and so on.
Dogwood Energy’s website gives you start up information including the US Department of the Treasury application and permit for an alcohol fuel producer. They make a cost-per-gallon production claim for ethanol that is difficult to ignore, especially if it is true. “Grain alcohol (ethanol) is a renewable fuel, and it is pretty much pollution free, since the by-products of combustion are only water and CO2. Furthermore, it is economical to make (around 75 cents to #1.25 per gallon). . .”
When you surf the web you may find that 1000 dollars might get you a still for producing ethanol. This is the second nightmare for the big oil companies because it means that their competitors have a very low entry barrier to enter the car fuel market. Big oil has managed to get their image vilified in the public’s psyche; hence, this creates an atmosphere where John Q. Public may want to see these new ethanol ventures succeed.
As a stockholder in the Ford Motor Corporation, I trust that
Chairman of the Board
William Clay Ford, Jr., will make his grandfather’s dream come true.
Ford might investigate Dogwood Energy’s technological claims and
perhaps aid them and other would-be ethanol producers to solve the
political problem of converting existing car engines to run E-85.
Dogwood Energy speaks of a product called FlexEnol Delay. They share:
“It is installed through connectors, with no need for wire cuts or any
other mechanical alterations, as a result FlexEnol keeps the vehicle in
its original state. The system can be removed at anytime.
“FlexEnol allows you to run on any blend of gasoline & alcohol.
“FlexEnol Delay...At this time it is a violation of EPA laws to
modify your engine in any way. This appears to us to apply to Flexenol
as well since it connects to your fuel injection system. We are
temporarily not shipping any Flexenol devises until this is resolved.”
Is the advent of Dogwood Energy a case where three dollars per gallon
gasoline and seventy dollars per barrel oil has finally peaked the
public’s disdain to the tipping point that causes ethanol to become
tomorrow’s car fuel? Perhaps the oil people forgot that coal was once
king. I recall as a child in the 1940s that we were very happy to stop
burning coal because I no longer had to empty the ash pan and make the
fire for mama to cook, heat the house and take baths. Oil was quick and
clean compared to coal when mama wanted to cook. Are we now witnessing
the crumbling of today’s multinational oil empires from little companies
like Dogwood Energy offering their customers energy independence?
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