More on cars

After reading Elisa's post on the depressing options if one wants to buy a car that is lighter on the environment, I found some interesting information on bio-diesel.  Now I know it's mostly considered a California hippy-dippy thing, but actually it's easier than it seems, and there are a lot of benefits. 

Bio-diesel is basically a vegetable-based diesel - usually made of canola oil or soy.  The first surprise to me was that you can put bio-diesel in a regular diesel engine, and in fact you can mix it with diesel.  The biggest problem is that there are not a lot of places to get bio-diesel, but if you can't get to a filling station, you can simply fill up with diesel.  Here is a map of all the bio-diesel filling stations in the US.  But if you're a real hippy-dippy, or just cheap, you can actually make the stuff yourself.  For people like me, I'd say "Don't try this at home".  At an average gas usage per year of, say 600 gallons, regular gas would cost around $1560 in my neck of the woods ($2.60/gall), whereas homemade bio-diesel would come in at about $360.  At the pump bio-diesel costs between $1.90 and $3.50.

The benefits are many.  Most obviously it reduces emissions to global warming to almost zero, and is non-toxic.  It is also good for our national security to be less dependent on foreign oil-producing nations, and good for the trade deficit to be buying our oil domestically.  The cons include the scarcity of filling stations, and if you live in a very cold climate, the oil can freeze.  There are measures one can take to prevent that.  For more in depth information about this, go to MetaEfficient's excellent website on the topic.  You can see a comparison of the cars that can be used for bio-diesel here - there are even a few SUVs and trucks for those who like big.

And for those who have good old-fashioned gas-guzzlers (because, hey, we're all about options, not preaching), there is a great website called GasBuddy, where you can find the cheapest gas in your hood.

Don't say we aren't trying to help you, one and all...

Comments

[MGR]

Hi, this is Mike from Treehugger.com

I was looking in our referrals and found your site. I just want to say "thanks" for the link.

Regards,

Mike

[Chuck Widdop]

The oil for bio-diesel can even be extracted from algae. Algae could easily be mass produced on less land than conventional crops like peanuts, and soy beans. It can even be grown in harsher climates like the deserts.