Building Ecotopia: Alternative Fuels

By Chuck Hall

A kit for making your own biodiesel fuel

As fuel prices rise around the world, entrepreneurs everywhere are looking for alternative fuels and alternative energy.
Personally, I don't think that there is any one-size-fits-all solution to the global energy crisis. If there is to be a solution to our transportation needs, I think the answer lies in utilizing many different types of energy. The commonality of all of these types of energy should be that they all be sustainable and renewable, doing as little damage to the environment as possible. Fossil fuels meet none of these requirements, as there is a finite supply of fossil fuels, and all of them are bad for the environment. I don't think it's wise to invest in any resource that will eventually run out, especially if there is an alternative.
An example of a fuel source that is both sustainable and renewable would be biofuels. Biofuels include ethanol and other alcohols made from plant matter, and biodiesel made from plant oils.
Biofuels have gotten a bit of a bad reputation based on the ways they are currently produced. Using current production methods, it actually takes more energy to produce biofuels than you get back out of them. This is also true of fossil fuels, but the energy used to create fossil fuels was expended over millions of years. The laws of physics actually prevent you from getting more energy out of any fuel than you put into it in the first place, but that doesn't mean that the energy expenditure required to make biofuels cannot be greatly reduced.
One way of reducing these energy requirements is to use the parts of the plant that are normally discarded. For example, ethanol is usually made from the corn grain itself, but it could just as easily be made from the stalks. Instead, stalks are routinely cut down and burned. Another example is biodiesel, which is usually made from plant oils. There is no reason why biodiesel cannot also be made from reclaimed cooking oil from restaurants. In fact, many people do just that. There has been a recent outbreak of people stealing waste cooking oil from storage tanks behind restaurants. Presumably these bandits are making their own biodiesel.
Biofuels are just one of many alternative energy sources for transportation. Other choices include hydrogen fuel cells, public transportation, electric cars, vehicles that run on compressed air, walking, and the good old-fashioned bicycle.
Another way to make a difference in energy used for transportation is to redesign how we travel. The Western world has developed a ‘car culture' in which we design our communities around our automobiles. One of the considerations in building Ecotopia is redesigning our communities around foot traffic instead of around automobile traffic. One design I really like has an ecovillage laid out in a series of concentric circles. Each circle is a road. A common garage lies on the outermost circle. People who live in the ecovillage park their long-distance transportation vehicles in the garage. The ecovillage itself has smaller vehicles for travel within the village. These vehicles might be electric golf carts for the elderly or handicapped, or bicycles or tricycles for those capable of using such vehicles. There could also be covered quadricycles for those days with inclement weather. These smaller vehicles would use less energy for short-distance trips within the ecovillage.
Ultimately, finding alternative fuel sources is only one part of the solution. Rethinking how and why we travel gives us a broader perspective, offering more solutions and greater energy independence.