More on Biofuels

TO start on a funny note, I was at Arizona Petroleum, checking out their ethanol and biodiesel pumps, and some guy pulls up in his older Mercedes Benz to fuel up on biodiesel. I was up to him and start out by saying I hoped I wasn't bothering him. He turns and tells me I am bothering him and asks what it is exactly I want and before I can answer he tells me he doesn't have it. I'm like, what are you talking about? He seemed to think I was homeless asking for spare change. It was at this point I took a look at what I was wearing to see if I dawned the apparel of a Tucson bum. Needless to say, we joked about it after that and he turned out to be a pretty cool guy. He bought his 1983 MB purely for the fact that it could run on biodiesel without any modification. He asked me if I drove a similar car and I was almost ashamed to say I drove a Honda Civic. I mean, it gets great gas mileage, but this biodiesel thing is changing the way I think about cars by the minute.

What I also learned in the process of writing the article was that all the white UA cars that say "for state of Arizona use only," run on E85. I was quite impressed with the job Mark Harrell, Fleet Manager for UA Motor Pool, and that program has accomplished. It became an even bigger story that I wish I kind of explored more with because now I am thinking that I should have gone up to the Pinal Energy plant up in Maricopa. I am thinking that I might take a video camera up there and tape a tour or something of the plant to document the process of creating ethanol out of the corn they receive locally and from the midwest. I think that also might turn into a story of its own in order to explain where they are receiving their corn from and why they do so. It could make for something interesting.

The thing that I have learned about ethanol, as told to me by Harrell, is that it will never end our dependence on foreign oil. The most common blend is, of course, E85, but that still requires 15% to be petroleum. That is why biodiesel is something we need to embrace. It is very clean with little to no emissions and we can produce every gallon of it in the United States. I asked Harrell if he knew about the algae form of biodiesel and he said that it was the most promising thing we have in the US right now, in terms of 86ing our need for imported petroleum. This is what bugs me a bit though. You don't hear anything about it on the main stream media. A search on CNN will show you what I mean. I don't like to embrace conspiracies too much, although I do love some, but it just adds to the fact that companies like CNN are mega corporations who are rumored to be influenced by the administration. I don't really know where I was going with that but I've hated the mainstream media for awhile now and the fact that they do not take extra space to talk about how to save the environment with new technologies developed right here in the good ole US of A, well it doesn't make me want to watch more of it, lets just say that.