Today’s Wall Street Journal has a front page story on a plant that might prove to be an excellent source of bio-diesel.
What the story demonstrates (although you need to read between the lines) is how important it is to allow the market’s discovery process to proceed unhindered. Profit-seeking investors will see if this plant, jatropha, really can provide a cheaper source of fuel. If so, money will pour into planting and processing. If not, then those who sunk their money in it will lose. In any event, the search for more efficient energy sources will continue.
Concluding paragraph from the article: “Jatropha takes very little water, so maybe it will work, Mr. Ramaiah said hopefully. When asked who might buy his future oil harvest, he was undertain. ‘Whoever is giving the most profit,’ he said.”
The plant could grow in many parts of the U.S. Will corn farmers try to get their political friends to put up roadblocks to it? Subsidized ethanol would seem to be very much at risk from jatropha or other more efficient sources. This is why the federal government ought to play no role in the production of energy — which would be the case if the Supreme Court hadn’t given Congress almost unfettered power to meddle in everything.
