Energy Gee, Your Car Smells Terrific!

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

Ask futurists what most Americans will be putting in the fuel tanks of their automobiles in the 21st century -- assuming there are still automobiles, with fuel tanks, in the 21st century -- and they will probably describe some exotic combustible derived from wood chips, corn husks or ordinary seawater. But as the year 2000 gets closer, it seems increasingly likely, even to ardent environmentalists, that the real fuel of the 21st century will be a more familiar blend. "For the foreseeable future," says Bill Sessa, a spokesman for California's influential Air Resources Board, "the dominant fuel in this country will be gasoline."

But not just any gasoline. To meet stringent air-pollution standards scheduled to take effect over the next few years, oil companies are racing to make their fossil fuels as pollution free as the alternatives, chiefly methanol, ethanol and natural gas. Last week Atlantic Richfield, the eighth largest U.S. oil company, said it had developed just such a fuel: a cleaner- burning gasoline that the company claims will cut toxic emissions nearly 50%.

If making a better gasoline is so easy, why hasn't anyone done it before? The simple answer: cleaner fuels are more expensive. A gallon of ARCO's new gas -- dubbed EC-X, for Emission Control-Experimental -- will cost about 16 cents more at the pump than standard gasoline. If ARCO simply passed those charges on to its customers, they would soon find new places to refuel. But the Los Angeles-based company knows that California is about to set new fuel standards that will require all oil companies in the state to reformulate their gasolines or switch to alternative fuels. ARCO has no plans to sell EC-X until it is ordered to meet the new standards, which will take effect in 1996.

Producing so-called designer gasolines is a matter of fine-tuning the refining process. Gasoline is a mixture of as many as 100 carbon-based compounds derived from crude oil by selectively distilling -- or cracking -- various hydrocarbons. ARCO's goal was to reduce the concentration of problematic components, among them cancer-causing benzene and the aromatic hydrocarbons that react with sunlight to produce ozone. To make EC-X, the company's chemists changed the mix of their distillates, adding compounds that cost more to refine.

The cleaner gas has advantages over rival fuels like methanol M85, a blend of 15% gasoline and 85% alcohol, which costs 25 cents to 40 cents more than standard gasoline. Unlike methanol, a gas like EC-X can be used in any car without mechanical adjustments or loss of power. As a result, the development could be the death knell to the massive switchover to alternative fuels that President Bush was urging as recently as two years ago. Switching to such fuels as methanol and natural gas would require retooling the millions of cars ; built each year and installing new pumps and tanks at 200,000 U.S. service stations. It would also end the cozy auto-fuel monopoly the oil industry has enjoyed for nearly a century.

While ARCO was first, other formulas may emerge. In fact, ARCO's announcement seemed timed more to influence hearings of California's Air Standards Board than to grab market share. Alternative-fuel enthusiasts are far from giving up their campaign to wean Americans from gasoline. "What you're seeing now," says Eric Goldstein, air-quality expert for the Natural Resources Defense Council, "is early skirmishing in the battle over how transportation will be powered in the 21st century." May the best fuel win.

With reporting by Denise Carres/Los Angeles