‘Fuel of the Future’ Methanol: Remembering a California Energy Failure
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 4, 2023
“Methanol has been promoted as an alternative transportation fuel from time to time over the past forty years. In spite of significant efforts to realize the vision of methanol as a practical transportation fuel in the US, such as the California methanol fueling corridor of the 1990s, it did not succeed on a large scale.” ( – Bromberg and Cheng [1])
“[With] U.S. energy policy … there is always a promised solution, usually through a technological wonder, or group of wonders, that will settle America’s energy dilemmas once and for all.” (- Peter Grossman, U.S. Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure (2013), p. x.
The history of government and energy in the U.S. is important for its many lessons for public policy today. In light of the California Energy Commission taking on gasoline and diesel in California today (see yesterday’s post), a look back at a prior savior from oil is merited.
Ethanol was not competing well with oil products and lost its limited political support. Electric vehicles were an oddity. Natural gas vehicles were mostly on the farm. But with “energy security” questions aplenty, what was going to replace gasoline and diesel to save the country from OPEC, Arab OPEC in particular?
https://www.masterresource.org/transportation-policy/methanol-politics-1980s-1990s/
