History of Biofuels
- In 1898, Rudolph Diesel premiered the diesel engine at the World’s Exhibition in Paris to run on peanut oil.
- Henry Ford was a key player in the early alternative fuels movement, beginning with his 1908 Model T engine to run on ethanol.
- Biofuels were instantly accepted as the key to the future. By the 1920’s Ford had established a partnership with Standard Oil, and 25% of oil sales were non-petroleum related.
- The petroleum industry saw the threat, undercut the prices and developed petro-diesel, a petroleum based alternative to vegetable oil. By the early 1940’s the use of any kind of biofuels became virtually non-existant.
- By the 1970’s the US became dependent on foreign oil. As early as 1973, the middle east, controlling most of the world’s oil began reducing supplies and increasing prices.
In the past nine years the popularity of biofuel has grown rapidly on a global scale. Biodiesel has been researched in over 28 countries, and there is currently large-scale production in 21 of these. There are 74 biodiesel production plants in Europe, and in Germany alone there are over 1500 outlets to buy it. In Brazil and Argentina, where the majority of the population lives in metropolitan areas along the coast, biofuels were introduced as early as the 1980s.
Long journeys powered only by alternative fuels have been undertaken in an effort to raise media awareness and bring biofuels back to the public eye. In 1996 the “Sunrider” boat circumnavigated the globe using 100% biodiesel. In 1997 Joshua Tickell became the first individual to drive his “veggie van” 10,000 miles around the US using nothing but waste vegetable oil from fast food restaurants. David Modersbach and his family were the first group to partially complete the pan-American journey from Oakland to Argentina in 2003 using biofuels. Since then, the Sustainable Solutions Caravan has become an annual pilgrimage to Costa Rica and back promoting renewable energies, organic farming and sustainable lifestyles in their veggie oil busses