Will corn-based ethanol save us from the economic and national security instability brought on by rising fuel prices? Or will it be “grassoline” – a fuel made from switchgrass that is currently being researched in Tennessee?

 

 

Or maybe hydrogen fuel cells – such as the kind being researched in Columbia – will save the day. Or perhaps the secret lies in internal-combustion hydrogen engines, like the kind BMW AG is already rolling off the assembly line.

 

It may take a few years before America’s reliance on oil subsides, but not for a lack of potential options, based on a recent Upstate forum that attracted businesses, researchers, educators and elected officials from around the Southeast.

 

“It is neat that our free enterprise system is leading us to these new developments,” says U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.).

 

Wamp is one of the organizers of the Tennessee Valley Corridor, which attempts to leverage job creation through the scientific and technology assets of a region that runs from southwestern Virginia to northern Alabama. The nonprofit organization recently stepped outside its boundaries a bit for a daylong event in Greenville.

 

“We felt like great things were happening over here,” Wamp says.

 

The two-part event discussed homeland security at Embassy Suites before the group of more than 250 attendees crossed over Interstate 85 for an afternoon session on advanced transportation at Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research.

 

It was the first official event inside the Carroll A. Campbell Jr. Graduate Engineering Center on the research campus. Clemson had hoped to use the building’s 300-seat auditorium, but the facility is not yet finished.

 

So in order to host a group already in tune with just-in-time auto manufacturing, Clemson had to ask the city of Greenville for a just-in-time occupancy permit. Chairs and a dais were set up in open lab space, allowing guests to poke their heads inside adjacent rooms where a truck and an engine were already set up for testing.

 

“For our inaugural event in the building, I don’t think we could have brought in a better audience,” says Dr. Chris Przirembel, Clemson’s vice president for research and economic development.

 

Speakers represented national laboratories at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and in Aiken. U.S. Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) participated as well.

 

So far, there is more money flowing into alternative fuels research than there are business opportunities flowing out.

 

“It depends a lot on the price of gasoline as to when this technology moves from science project to market-driven technology,” says U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.)

 

Clemson’s automotive engineering researchers could play a role in that transition.

 

“CU-ICAR is there to take the basic research and integrate it,” Przirembel says. “The whole object is not to write papers on it, it’s to move it into the marketplace.”

 

Wamp, DeMint and others say it will take regional cooperation throughout the Southeast to lead to breakthrough technologies in alternative fuels. And as that happens, new specialists will be needed in professions ranging from accounting to insurance to deal with everything from fuel tax incentives to liability coverage for ethanol facilities.

 

“It’s just a matter of time,” says Dr. Shannon Baxter-Clemmons, executive director of the S.C. Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Alliance. “Being a new technology, there’s a lot of unknowns about it.”

 

For now, oil continues to flow through the U.S. economy’s veins. A number of different fuel substitutes are in various stages of research, however, creating a race that may have more than one winner.

 

“What we need to seek is a balance,” says Tom Baloga, vice president of U.S. engineering for BMW. “Keep pushing for all the different forms of energy that allow us to adjust to technology.”

 

There is concern that one renewable energy type will eventually be declared king by either the marketplace or the government, making losers out of all the businesses and universities that bet their research dollars on other fuels. Inglis sees a parallel to decades of breakthroughs in recording technology, however.

 

“Somebody invented the eight-track, and they made money off of that,” he says. “Somebody invented the cassette tape, and they made money off of that.”

 

Later, similar successes were found with compact discs, then digital files.

 

“All of them made money,” Inglis says. “All of them have been helpful advances in technology.”

The same, step-by-step progression could be in store for the energy industry.

 

“The marketplace will drive that,” Inglis says.