Replies

Noting that regardless that Congress has had since the 1973 oil embargo to address oil independence and oil pricing, history is repeating itself. So I'm keeping an eye on domestic energy alternatives.

First, although I don't use this product, since people are starting to use bicycles more, people might be interested in this autoshifting bicycle.

Autoshifting bicycle

Also, I'm keeping an eye on developments in bio-fuel production.

First, the bad news about ethanol. Ethanol fires are evidently harder to control than gasoline fires.

Ethanol fires hard to control 1
Ethanol fires hard to control 2

Hopefully, ways will be developed to make controlling ethanol fires easier.

On the brighter side concerning ethanol, there's now evidence that people might get as much, or more, bang per buck for their gas dollars with gas / ethanol mixtures.

Gas-competitive gas / ethanol mixtures

Also, I was surprised by the introduction of a machine (popularly known as a still) for making home-made ethanol.

EFuel100

In stark contrast to the 1700 gallons of water required to make one gallon of corn-based ethanol as indicated by the OP, the EFuel100 uses only 170 gallons of water to produce 35 gallons of ethanol In other words, the EFuel100 uses less than 1% (about 0.2%) as much water as corn ethanol, under five gallons, to produce one gallon of ethanol.

But also note that the water used in the EFuel100 process does not take into account the water needed to grow the sugar that is used for this process.

And watch out for fines for violating biofuel regulations.

Fines for violating biofuel regulations

Also, progress is being made in the development of other non-corn ethanol production technologies as well.

Non-corn ethanol

Finally, I've also been hearing good things about biodiesel production but need to find some links.