Renewable: The World-Changing Power of Alternative Energy
By Jeremy Shere
4.5/5
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About this ebook
Where does the energy we use come from? It's absolutely vital to every single thing we do every day, but for most people, it is utterly invisible. Flick a switch and the lights go on. It might as well be magic.
Science writer Jeremy Shere shows us in Renewable: The World-Changing Power of Alternative Energy that energy is anything but magical. Producing it in fossil fuel form is a dirty, expensive—but also hugely profitable— enterprise, with enormous but largely hidden costs to the entire planet. The cold, hard fact is that at some point we will have wrung the planet dry of easily accessible sources of fossil fuel. And when that time comes, humankind will have no choice but to turn—or, more accurately, return—to other, cleaner, renewable energy sources. What will those sources be? How far have we come to realizing the technologies that will make these sources available?
To find the answers, Shere began his journey with a tour of a traditional coal-fueled power plant in his home state of Indiana. He then continued on, traveling from coast to coast as he spoke to scientists, scholars and innovators. He immersed himself in the green energy world: visiting a solar farm at Denver's airport, attending the Wind Power Expo and a wind farm tour in Texas, investigating turbines deep in New York City's East River, and much more.
Arranged in five parts—Green Gas, Sun, Wind, Earth, and Water—Renewable tells the stories of the most interesting and promising types of renewable energy: namely, biofuel, solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower. But unlike many books about alternative energy, Renewable is not obsessed with megawatts and tips for building home solar panels. Instead, Shere digs into the rich, surprisingly long histories of these technologies, bringing to life the pioneering scientists, inventors, and visionaries who blazed the way for solar, wind, hydro, and other forms of renewable power, and unearthing the curious involvement of great thinkers like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Nicola Tesla.
We are at an important crossroads in the history of renewable technologies. The possibilities are endless and enticing, and it has become increasingly clear that renewable energy is the way of the future. In Renewable, Jeremy Shere's natural curiosity and serious research come together in an entertaining and informative guide to where renewable energy has been, where it is today, and where it's heading.
Jeremy Shere
JEREMY SHERE is a science writer who has written and produced for some of public radio's top nationally syndicated science programs, including Sound Medicine, Earth & Sky, and A Moment of Science. His work has appeared in Talking Points Memo, Reuters, Matter Network, The Jerusalem Report, Bloom, and Reform Judaism, among others. He is the author of Renewable: The World-Changing Power of Alternative Energy. Shere teaches journalism and magazine writing at the School of Journalism at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he lives with his wife and twin sons.
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Reviews for Renewable
4 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If you are looking for an in-depth, technical analysis of the current state of alternative energy, this book is not for you. If you are looking for information on cutting-edge research in alternative energy, this books is not for you. However, if you wish to see where renewable energy has come from, and what direction it is heading, this book is perfect. Shere does a fantastic job of tracing each alternative energy concept (biofuel, solar, wind, geothermal, water) to its roots. His historical information is well-researched, and he writes excellent narrations showing how alternative energy got to where it is today. He goes into the current state of alternative energy, but not in excruciating detail. Overall, I think that this book gives the reader a broad, working knowledge of the history and concepts of alternative energy.
Book preview
Renewable - Jeremy Shere
INTRODUCTION
The idea for writing a book about renewable energy first struck me when my car—a ’97 Honda Accord—died on my way back from Indianapolis to Bloomington, Indiana, where I live. The engine coughed once, sputtered gently, then simply shut down. I wasn’t particularly upset; the car had served me faithfully for the past twelve years, and now its time had come.
But even as I pulled off onto the highway shoulder I began to fret about the most obvious consequence of my car’s demise: having to buy a new one. It wasn’t the expense—thanks to the recession, car prices had never been lower, and we—my wife Barre and I—could afford a reasonable monthly payment. No, my anxiety had more to do with what kind of car we should be driving. Gas-electric hybrids were all the rage and seemed like a smart, environmentally conscious option. But what about a flex-fuel car, whatever that was? Was it worth considering an all-electric car? Was it even possible to get an electric car? (This was before the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf hit the market.)
I realized, after several late nights spent poring over used-car Web sites and Consumer Reports ratings, that figuring out what kind of car to buy was really a matter of deciding what sort of energy consumers we wanted to be. With memories of $4.30-per-gallon gasoline fresh in mind, buying a car that simply guzzled gasoline seemed, well, somehow wrong. Or maybe passé. Surely it made sense to get a hybrid, like all the shiny new Toyota Priuses we’d seen gliding quietly around our neighborhood. But given the relatively small amount of time we actually spend driving around our small, bike-friendly college town, the little money we’d save on gas just didn’t add up. Plus, hybrids are expensive—we’d pay a premium for the brand name. Same goes for flex-fuel cars that run on gas that’s up to 85 percent corn-based ethanol and 15 percent regular gasoline, or E85. (Another deterrent: not all gas stations sell E85. In 2008 there were around 1,600 such filling stations in the United States, but none in Bloomington.) The only all-electric plug-in was the Tesla Model S, which went for a cool $50,000—just a tiny bit out of our price range. As far as I knew, cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells existed only as prototypes.
Finally, after endless hemming and hawing and several sleepless nights (hard to believe, but true), we settled on a new Honda Civic with a fuel-efficient but decidedly nonalternative, gasoline-consuming internal combustion engine. Although our new car was state of the art, got roughly as many miles per gallon as a hybrid, and will probably keep us rolling for the next twelve years with minimal problems, it still felt like a letdown. Or, more accurately, my wife and I both felt that we’d somehow failed to take the leap and boldly join the coming revolution in renewable energy. Wasn’t it our duty, as environmentally conscious, well-educated Americans, to do our bit? Was it not worth paying a little more for a hybrid car if for no other reason than to contribute to what seemed like the wholly righteous movement toward renewable fuels and alternative sources of energy that will wean us off oil and other climate change–causing fossil fuels?
The answer to that question was not at all obvious. (To be honest, it still isn’t.) But what is clear is that the commonplace experience of shopping for a car made me aware for the first time in a truly visceral way that how we produce and consume energy is an everyday concern in my, in your—in our—everyday lives. As a journalist and a science writer I’d read a lot about renewable energy and interviewed dozens of scientists working on a wide range of new energy technologies. Compared to the average person, I was fairly well informed about the latest trends and advances in renewable energy. But that knowledge didn’t really hit home. I still had only a cursory idea of where and how the energy we consumed in our house and on the road was produced. And although I knew something about biofuel, solar cells, wind power, hydrothermal technology, and other forms of renewable energy, I didn’t have a clear sense of the big picture, of how—or if—the dozens of alternative energy technologies we hear so much about every day really added up to something new and viable. I was almost completely in the dark about how these technologies would make a real difference in our lives in the near, mid-, and long-term future. Until, that is, shopping for a new car and negotiating the myriad energy-related options at play brought home the realization that renewable energy is no longer the stuff of science fiction. It’s here, now, slowly but surely changing the world in ways large and small.
Not all of those changes, though, are as obvious as the advent of hybrid vehicles or the wind farms cropping up around the world. Some are more subtle, like the increasing amounts of ethanol now routinely blended in with regular gasoline and the dozens of power stations across the country that have quietly switched to burning alternative fuels. Other advances in alternative energy are so new that they’re still in development, at least a few years or even decades away from having a real and noticeable impact on people’s lives. But the fact that energy research happening in labs and boardrooms and testing facilities across the country and around the world today will change our lives in the near future got me thinking hard about how all of this will play out as the twenty-first century unfolds.
As a science writer, I’m curious. I want to know what’s going on in the labs, who’s on the brink of discovering an incredible new source of renewable energy, which promising technologies are for real and which are merely pipe dreams. But beyond professional curiosity, as a citizen and especially as the father of two small boys who will grow up to inherit an energy economy very different from the one I’ve lived with, I feel an urgent duty to know, to learn what I can about how and why the way we produce and consume energy is changing, and what this means for me, for my kids, for everyone. The subject of Energy with a capital E is so big, so complex and overwhelming, that it often seems impossible to get a handle on the myriad crises and challenges facing us as we tentatively begin to transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable alternatives. After all, unless you’re a high-powered scientist or CEO or policy bigwig, what can one person actually do to sway the course of events? What difference can you, or any normal person, make?
The answer is that you and I can make a difference, and the first step toward being more than merely a passive observer or ignorant consumer is to learn what renewable energy is really about: where it’s headed, why it matters, and how it’s already changing the world.
That, in short, is what this book is about: navigating the ins and outs of renewable energy to inform, engage, and give readers a handle on the science, technology, and especially the story of alternative energy. My hope is that readers will feel empowered to be active participants in the quickly evolving energy economy. But achieving this won’t be easy. Because to even begin to scratch the surface of renewable energy research and development is to become enmeshed in a complex jumble of new, competing ideas and technologies that change rapidly from year to year and even month to month. Anyone who’s been paying even scant attention can probably tick off the major players: solar, wind, geothermal, biofuel, hydropower, and so on. But what these concepts actually mean—how, if at all, they function as viable, working technologies; what they consist of—is far more complex than it might seem at first blush. Take biofuels, for example. For roughly the past decade in the United States, the ethanol industry has focused on producing fuel from corn. Now, in the aftermath of the so-called food versus fuel debate, attention has turned to cellulosic ethanol—fuel made from nonedible green plants, like kudzu or switchgrass. And some visionary entrepreneurs have rethought biofuels entirely, seeking to squeeze oil from cultivated algae. Navigating the world of biofuel research is tricky, not only because the science and technology change so rapidly but because, as with any industry in its infancy, its great promise is tempered by great uncertainty.
The same can be said about renewable energy as a whole. The patchwork of ideas, innovations, and technologies at play is exciting but perilous, uncertain yet full of promise. We know for a fact that oil and natural gas will one day run out and that even coal is finite, not to mention environmentally corrosive. We also know that, sooner than we probably think, we’ll need (or be forced) to replace fossil fuels with alternative, renewable sources. We just don’t know with any real certainty when that transition will happen and which renewable technologies, together with nuclear energy, will emerge to form the basis of a new energy economy. But we’re starting to get some clues. This book is about piecing together the clues to learn what we can about renewable energy’s big picture, however shifting and incomplete.
So what might this big picture look like? Imagine with me for a moment that it’s the year 2075, and you’re making breakfast. In many ways, things haven’t changed much. You butter some toast, peel an orange, brew a pot of coffee. But some things are different; for example, the toaster, the coffee machine, and all the other appliances in your kitchen are powered by electricity generated by your roof, which is made of shingles doubling as solar panels, and which also features several mounted wind turbines catching the morning breeze and turning it into electricity to keep your refrigerator, microwave, and dishwasher humming. And thanks to a wall-mounted smart meter, you’re able to monitor exactly how much electricity you’re using, which devices are using it, and when. Scanning the meter’s touch-pad, with a few quick strokes you program it to power down as much of the house as possible during the day to save energy.
Other things are different, too, in less obvious ways. Like garbage. Instead of tossing the remains of breakfast into a trash can or down the garbage disposal, you drop it into a large shoebox-sized device—let’s call it a biomass compactor—that, with the push of a button, condenses the banana peels, peach pits, broccoli stalks, coffee grinds, and whatever other organic waste you toss in, into a dense brick. The brick is then whisked down a pneumatic tube to your garage, where it enters another, larger machine—we’ll call this one the Home Biorefinery 5000. The garbage brick is then drenched in a solution of enzymes and designer microbes that breaks down the organic material, isolates and ferments its carbohydrates, and distills it into high-grade ethanol. You push a button and, presto: out through a hose pours biofuel, directly into the tank of your nearby car. Now you’re gassed up and ready to go. And the cost to you? Nearly zero, thanks to government subsidies that encourage the purchase of home biofuel machines (which are largely self-powered). The cost to the environment: minimal, since your homemade gas doesn’t consume fossil fuels and doesn’t emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It’s clean, cheap, and completely renewable.
Of course, your other car is a seventh-generation Honda Clarity, powered by fuel cells (or perhaps the latest all-electric Chevy Volt or Nissan Leaf, now quite affordable for the masses owing to economies of scale). Thanks to a breakthrough in hydrogen production technology ten years ago, fueling your Clarity at a nearby hydrogen/biofuel filling station has never been cheaper. But you often don’t need to stop at the station because your home hydrogen fuel system—hooked up to your home’s natural gas line—makes enough fuel to get you to and from work.
So off to work you go, zipping past a river where, beneath the calm surface, hydrokinetic turbines capture the water’s steady current, turning it into electricity sent to the local power grid. Thanks to the completion of the grid’s massive overhaul in 2040, it works more like the Internet, not simply sending electricity everywhere whether it’s needed or not, but rather responding to data collected from smart meters that help the grid and its operators decide where and when to direct flow. (The thirty seconds you took to program your home’s smart meter helped.) As you cruise along, listening to the latest U2 album (yep, they’re still around, thanks to a breakthrough in stem cell antiaging therapy), you’re thinking that in a few years your oldest kid will need a car of his own. One of the new compact electric plug-in models is probably the way to go. At $3,000 a pop, they’re durable yet practically disposable. If your kid’s propensity for breaking everything he touches is an indication—remember the fuel cell–powered laptop he dropped in the pool last year?—any car he drives probably won’t last very long.
But that’s still a few years away. Now, you pull into the space-saving underground garage at your office at the local nuclear power plant. (Don’t worry—there hasn’t been an accident at a nuclear facility in nearly a century. Plus, in the past fifty years the problem of nuclear waste has been mostly solved thanks to a new technology that renders it essentially harmless.) Unlike the foreboding, conical concrete towers emblematic of earlier nuclear power plants, today’s look pretty much like any other normal, LEED-certified platinum-level office building. You walk into the reception area—a spacious atrium lined with floor-to-ceiling windows and filled with natural light. The building is so well designed that there are remarkably few artificial lights anywhere. Although the building’s roof is made of the same solar panel shingles that are on your house and is equipped with several high-voltage wind turbines, the building’s overall energy consumption is relatively minimal, thanks to the thick, well-insulated walls and triple-pane windows that let in light but not heat. Running the plant’s nuclear fusion reactors is energy-intensive, of course, so burning some oil and natural gas is still necessary to generate enough electricity to power the machinery. But oil, coal, and natural gas account for only about 15 percent of raw materials used to generate power. The other 85 percent comes from biofuels, hydrogen fuel cells, the nuclear power you help produce at work, solar and wind, and geothermal energy plants feeding power into the grid. Together, these technologies—channeled through an electrical grid sensitive and responsive to your consumption patterns—provide enough energy to meet the world’s growing energy demands. And they do it at minimal cost to the environment.
How realistic is this scenario? It’s hard to say. But based on what I’ve learned while writing this book, a world like the one I’ve just imagined, or some version of it, isn’t completely fantastical. In fact, in many significant ways, that world is already here. In the United States alone an increasing number of buildings and homes are mounting solar panels on their roofs and investing in geothermal systems to help lower cooling and heating costs. Around the world, wind farms featuring majestic turbines spread out over hundreds of acres are becoming commonplace. Nuclear power accounts for a good chunk of the electricity we use (although the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation and how to handle nuclear waste remain serious problems). We pump biofuel-enhanced gasoline into our cars, an increasing number of which are gas-electric hybrids. For more than a century, dams and waterfalls have generated ample amounts of electricity, and now new technologies like underwater turbines and wave-power devices are starting to break new ground.
As you will see, this book is not prescriptive or politically motivated; I do not advocate any particular energy policy, take a stand on the contentious debates concerning nuclear energy and climate change, or include instructions for how to build ad hoc solar panels or wind turbines and live off the grid. I offer no central, comprehensive thesis or polemic. (While I’m personally convinced by an Everest-sized mountain of evidence that human-enhanced climate change is all too real and that we have an obligation to do what we can to reverse or, at the very least, mitigate its effects, I make no effort to persuade anyone who thinks differently, mainly because other writers have already made the case for the reality of climate change much more effectively than I ever could.)
What this book does offer is a glimpse behind the hype and headlines in an effort to put renewable energy into a useful, enlightening, and engaging context. My only true agenda in writing this book is to bring the diffuse topic of renewable energy into focus and to bring it to life by telling stories about the incredible technologies that comprise it and about the people—scientists, engineers, inventors, visionaries, and schemers—who, over the past few centuries, have labored and struggled, often against incredible odds, to offer real alternatives to fossil fuels. With a few notable exceptions, most books and articles about renewable energy treat it as an engineering topic, focusing on kilowatt-hours, efficiency ratings, and the technical minutiae of how things work. Which is all good and well: after all, it’s impossible to understand why energy matters without understanding what it is, how it’s made, and how it works. But, to be honest, after a few paragraphs of technical material my eyes start to glaze over and my mind begins to wander. Which is why I focus less on the technical details of the amazing technologies I discuss in the following pages and much more on how things like fuel made from plants, solar cells, giant wind turbines, geothermal systems buried miles underground, and wave machines came to be. As Alexis Madrigal notes in his excellent Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology, renewable energy is astonishingly underhistoricized, the assumption being that green, alternative energy technologies are brand-new. For the most part, in fact, renewable energy devices and ideas have been around for many decades and in some cases centuries. So this book is in part a narrative history aimed at elucidating the origins and development of some of the most significant green energy technologies making headlines today.
Like any historical narrative worth its salt, though, this book is also about why the history of renewable energy matters, how the contraptions and technologies it’s given birth to are changing the world today, and how they’ll continue to grow and evolve in the future. If this book has any one overarching idea or argument at its core, it’s that renewable energy is less a choice than an inevitability. Fossil fuels are so central to modern civilization that it’s difficult and even frightening to imagine a world without them. But eventually, inevitably, the time will come—whether it’s right around the corner, as peak oil
advocates argue, or many decades (or even centuries) from now—when oil, coal, natural gas, and even uranium will become so scarce that we have no choice but to turn to other, cleaner, more sustainable sources of energy. And in doing so we will not be venturing into a new, uncharted energy landscape but rather returning to the way things have been for most of human history—and prehistory.
I
GREEN GAS
1
HENRY FORD AND THE SEARCH FOR ETHANOL
In the winter of 1917, as American troops sailed for Europe to join the bloodiest war in recorded history, automobile magnate Henry Ford steered a specially built Model T through the humid backwoods roads of rural Florida, on the lookout for sugar plantations and farmland suitable for growing crops that could be turned into motor fuel. As much as anyone in America, Ford had been responsible for ushering in a fast-paced, motorized era increasingly dependent on gasoline and oil. But an agrarian at heart, he disdained the profit-driven oil barons and wildcatters whose business both enabled and depended on the stratospheric growth of the automobile industry. To Ford’s mind, the oilmen were unprincipled speculators whose obsession with the quick strike did little to benefit the towns and farming communities that opened their land to drilling. Plus, Ford believed—presciently, it turned out—that gasoline exhaust fumes polluted the air. To be forced to rely on such unwholesome fuel rankled, and the automobile maker was intent on finding alternative fuels for his wildly popular Model T. Like many others in the quickly maturing automobile business, Ford was intrigued by the prospects of alcohol. It not only burned cleaner than gasoline but was also a renewable resource derived from grains and other annual