A gas crisis is striking the area of Georgia around Atlanta. With the recent spate of hurricanes and storms knocking out the Gulf Coast’s and Southeast U.S.’s refining of non-renewable petroleum, drivers are finding a shortage of fuel in the region.
But this story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution says some enterprising Atlantans and other people from across the country are discovering the beauty of alternatives, in particular, biodiesel:
Driven to help the environment, or their own pocketbooks, many Atlantans are seeking alternatives to the gasoline habit. The most adventurous, like [East Cobb resident John] Knop, retrofit their diesel engines to run on waste oil from restaurants, picking up free fuel while their friends wait hours in line and pay through the nose…
Most manufacturers will void a vehicle’s warranty if the owner uses vegetable oil as a fuel, despite the fact that in 1893 Rudolf Diesel ran his newly invented engine on peanut oil.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also frowns on grease-cars. Though the exhaust has a sweet, french-fry smell, it can contain toxic fumes. Waste oil is considered an unregistered fuel, subject to fines, which Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger discovered when he turned his Hummer into a canola cruiser.
These and other concerns prompted former veggie-oil driver Rob Del Bueno to begin brewing his own biodiesel, a product created by using methanol to chemically alter vegetable oil. Del Bueno soon learned that home-brewing fuel also was illegal, for a variety of reasons, and he went through the complex, and expensive, process of going legit.
The article goes on to say that Del Bueno joined the National Biodiesel Board and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and had his fuel certified. Now, he sells a quarter million gallons of biodiesel a year with plans to expand into Tennessee and Illinois.
Twelve feet of water can do a lot of damage… just ask the folks at GreenHunter Energy. Their biodiesel refinery in Houston had just opened this summer has been knocked out of commission when the eye of Hurricane Ike passed nearly directly over the facility.
Through the immediate and tireless efforts of our staff and management team, the refinery has been substantially cleaned of layers of mud, spilled materials, and debris from the flood. Repairs were commenced within one week of Hurricane Ike’s landfall strike. Major mechanical and operational components of the refinery remain intact. The receipt and installation of necessary electrical components from third parties is the primary reason for delay in restarting operations. It is anticipated that the U.S. Coast Guard will approve our barge docking facilities for resumption of operations, enabling the Company to begin moving products and feedstock early this week. The Company continues on target to meet the estimate of resumption of operations on or before October 31, 2008. 
The goal of the American Seed Research Summit was to bring together research leaders from industry, academia and government to identify major seed research challenges and to develop a national strategy and action plan to solve those challenges. 
The legislation, authored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Dick Lugar, would promote accelerated development of sustainable biofuels and other renewable energy production, help establish voluntary carbon trading markets, leverage private investment in new energy, promote research, and further integrate the Hemisphere’s energy infrastructure.
The first presidential debate between Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama just wrapped up, and I have to say I was a little disappointed in how little renewable energy was part of the conversation. I know that it was a debate on foreign policy, but what could be bigger on our foreign policy than reducing our dependence on foreign oil?