Renewable fuels: mileage mandates and biofuels aren't silver bullets.

• Author: Frodl, Michael G.
• Position: COMMENTARY

The United States got on the right path right after the Arab oil embargo shocks of the 1970s by focusing on higher mileage requirements for cars and trucks. But the drop in oil prices in the 1980s drove the nation off course. In addition, Detroit's lobbying of Congress to get personal vehicles disguised as trucks--which were exempted from the mileage rules for cars--opened the door to the golden age of the sports utility vehicle and as a result the mileage targets became an empty promise. Consumption of gasoline just steadily grew.

Even if Congress had not created the SUV loophole, we would have eventually seen consumption of gasoline continue to increase despite mileage targets, but perhaps not as fast. One of the perverse and unintended consequences of "energy efficiency" as first conceptualized and implemented in the 1970s and 1980s was that, over time, instead of Americans driving the same distance in the same sized cars for less, they would eventually spend the money to drive farther in larger vehicles as the cost of operating those vehicles dropped.

A similar phenomenon also took place in the home building sector--instead of Americans living in the same amount of space with the same amount of heating, cooling and electrical appliances, many spent the same money or more to live in bigger houses that sucked down even more current to power more heating, cooling and appliances.

Proponents of energy efficiency are painfully aware of this, but they do not like to alert their audiences to such perverse consequences. Yet it's true. This doesn't mean we shouldn't demand energy efficiency of our vehicles, simply that if all we do is to improve that efficiency incrementally and slowly, we won't solve the challenge of making a big dent in gasoline consumption because after a while we'll be consuming a lot more gasoline than before.

Putting aside the fancy and misleading "fleet" accounting meant to meet Department of Transportation regulations and satisfy the laws on the books, many vehicle models today get less mileage than in the 1970s. A law passed in 2007 finally strengthened the CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards but the U.S. automotive industry is years behind those of Japan and Europe.

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The nation has wasted a lot of time not just with mileage requirements but also with funding inappropriate alternative fuels.

Washington tried to solve two problems at once by proclaiming that corn-based ethanol could serve...