Editor's Note: Steve Clark responds to Solar Today's article about Biofuels and makes a compelling argument to move away from combustion engines completely.

Dear Carol and Gina,

I looked at the Solar Today article on resolving the issues around biofuels and like many energy experts, you are failing to question certain assumptions. The assumption that we are going to continue to get our personal mobility in less than 10% efficient 3-ton machines with godlike amounts of power is one that must be questioned. We will not paint this model of transportation green. The show stopper for all alternative fuels whether bio or coal-to-liquids or unconventional oil is the internal combustion engine.

If there was a reasonable, affordable, abundant alternative to gasoline THAT is what Exxon would be selling us. It doesn't exist so quit looking for it. The problem is not the energy, it is the technology we use to get mobility, the internal combustion engine (ICE).

While I think there may be some uses for bio derived energy from waste, the idea that we are going to get our transportation from biofuels is simply nonsense. The last thing we need is another liquid fuel to dump through inefficient internal combustion engines. An analogy that might make sense to a solar person is that you would suggest someone build a PV powered home and light it with incandescent bulbs.

We have developed our energy infrastructures and technologies based on the input of huge amounts of cheap and abundant fossil fuels. The transportation system must be recreated starting with the concept that we can no longer afford to be so profligately wasteful. The age of joy riding in 6000 pound 300 hp machines that waste 90% of the energy we put in them is over.

There are two scenarios when attempting to find solutions to a problem. Divergent solutions are ones for which there are many different equally functional solutions. Convergent solution are ones in which everyone comes to the same answer. The many alternatives being proposed to solve our gasoline price problem are numerous. If we continue to try to use the internal combustion engines, we will see all manner of environmentally destructive solutions proposed such as oil shale and coal-to-liquids and biofuels.

The convergent solution is to kill the ICE and use a more efficient technology to give us personal mobility. That technology is electric. At over 90% efficient an Electric Vehicle's drive system is nearly twice the energy efficiency gain of changing from incandescent lights to CFLs.

We must understand that we don't want gasoline, we want mobility. Stop thinking in mpg and start thinking in MP$. If your ICE car gets 30 mpg and gas costs $3/gallon (ah those were the days) you are getting your mobility at a rate of 10 miles per dollar. A well designed EV will easily get you 10 times the MP$. China has realized this and they have already built over 40 million EVs, mostly the small two wheeled variety. Israel has realized this and is creating Project Better Place to eliminate the gasoline vehicle in less than ten years.

Now everyone will say that you are just making oil power transportation into coal powered transportation if you drive a plug in vehicle. However, if you power that EV with PV you have not only created a renewable green solution to your carbon footprint you have also taken charge of the entire supply chain for powering your mobility, as well as bought a hedge against all future increases in the cost of mobility. No more wars for oil, no more fears of peak oil, no more GHGs from the transportation sector, no more tune ups or oil changes, no more...

When people realize this we won't be able to get the new technology fast enough and we will wonder why we ever hung on to our old ICE cars for so long or tried any other solution.