Word: diesel
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Renewable energy, it turns out, does grow on trees. The fruit pods plucked from jatropha trees have seeds that produce clean-burning diesel fuel. But unlike corn and other biofuel sources, the jatropha doesn't have to compete with food crops for arable land. Even in the worst of soils, it grows like weeds. Sound too good to be true? That's why brothers Paul and Mark Dalton chose to name their Florida jatropha company My Dream Fuel...
...betting: that jatropha, like other nonfood sources such as algae, will revive a biofuels movement battered of late by charges that it diverts too many crops from too many mouths. India has set aside 100 million acres for jatropha and expects the oil to account for 20% of its diesel consumption by 2011. Australia, China, Brazil and Kenya have also embraced it. In December, a Boeing 747 was successfully test-flown by Air New Zealand using a 50-50 blend of jatropha and aviation fuel. (Watch TIME's video about biofuel tree farmers in action...
...Daltons are growing (since 2006 they've planted 900,000 near Fort Myers) thrive so well in Florida that they may yield up to eight times as much oil as they do in places like India and Africa. That translates into as much as 1,600 gal. of diesel fuel per acre per year, vs. 200 gal. for stocks that grow in the wild...
This news is likely to be the buzz at the National Biodiesel Conference, which convenes in San Francisco on Feb. 1. Given how record diesel-fuel costs literally drove up food prices last year--tractors and delivery trucks run on diesel--suppliers hope the new Administration will consider jatropha as stimulus-worthy as wind or solar power...
...been itching to get its stylishly economic models on the market in the U.S., and the deal with Chrysler can be seen as part of a series of "strategic partnerships" it has sealed with other automakers in recent years, including one with Tata motors and a deal to build diesel engines with Daimler-Chrysler, before the breakup last year of that German-American alliance...