Recognition is a good start...

Recognition is a good start if there is going to be a change in the way we do things in the US. I listened intently to the President's State of the Union address, and I was very excited when he specifically mentioned biodiesel, ethanol, wind and solar energies. I'm also glad he mentioned trying to improve fuel economy standards in cars. I wish he would have said trucks and SUVs would get improved fuel economy standards also. Diesels are already helping trucks and SUVs get better MPG than gasoline engined equivilants, so it's already kind of a good thing. There will be diesel engines in small SUVs and 1/2 ton pickups by 2009.

This article by CNET.com describes how we have a long way to go with the US's production of biodiesel. The US used 62 billion gallons of diesel, and will be soon be producing 150 million gallons of biodiesel. Yeah, LONG WAY.

The US has made great advances in the production of ethanol. For 2006, 4.9 billion gallons were produced, which is a good number if we are to meet the Energy Policy Act of 2005 goal of producing 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2012 and the President's new target would bump that figure up to 35 billion gallons by 2017. Check out this CNET.com article.

Ethanol 2.0 is a nice way of stating cellulosic ethanol. We need to get away from competing with food supplies by using corn to produce ethanol. The ethanol industry had to start somewhere, and corn was an easy place to start. Watch DuPont in the near future. They were the first stop on the President's alternative fuel tour, they own Pioneer, and recently revealed that they had co-developed biobutanol with BP.