Photo by Center for American Progress Action Fund: Flickr

A few months ago, Wesley Clark was hawking corn ethanol. Now it’s electric cars. Take your pick – ethanol or electricity. Both of them are worse for the environment than conventional gasoline.

That’s not my claim. That’s the assessment of the National Academy of Sciences, which released a report on Monday on the cost of fossil fuels. But before we turn to the report, let’s review Clark’s history. He’s the retired four-star general who graduated first in his class from West Point. He went on to serve as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. In 2004, he ran for president as a Democrat but quit the race after racking up a single primary win: Oklahoma.

Since then, Clark, like many other retired military types, has re-invented himself as an expert on energy. In that capacity, he’s been carrying water for the corn ethanol scammers. In February, Growth Energy, an upstart group which claims that more corn ethanol production will help the US economy “through cleaner, greener energy,” announced that Clark will serve as its co-chairman and that he “will help America take an important step closer to becoming energy independent.”

Clark has been promoting Growth Energy’s effort to increase the amount of ethanol that can be blended into gasoline. Right now, refiners can use no more than 10.2% ethanol. Clark and his bosses want to break what’s known as the “blend wall” so that up to 15% ethanol can be blended into gasoline. Clark has declared that moving to 15% ethanol will stimulate the US economy and create 136,000 jobs. He has even claimed – apparently with a straight face – that US farmers are “the original free market people in America.”

The EPA has said it will make a ruling on the blend wall issue in December. That agency is also being lobbied by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who declared last week that higher concentrations of ethanol in gasoline were safe for automobiles. “We will continue to publicly advocate an increase, and privately advocate,” Vilsack said during a visit to Des Moines, Iowa. “Our hope is they understand the significance of this decision as it relates to the future of the industry.”

But there’s enormous opposition to changing the blend wall rules. In March, one of the oddest coalitions in modern American history sent a letter to Vilsack, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Obama’s advisor on climate change, Carol Browner. The signatories included, among others, the Sierra Club, National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Grocery Manufacturers Association, Friends of the Earth, and the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers. The coalition declared that it “opposes any administrative or legislative efforts to increase the current cap on the amount of ethanol permitted to be blended into gasoline” until “comprehensive testing programs” have been done. In addition, both Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. are opposing any changes to the blend wall.

Given that resistance, it appears Clark has decided to embrace yet another alternative fuel. On Tuesday, during a speech in Detroit, Clark said that US efforts to build an electric car were critical to national security, saying that the issue “is absolutely dead center in the bull’s-eye for national security.”

Brent Snavely of the Detroit Free Press reported that Clark warned that the US must reduce its dependence on foreign oil. Snavely then summarized Clark’s remarks saying that the general compared the “current status of electric vehicles to the early stages of development for personal computers, cellular telephones and the Internet. He said the industry could be standing at the cusp of a similar technological revolution that could create jobs and boost the US economy.”

Yeah, maybe.

Then again, the entire electric car push may just be another over-hyped flavor-of-the-month whose main effect will be the transfer of billions of dollars from the pockets of taxpayers to the coffers of politically favored industries that have effective lobbyists in Washington.

Among the most notable recipients of the government’s largesse: Fisker Automotive. In September 2009, Fisker received a $529 million loan from the US government to help finance its startup costs. One of Fisker’s main financial backers is the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a Silicon Valley firm where Al Gore is a partner.

Fisker wasn’t the only one to get a major dollop of taxpayer bash. Nissan got a $1.6 billion loan and Tesla Motors got a $465 million loan. Two Phoenix-based companies, Electric Transportation Engineering Corp., and ECOtality, were given $99.8 million in federal stimulus money to help roll out an electric vehicle pilot program in several US cities. Johnson Controls, one of America’s biggest battery makers, got a federal grant for $299.2 million to help it build batteries for electric and hybrid cars. General Motors got $105.9 million to help it produce battery packs for the Chevy Volt. In all, about 50 different entities were given federal grants (all provided by the stimulus package passed by Congress ) that totaled some $2.4 billion as part of an “electric drive vehicle battery and component manufacturing initiative.”

But just as the corn ethanol scam has been found to be less than “green” some scientists have begun casting a critical eye on electric cars. What they are finding should be of interest to every American taxpayer.

The day before Clark’s speech in Detroit, the National Academy of Sciences released a report called “Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use.” The study claims that burning fossil fuels costs the US about $120 billion per year in health costs, mainly due to an estimated 20,000 premature deaths due to air pollution. While that calculation can be argued – particularly given that the study didn’t put much effort into tabulating the benefits of fossil fuel use – the report compared the overall costs to the environment of various motor fuel sources. Regardless of which fuel Clark wants to use – ethanol or electricity – both came out worse, in terms of total costs to society, than either conventional gasoline or natural gas.

The analysts at the National Academy looked at 13 different fuel sources and analyzed their total impact on the environment, in what they called “health and non-climate damages” presented by “life-cycle component” for different combinations of fuels and cars. They then expressed those damages in cents per vehicle mile traveled (VMT) and did them for both 2005 and 2030.

The graphic below is reproduced from the ones published by the National Academy of Sciences. For the sake of simplicity, we reduced the number of fuels displayed from 13 to 9. It clearly show that vehicles fueled by corn ethanol (E85), or ethanol produced from cellulosic materials (labeled “Herbaceous” in the graphic), or electricity, impose more “damages” on society than vehicles that are fueled by gasoline or natural gas. Furthermore, those two conventional fuels are less costly to society than are plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, which are identified in the graphic as “Grid Dependent SI HEV.”

I don’t mean to pick on Clark. Lots of other people are buying the hype on electric cars. But the calculations done by the National Academy deserve more attention than they are getting. Electric cars may be sexy but they are not a panacea. In fact, when it comes to the environment, they may be significantly worse than the vehicles we are now using.

Note: CG stands for conventional gasoline. SI stands for spark ignition. CNG stands for compressed natural gas.

Source: National Academy of Sciences.