Dangerous Ideas

As I was reading articles about Danica Patrick, I came across a mention of ethanol. It’s so cool that the Indy 500 will be trying to switch to 100% ethanol by 2007! Like bio-diesel, alcohol is a sustainable fuel.

Bio-diesel is great and really flexible. Gaba was telling me how she and Evan chose bio-diesel over alcohol since they can alternate that with un-bio-dieselized (okay, I realize that’s not a word!) vegetable oil. But the cool thing about alcohol is that it’s pretty easy to make yourself … it’s a little easier to grow corn and then ferment it than it is to extract oil from it, then convert it to bio-diesel. At least that’s what I thought when I listened to various presenters at SolFest a couple years ago. I donated money to Alcohol Can Be a Gas to help them get their book out, and am still looking forward to getting a copy (they need help since they had to part ways with their publisher, by the way; if you’re interested, head of to the site and make a donation to get a book when it comes out).

It’ll be great to have a high-profile racing league endorse a sustainable fuel!