Drivers, farmers embrace going green

NASCAR has gone Sunoco Green.

Not "Soylent Green," the old Charlton Heston science fiction movie of the same name. Sunoco Green as in Sunoco Green E15, NASCAR's new racing fuel comprised of 85 percent gasoline and 15 percent ethanol.

Fifteen percent American Ethanol, processed right here in the U.S. of A., as patriotic types and NASCAR fans are fond of saying.

Actually, there is a correlation between "Soylent Green," the movie, and Sunoco Green, the racing fuel.

The movie is set in a future world ravaged by pollution, overpopulation, depleted resources, poverty, dying oceans and a hot climate due to the greenhouse effect. It was as if Al Gore wrote the screenplay.

The fuel blend is supposed to reduce the effect of most of those things.

As former driver Kyle Petty said when NASCAR was first considering adding cleaner-burning ethanol to its fuel mix, "The global warming thing, and all the things that are written about that, a lot more people are aware that we need to do something.

"I think once you start seeing alternative fuels show up in places like racing and places where you least expect them, then you don't think about that guy with the Volkswagen van that runs off of whatever."

Petty wears his hair in a ponytail and sort of looks like a guy who would drive a VW bus with peace signs and Jimi Hendrix bumper stickers, so perhaps you'd expect that from him. But now other drivers are saying a lot of the same things, some in an official capacity.

"Two races into it, it's a great partnership, and I think you'll see it continue to get bigger," said Clint Bowyer, who will drive the No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevy in Sunday's Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. "It's a win-win situation for everybody involved.

"For them," Bowyer said of ethanol proponents, "it gets them in front of 80 million people. There's an awareness of being tied to NASCAR. And, for us, there's an increase in horsepower. As a race-car driver, that puts a smile on my face."

As a race-car driver, Bowyer would pour E15 over his Cheerios (his primary sponsor) in the morning if he thought it would help him go faster. But having grown up in a farming environment, the production of corn-based ethanol is near and dear to his gearbox. His grandfather was a farmer, mostly wheat, but three of his crew members are from Iowa, whose farmers planted 13.7 million acres of corn in 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

So when NASCAR was looking for a spokesman who doesn't wear his hair in a ponytail, Bowyer, of Emporia, Kan., was first to raise his hand, after Oliver Douglas and Eb from "Green Acres."

"This is one more step to a greener environment, and it creates 400,000 jobs in this country," Bowyer said. "It puts us closer to not having to rely on fossil fuels and things like that."

I told Bowyer that a story in this newspaper on Tuesday said gas would cost $4 a gallon by Memorial Day weekend.

Exactly. He said that's what he is talking about: reducing America's dependence on oil from the Middle East.

In his world, passing Tony Stewart on the high side is considered difficult, but that's only because Bowyer has never haggled with Arab sheiks over the price of a barrel of crude.

And yet, despite ethanol's inherent advantages -- renewable and sustainable energy, reducing the dependency on foreign oil, environment benefits, higher octane -- people smarter than Bowyer and me engage in spirited discourse about its inherent disadvantages. Most are oil company and automaker representatives.

Ethanol is corrosive over time, and it might damage engine parts. It has a lower energy content, so it takes more ethanol than gasoline to get to the Ozarks. And you can't get ethanol at most Texaco stations on the interstate.

Maybe we'll have to get Detective Thorn from "Soylent Green" right on it. Or Kyle Petty.

All I know is that when the gentlemen of NASCAR and Tony Stewart start their engines, guys sitting atop tractors in Iowa will look out over amber waves of grain and smile for a change.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.