THE BUSH PLAN FOR CLEAN AIR : Methanol, Likeliest Clean Fuel, Is Costly to Produce, Poisonous

The Bush Administration’s hopes that alternative fuels will slash tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks ride chiefly on methanol, a common, relatively clean-burning liquid that is readily substituted for gasoline and is said to cut smog-forming emissions by up to half.

But any broad-based switch to methanol poses some problems of its own.

They include attracting the money needed to erect the methanol plants it would take to make a dent in the nation’s use of gasoline. By one estimate, it would cost $55 billion to create enough methanol capacity to replace just one-seventh of America’s gasoline consumption.

There are concerns with the substance’s safety: It dissolves in water and is highly poisonous. Poison experts predict a surge in deaths, blindness and brain damage from accidental ingestion of methanol if it becomes widely used. A way would also have to be found to stem methanol’s emissions of formaldehyde, which causes cancer.

Nor would a broad switch to methanol do much to improve the nation’s energy security. The factories to make it would probably be built in such overseas sites as the Middle East, prolonging U.S. reliance on foreign energy and worsening the trade balance to boot.

But, for all of methanol’s drawbacks, it is expected to be the fuel of choice for meeting the Bush Administration’s clean air proposal to put more than 1 million clean-fuel vehicles on the road by 1997 in Los Angeles, San Diego and seven other major metropolitan areas. The South Coast Air Quality Management District has already set a target of 40% for the number of cars in Southern California operating on clean-burning fuels by the year 2000.

Methanol’s advocates note that gasoline is also dangerous. The U.S. Energy Department believes that diversifying the fuels that can be burned by U.S. cars would undermine the market control attainable by a foreign-based cartel such as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Could Reduce Smog

But methanol’s great virtue is environmental. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has endorsed findings by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena that methanol-powered cars, by emitting sharply lower levels of soot, hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen, could dramatically reduce smog.

“It is not a perfect fuel,” conceded an official at the California Energy Commission, which has staked much of its reputation on methanol. “But it is a near-term solution to air quality problems until we move to something more exotic, like hydrogen- or solar-powered cars.”

In seeking ways to rapidly clean up auto emissions, researchers have focused on familiar fuels that can be used by today’s cars and trucks and be delivered by the current infrastructure of tankers, pipelines and service stations. Those considerations have led them to natural gas and methanol.

Natural gas must be stored under pressure, requiring expensive, heavy tanks on the vehicles. Energy Department experts who have been testing alternative fuels consider natural gas, along with propane, to be suited for fleets of cars and trucks.

Government officials boast of having dropped natural gas-fueled vehicles from a height of 90 feet onto concrete surfaces without any leaks. But they foresee resistance from motorists to driving around with tanks of natural gas compressed at 3,000 pounds per square inch.

Methanol, by contrast, is a clear liquid that can be transported much as gasoline is. It can be burned in today’s cars--and it is already available at a handful of experimental pumps at California service stations. However, its corrosiveness requires a few hundred dollars of modifications to fuel lines and other equipment.

Methanol can be made from anything containing carbon, notably coal and natural gas. It is produced when carbon monoxide reacts with hydrogen in the presence of a catalyst.

Methanol was once touted as a boon to energy security because it could be made from the nation’s vast coal reserves. But that argument is seldom heard these days because of coal’s big contribution to the suspected global warming.

That leaves natural gas, from which methanol can be produced at a fraction of the cost of using coal, as the most likely source.

The cheapest reserves of available natural gas are overseas, industry and government officials say, and methanol refineries would be built close to the natural gas fields because methanol is cheaper to transport than is natural gas.

Likely places for refineries include the Middle East, the Far East, Canada and South America. Alaska has big untapped reserves, and the Soviet Union has more natural gas than any other country.

The commercial challenge is matching enough methanol with enough methanol-compatible cars to make a significant impact on air quality. Advocates concede that investors will not build plants to produce methanol without assured demand for methanol as a car fuel.

And there is no free-market demand because there are only a few government-subsidized cars using methanol, most of them in California. The government estimates that methanol currently costs 30% more than gasoline on an energy-equivalent basis.

Methanol’s eventual retail cost to motorists in comparison to gasoline, after large-scale production begins, is impossible to know. Studies financed by skeptics--especially the oil industry--say methanol could cost 50% more than gasoline at the pump.

Methanol’s advocates say it could actually cost less than gasoline, even though it takes 1.7 gallons of methanol to propel a car as far as a gallon of gasoline. The economic case for methanol would grow stronger if gasoline supplies tighten, as many experts expect, and demand continues to rise.

Industry consultant James Crocco of Houston, arguing that “methanol is a chemical, not a fuel,” said it would require massive subsidies or an outright government mandate--as proposed Monday by President Bush--to create a big role for methanol.

A recent federal law already lets auto manufacturers avoid millions of dollars in penalties for falling short of auto fuel economy standards if they will build methanol-powered cars.

“This has clearly been a stimulus for GM and Ford,” said Charles Imbrecht, chairman of the California Energy Commission. “And, with the mandated production, the issue of risk on investments in methanol plants is largely eliminated.”

Huge Capital Outlay

Regardless of risk, investment in methanol production would be enormously expensive. An oil industry-sponsored study by SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif., estimated that it would take $6 billion to $8 billion in capital investment to produce the methanol needed to satisfy the clean air plan of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Nationwide, a U.S. Energy Department expert calculates that it would cost $55 billion to build the capacity to produce enough methanol to replace one-seventh of the 7 million barrels of gasoline consumed by the nation daily.

“That’s not too many aircraft carriers,” this official said. “But, when you take all these things into consideration, you’re talking a minimum of 20 years.”

Might Poison Water

Other problems:

--Unlike gasoline, methanol dissolves in water. In case of leaks from underground storage tanks, which have been a serious problem with gasoline, methanol could contaminate aquifers.

--Methanol’s toxicity poses serious risks for anyone who accidentally swallows as little as a teaspoon, as routinely happens when people suck on a tube to start siphoning gasoline. Self-service stations pose the prospect of direct daily exposure of countless motorists. The National Capital Poison Center predicts 131 deaths a year and more than $56 million in hospital emergency costs if methanol completely replaces gasoline.

--Cars go as far on a gallon of gasoline as they travel on 1.7 gallons of methanol. For methanol-burning vehicles, that means more frequent trips to service stations or substantially larger fuel tanks.

MOTOR VEHICLE FUEL USE IN THE L.A. BASIN--Gasoline and diesel are the only significant fuels used by motor vehicles in the South Coast Air Basin. In 1987, the use of fuels containing 85% methanol or 100% methanol were negligible. But, by 2007, if the Southern California Air Quality Management District’s forecast is met, methanol fuels could dominate.

Figures are based on a transportation fuel use forecasting model. Diesel figures were adjusted upward to match the best estimates of current use. Some producers of fuel say the 1987 gasoline figures may be lower than actual use.

SOURCE: U.S. Dept. of Energy