The word energy has been thrown bandied about so extensively over the last several years, it’s hard even to understand what people are really talking about.

When we discuss energy and the dependence of the United States on foreign countries for energy we are, almost exclusively, discussing oil. The energy we get from oil is primarily for transportation. Crude oil makes gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, kerosene and many other valuable products such as plastics and petroleum derived chemicals.

So when we open a discussion about renewable energy and how it can reduce our dependence on foreign oil, we are talking alternative transportation energy. Biodiesel, ethanol, hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles, and hydrogen are the primary alternatives for transportation fuels.

When you think about ethanol, just remember that it is usable in flex-fuel vehicles as a gasoline substitute. In most cars you can run as much as 10% ethanol in your gasoline; however, if your engine is not rated as a flex-fuel, long term use of ethanol blends over E10 can cause damage to your engine.

Biodiesel is derived from vegetable oils or animal fats. In order for these esters to be legally called biodiesel, they must conform to ASTM D6751 specifications for use in diesel engines. Biodiesel is not just waste vegetable oil poured into a diesel fuel tank. There is a chemical process called transesterfication that the oils or fats must go through before they can be called biodiesel. Once the process is complete and the oils and fats have been processed into biodiesel, it can be easily mixed with regular petroleum diesel fuel in concentrations as high as B99 (99% biodiesel and 1% petroleum diesel) down to a B2 blend. Biodiesel in any fuel mix shows reduction in most pollutants and green house gas emissions over straight petroleum diesel, and biodiesel also adds lubricity to the engine. This additional lubricity is even more important with the new low and ultra-low sulfur diesel fuels.

Hybrid vehicles use either a small spark ignition engine (gasoline-powered) or a small compression ignition engine (diesel) along with a battery operated electric drive system to operate the vehicle. Some drawbacks are that you have to use a battery system for the electricity, and the bulk of your mileage savings tends to come from in-town driving rather than highway driving. So if you do most of your driving in town with lots of stop-and-go at low speeds, you can use considerably less fuel in your daily life. If you have the bulk of your driving on the highway at highway speeds, you are better off with a vehicle that just gets good mileage. Of course, if you are in a major metropolitan area where you are going to experience stop-and-go driving even on the highways during your commute, and public transportation is not available to you, then a hybrid could still make a huge difference in your fuel consumption.

Electric vehicles are powered from our electrical grid through resources found right here in the USA. Coal, natural gas, methane, wind, solar; whatever powers your home then powers your vehicle. Drawbacks are range, the time it takes to charge up your batteries, and unless you are one of those few lucky ones who has access to clean renewable electricity generation you are still pumping greenhouse gasses and pollution into the air. It just comes from the stacks at the power plant rather than your tail pipe.

We have all heard about the hope of hydrogen. Hydrogen vehicles hold a great potential promise for our transportation needs for the future. Still, we must overcome many obstacles to see the fulfillment of a hydrogen economy. We know we can use hydrogen to power a vehicle. That has been the easy part. Our next challenges are to make those vehicles cost effective, make the fuel accessible, and create that fuel in a renewable green manner. It does not make much sense to use a coal-fired power plant to create hydrogen. We are still just transferring the pollution from the tail pipe to the smoke stack. That is not what I would call a great leap forward.

With the exception of the Northeastern United States, the rest of the country is supplied with its heating and cooling from electricity, natural gas, and propane. Propane is a product derived from natural gas as well as petroleum processing. Propane by its nature does come, partially from foreign sources. Otherwise all the electricity used in the US is derived from resources in the US. Our coal comes from the US and the wind and sun we use in our renewable efforts fall within the border of the US. Biomass and natural gas production are also derived from natural resources within the borders of the US.

The point here is to not confuse the argument. Over and over, we hear people try to tie foreign oil to our electricity usage, when, in truth, they are comparing apples to oranges. We have different types of energy for different applications. Regardless of what type of energy we are using for transportation or electricity in our homes and work places we desperately need to look to energy conservation as the primary way we can reduce the amount of fuel we use and pollution we create. Every source of energy has some ecological cost to it. It is our responsibility to make sure that those resources are used in a way that most efficiently and cleanly drives our economy and our lives.