However, some analysts warn that electrification of the transportation sector will be slow, and thus the impact on oil dependence limited, especially in the near-term. "Everybody imagines that in five years you'll see electric vehicles driving all over the place. The fact is that it will take longer than they think," David Victor, a professor at the University of California San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, told me. Kateri Callahan, the president of the Alliance to Save Energy, shared his skepticism. "The battery is expensive," she told me, "and it doesn't deliver what you'd get from liquid fuels in terms of range. In order for an expensive item to displace an existing product, it has to offer more for the consumer." It is not clear that electric vehicles do so.

But the government has missed some big opportunities, particularly when it comes to drop-in alternatives to oil, such as biofuels. Biofuels have been held back by a "chicken-and-egg" dilemma. That is, the market for biofuels is too small because so few people have flex-fuel cars, which means that filling stations have little incentive to carry biofuels, which in turn discourages people from buying flex-fuel cars.

In 2008, a potential solution to this problem won widespread support among politicians in both parties: the Open Fuel Standard Act. The bill would have required that at least 50 percent of each light-duty automobile manufacturer's annual inventory be "fuel-choice enabling" (that is, either flex-fuel vehicles or cars capable of operating on biodiesel) by 2012, and that at least 80 percent of these inventories be fuel-choice enabling by 2015. In other words, it would have forced automakers to give new car owners the ability to fill their tanks with alternative fuels if they chose. This probably would have driven up biofuel consumption, and may have helped next-generation biofuel projects to look more attractive to investors.

Many analysts view the Open Fuel Standard Act as an important step because it challenges the monopoly that oil enjoys over the transportation sector by paving the way for biofuels to compete at the pump. Gal Luft, executive director for the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, said, "The most important thing is to stop this horrible folly of putting out cars that can run on nothing but oil. Everybody talks about the oil problem, but meanwhile you're committing yourself to it by ensuring that the transportation sector can run on nothing else."

Ultimately, energy policy has not been through a completely lost period since the drop in oil prices in 2008. But there have been notable failures, and we could have accomplished more. As prices rise, energy will again return to the top of the political agenda. And as it does, there will be renewed calls for more aggressive policies to promote oil alternatives. If we are to see those efforts through, Congress needs to remember that the battle for real energy security is going to take longer than the next two or three year price surge.

Images: 1. David McNew/Getty Images; 2. Exhibit at the First Symposium on Low Pollution Power Systems Development, the U.S. National Archives.

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