Charities and Business Work to Promote Use of Alternative Fuels

Big players and big money are hard at work in the effort to replace all or a sizable portion of the gasoline in American fuel tanks

with homegrown and less-polluting biofuels.

The Bush administration has provided more than $12-billion for research into such alternative fuels, and profit-seeking investors have spent $4.5-billion since 1999. Hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into universities engaged in alternative-fuel research, including a $250-million commitment to Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project from ExxonMobil and a handful of other energy companies.

Some nonprofit leaders, however, say public-interest groups are now needed to track these efforts and encourage policies that will benefit consumers and the environment.

“It’s fairly easy to put together a pretty compelling story on how biofuels can play a very important role in reducing our oil addiction,” says Nathanael Greene, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York environmental charity. “There are very focused political activities that need to happen around these issues, along with public education and consensus-building. This is the important role the nonprofit world can play right now.”

State Laws

The Energy Foundation’s $200,000 grant to the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2005 helped the charity create a report, “Bringing Biofuels to the Pump: An Aggressive Plan for Ending America’s Oil Dependence.” Last year the group received more than $400,000 from the Energy Foundation to continues its biofuels work, which now includes examining the roles of farm policy and state legislation in furthering biofuels development.

For biofuels to effectively enter the market, Mr. Greene stresses, three things need to happen: The fuels have to be cost-effectively produced in quantity, there must be vehicles capable of using such fuels, and ample filling stations need to be on hand to provide them to consumers.

“We’ve done a fair amount of analysis on where the biggest challenges and bottlenecks are with those three pieces,” Mr. Greene says. “We have the ability to step back and look a little more broadly. If you are part of the gasoline-retailers’ association, you only think about it in terms of what’s happening at the stations. If you are in the auto industry, you think about the vehicles.”

‘Strange Bedfellows’

The need for a broader and more inclusive examination of the energy challenges and opportunities facing the United States, and the world, is what led the United Nations Foundation, in Washington, to create the Energy Future Coalition in 2001.

The alliance of business and labor leaders, farmers, government officials, and environmentalists examines and offers solutions to the economic, security, and environmental threats posed by dependence on fossil fuels. “It’s an opportunity to bring forward recommendations from disparate groups — some would say strange bedfellows — and to have that change the conversation about energy in Washington,” says the coalition’s executive director, Reid Detchon.

Initially the charity organized six working groups focused on different energy topics, including transportation and biofuels.

A series of public roundtable discussions was held as the groups formulated recommendations that were published in 2003 in the report “Challenge and Opportunity: Charting a New Energy Future.” This spring many of the Bioenergy and Agriculture Working Group’s recommendations were incorporated into a booklet, “Biofuels for Our Future: a Primer.”

Mr. Detchon says the coalition also had a hand in persuading the British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson to embrace biofuels.

In 2005 Mr. Branson, whose business ventures include Virgin Airways, announced plans to build new petroleum refineries in the wake of the oil-price spike following Hurricane Katrina. Ted Turner, the media mogul who created the United Nations Foundation with a $1-billion pledge, asked Mr. Branson to consider biofuels instead, and invited him to meet with members of the coalition to discuss them.

“We spent hours with him,” Mr. Detchon says.

Mr. Branson subsequently became a member of the coalition’s steering committee, and last September he announced intentions to invest $3-billion in biofuel development over the next 10 years.

“I decided that what they said was right,” Mr. Branson told the British news media after his meeting with the coalition.

Since last year, the coalition has been a major supporter of a public-policy effort that calls for the United States to meet 25 percent of its total energy needs through renewable sources, including biofuels, by 2025. The bulk of the effort’s $2-million annual budget comes from the Better World Fund, a sister group to the United Nations Foundation that was also founded by Mr. Turner.

Abbreviated to “25x’25,” the project has been endorsed by 21 state governors. In February, Mr. Detchon spoke at the Transportation Biofuels Conference held by the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, and in June a resolution in support of the 25x’25 effort was adopted by the Senate. A similar resolution is pending in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“When we started out, biofuels were not really on the policy agenda in Washington,” Mr. Detchon says. “I think we contributed in putting forward that option as one of the major options to be considered in terms of reducing our oil dependence.”