Everyone now-a-days is worried about the dwindling oil supply and the bad state of the environment. People want to be able to afford to fuel their cars and they want to be able to breathe healthy clean air. Well luckily, there are solutions that are being developed to solve the oil and environmental problems. There is a new revolutionary way for people to fuel their cars, and that is with alternative fuels. These solutions have the backing of politicians, which will hopefully bring more funding and recognition to these solutions.

Why use gas when there is:

New or used cooking oils
Biodiesels
Ethanol

New or Used Cooking Oil

How to get it:

• You can get new cooking oil from the grocery store for about $2 a gallon
• Used cooking oil can be obtained from local restaurants, fast food chains, or any place that fries up their food. Most of these places will give you their used oil for free. And who doesn't love getting free things!

Benefits:

• People will no longer have to pay big bucks for gas if they can get it for free from restaurants
• Running your car on cooking oil, new or used, will produce less carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide than regular gasoline
• Using used cooking oil will recycle that oil that would normally have no other use

Other Facts on Cooking Oil:

• To run your car on cooking oil you will have to buy a conversion kit to install in you car. The kits average around $800 and take a few hours to install.
• Only diesel engines will run off of cooking oil
• Before you put the cooking oil in your car you have to filter the oil to get rid of anything left over from cooking

Biodiesels

How to get it:

• You will have to go to a biodiesel fueling station to obtain biodiesels for your car. The number of these stations are increasing in the past few years.

Benefits:

• Using biodiesels will produce no fossil carbon emissions and it will produce 90% less carbon monoxide than regular gasoline. This will help to make the air cleaner and reduce air pollutants.
• Biodiesels are also cheaper than regular unleaded gasoline. And with gas prices continuing to rise this is a nice break on your wallet.
• Since biodiesels are made in the United States, your money won't be going over seas, they will be staying here in your country

Other Facts on Biodiesels:

• Biodiesels are generally made of vegetable oil and animal fats
• Only diesel engines can run off of biodiesel
• 75 million gallons of biodiesel were produced in the United States in 2005. Hopefully this number will continue to grow as more and more people are demanding biodiesel using cars.

Ethanol

How to get it:

• E85, the popular ethanol fuel, is available at over 850 gas stations across the United States. This number is going to increase as more and more ethanol plants are springing up throughout the country. And with this many stations there is bound to be one in your area.

Benefits:

• This product is also produced in the United States, which will keep the money within our borders
• 4.5 billion gallons of ethanol are produced a year in the 128 United States plants. These plants are found in 21 different states, which will make ethanol more available across the whole country. The amount being produced also shows how widely available this fuel is.
• Ethanol is a clean burning fuel, producing no carbon dioxide emissions
• Ethanol is also cheaper than regular unleaded gas, which is what most of people fuel their cars with, so of course you will be saving money

Other Facts on Ethanol:

• You need to have a specially engineered car for it to run on ethanol, but luckily automakers are going to double the production of these cars by the year 2010, which is in the very near future.
• Ethanol is made from corn

Sources:
Adriel Bettelheim's "Biofuels Boom" (2006)
George P. Blumberg's "Got Grease? Then Fill it Up!" (2004)
Elizabeth Armstrong"s "Tired of Premium? These Cars Tank Up on Vegetable Oil" (2004)
Daniel Dasey's "Cooking Oil on the menu as STA buses try green route" (2006)