Left Behind
Thanks to the oil mongers sitting atop the current administration, our energy policies over the past few years have been too focused on subsidizing big oil companies instead of getting creative with new technologies and directions. Well, according to the Christian Science Monitor, it seems that the rest of the world is making strides to becoming more fuel efficient and less dependent upon oil.

Although alternative fuels still make up a small fraction of US energy supplies, they are growing at a 30 percent rate compared with 4 percent for oil and 6 percent for natural gas. The projects are especially popular among states with governors opening up new wind farms and farm-belt ethanol refineries. But it's not just a political fad. The cost of many of the alternative fuels is approaching that of oil and natural gas. That competitiveness, combined with congressional renewal of a key tax credit, has business signing contracts to build everything from new wind farms in Iowa to solar farms on top of FedEx terminals.

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Energy experts say, however, the US will still lag behind Europe, which has plans to produce 10 percent of its power from alternative sources by 2010 and 20 percent by 2020. Denmark, which sits on the windy North Sea, probably leads the world with 20 percent of its electricity currently coming from wind farms. By next year, that will increase to almost 30 percent.

Both Germany and Japan are snapping up much of the world's supply of solar panels. Japan's solar use is growing three times as fast as that of the US and Germany's twice as fast. "In Germany, they are literally paving farmlands, blocks of land as large as 10 city blocks, with solar panels," says Mike Eckhart, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy in Washington.

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Even oil companies are jumping on board, using ethanol to augment gasoline supplies. Today, ethanol, which uses 12 percent of the nation's corn crop, is blended in 30 percent of the nation's fuel. Demand for ethanol is so robust, 12 new plants are under construction and many more are searching for financing to join the 83 already in operation. "It's not just a Midwest fuel anymore," says Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington.

In fact, in New York State terminals are blending at a 10 percent level, double what's required for environmental standards. "The reason is it is more cost effective than other petroleum enhancers," says Mr. Dinneen.

A Kerry administration will not make changes overnight, but I'm confident it will put us on a path toward business-oriented strategies for reducing our import of foreign oil. This is not just a hippy-dippy ecoterrorist desire to make a greener earth (though there's really nothing wrong with that), but it's also becoming a necessary piece to our outlook on foreign policy.