Thanks to the King, we have a variety of alternative fuels – a blend of fossil fuel and sugarcane-derived ethanol – available these days.
Keokhwan Vajarodaya, former secretary general of the Bureau of the Royal Household, once noted that the King’s initiative on biomass fuel development began more than 50 years ago. Keokhwan, who played a role in that initiative, passed away in September.
He wrote that in 1961 the King predicted a surge in the oil price as car ownership grew.
Keokhwan was instructed to experiment to create fuels that made of petrol or diesel blended with ethanol – which eventually became known as gasohol and biodiesel.
Then came research on biomass fuel as part of a project conceived in 1985 at Chitralada Royal Villa.
Started with seed funding of Bt925,500 from the King’s own pocket, the research  involved cultivation of different sugarcane varieties to find the best ethanol producers.
A small alcohol distillery was opened in the compound of the villa in 1986, producing 2.8 litres of 91-per-cent-proof ethanol per hour.
The purity was eventually refined at 95 per cent, to create ethanol, but it still contained too much water to make gasohol.
Success finally came in 1994 when the researchers managed to reach 99.5 per cent proof, enabling the blending of nine parts 91-octane gasoline to one part ethanol. The resulting gasohol was used to fuel all the cars at the villa thereafter.
Gasohol was first sold at PTT and Bangchak petrol stations in 2001 before being used ubiquitously today.
Though fossil-fuel prices were falling at the time gasohol was set to go commercial, the King took a long-term view and refused to give up on the initiative.
Oil is among the commodities most bound up with politics, since no government can afford to leave its citizens at the mercy of world markets and their oil price surges.
In 2007, then-Energy Minister Piyasvasti Amranand was reluctant to proceed with a planned ban on octane-95 gasoline.
A key reason was that methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE), a gasoline additive, was Bt4 per litre cheaper than ethanol. This caused concern there would be insufficient ethanol to replace MTBE.
The policy to ban MTBE came after international safety watchdogs discovered it was hazardous to health.
The Thai government wanted to postpone the ban, saying that an end to sales would save only Bt3 billion a year, which was not worth it when weighed against the suffering caused to motorists.
In the King’s initiative, the point is that the financial impact should be considered in terms of the whole country, not just the consumers. If we can save Bt3 billion a year, that means we should save around Bt30 billion for the over 10 years.
Every satang that motorists pay for fuel will eventually find its way back to local growers of ethanol-producing plants like sugarcane, maize and cassava.
What does it matter that gross domestic product is high, if more than a half of the population is still poor?
Thailand is progressing well on the use of alternative energy, which now meets 12 per cent of total demand. But we cannot afford to let this momentum slip if we want to free ourselves from reliance on imported energy.