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Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, believes plug-in hybrids can pave the way to more renewables.

Wei Lin

The Shiloh Wind Farm in Solano County, Calif., has a 150-megawatt capacity.

PG&E;

CalCars founder Felix Kramer, owner of this car, says the world is ready for plug-in hybrids.

CalCars

General Motors made a splash when it announced this concept plug-in hybrid was headed for production, but advocates decried the absence of a time frame.

General Motors

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Washington is in the throes of a senseless "ethanol euphoria," says Earth Policy Institute President Lester Brown.

U.S. President George Bush hasn't helped, calling for a quintupling of biofuel production, to 35 billion gallons, by 2017. Most of that likely will come from ethanol.

President Bush also struck a deal with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in March to boost research and production of ethanol. Earlier this year, BP awarded the University of California at Berkeley with $500 million to research biofuels. And the U.S. Department of Energy is pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into new ethanol projects from companies such as Range Fuels, Mascoma and Iogen, and hundreds of millions more into three bioenergy-research centers.

What's Brown's beef with ethanol? The fuel's competition with the food supply. The National Corn Growers Association claims there's enough corn to provide for both, and says food-price increases are likely to be minimal. But Brown says corn prices doubled in the last year, soybean futures grew by half and wheat futures are trading at a 10-year high.

Brown says the skyrocketing corn prices are triggering growth in prices for meat, milk and eggs in China and the United States, because cows also eat corn in the form of distillers grains, an ethanol byproduct.

"The stage is now set for direct competition between the 800 million people who own automobiles and the world's 2 billion poorest people," Brown wrote in a report released in March. Millions could starve as a result of higher food prices, he warned.

Brown wants Washington to shift its favors to plug-in hybrids, via a policy requiring cars with better fuel economy. Plug-in hybrids are gasoline-electric hybrids that owners can recharge for better mileage. Advocates say replacing some gasoline with electricity can push mileage beyond 100 MPG. Indeed, Toyota and Nissan - and even GM, the perpetrator of gas-guzzling Hummers and other road sows - are now working toward that goal.