AUBURN, Ala. (WAAY) -- After recently seeing gas rise to $4 a gallon, more attention was drawn to alternative fuels. Alternative fuels and energy independence became bigger topics this presidential campaign. But when will they become a reality?
The United States has had the technology to create alternative fuels for the past 30 years.
But it's not until the last few years that the state and federal governments have begun rallying behind local farmers and universities to make alternative fuels a reality and tell foreign countries they no longer depended on their oil pipelines.
The United States imports 65 percent of its oil, with $1 billion a day being sent overseas. And oil prices are unpredictable.
The energy information administration shows in February 1998 a barrel of oil was $9.31. In February 2008 a barrel was $100. That was a 974 percent increase/
The price of oil is down for now but the question is: will it last? That's why some are turning to alternative fuels like ethanol and biodiesel.
"These are renewable alternatives for fuel and energy and we don't know when the petroleum oil supply will run out.," said Larry Fillmer with Auburn University.
Ethanol and biodiesel are the two major alternative fuels on the market. Ethanol or E-85 is a mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline.
Biodiesel can be a B-20 or B-100 mixture. B-20 is twenty percent vegetable oil and 80 percent gasoline. B-100 is 100 percent vegetable oil.
Auburn University is allocating millions of dollars in building new research and development laboratories to find Alabama's best natural resource to produce alternative fuels.
"We can do work that really advanced the technology and advances the capability to create biofuels and bioenergy in a more effective way," Filmer said.
Corn, switchgrass, poultry litter and wood chips are known as biofeed stocks. They can produce ethanol. Then canola, sunflowers and soybeans can produce biodiesel. Unlike gasoline, all of them are renewable sources of energy that can be regrown every year right here on American soil, not the Middle East.
"It's going to take a whole range of different biomaterials in order for us to become energy independent," Filmer said.
But not every state will use the same biofeed stock. Fillmer said each state has its own natural resource.
While corn is easier for the Midwest to grow, 2/3 of Alabama's is covered in forest. There is 15 million tons of wood waste in Alabama that could produce enough fuel for the entire state.
Wood waste is what's left over from paper mills or it's those tree limbs homeowners set out for the city to pick up.
"That's what surprises people, that we can take a tree and make diesel fuel out of it," said Steven Taylor, who is the director for Bioenergy and Bioproducts at Auburn University. He is developing various bioenergy programs on campus.
"Students are interested and we're trying to address those needs."Taylor said.
Auburn is using a mobile gasification unit to show how wood chips can be turned into a gas. The gas can be used as electricity or turned into a liquid, thus creating ethanol.
Wood will soon be Alabama's alternative fuel resource. The test now is to build the infrastructure to collect the waste, the facilities to process it and gas stations to sell it.
"We know a lot," Taylor said. We know the technology, how to make a synthetic diesel fuel. The challenge is how to do that cost effectively. It's just going to take us a little bit of time to make that transition."
Coming up: WAAY-31 shows a biodiesel production facility that produces biodiesel in Athens. See how it works and why cooking oil is a huge contributing factor.
Reporter: Laura Beth Ezzell
Web Editor: Dana Franks
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