[Big Dave]

The poll is poorly worded and will probably be used even more poorly.

It's a push-poll.

In theory who could be opposed to alternative fuels? The problems start when you reduce it to reality.

There are only two really feasible renewable fuels out there: ethanol (actually denatured alcohol) and biodiesel.

Of the two only biodiesel makes any energy sense. Ethanol due to the energy costs of farming, transporting and fermenting refining the product takes more energy to make than it yields. Biodiesel is considerably better.

But both run into the same problem: They compete with food crop resources (arable land, fresh water, farm labor, fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides, etc). These resources are more finite than oil. If more acreage goes into ethanol or biodiesel feedstocks food prices go up. Bad idea.

Algal biodiesel offers some hope. You could build algae farms and refineries on desert lands near bodies of seawater. You refine the algae into biodiesel, propyl triol and feed mash on the spot so that you minimize transportation costs by transport finished product rather than raw materials. Seawater costs only the cost of the electricity for the pump motors. Desert land is worthless (could you build a algal biodiesel plant in the US given obstructive environmental regulations?) so you get around having to compete against food crops for resources. Nobody is farming on desert land using seawater. Yeah, biodiesel needs natural gas in today's state of the art to make the methanol and lye. But the US will be hip-deep in natural gas for the foreseeable future, buying time to find alternatives to the natural gas.

Biodiesel has one big problem from the standpoint of the consumer - its high (35 degree F) cloud point. So, if used straight it is a summer-only or southern states only renewable.

Ethanol has a similar problem. It works OK in tropical Brazil, but in the cold of the Midwest, its low Reid vapor pressure makes cold starts a nightmare. That's why it is currently sold as E85 - cut with 15% RUG.

An elegant solution to biodiesel's cloud point problem is to marry the biodiesel operation with a Fischer-Tropsch kerosene operation. F-T could use any number of carbonaceous feedstocks (coal, old tires, prepared garbage, even dried sewage sludge) to make its gaseous intermediate product. F-T makes an excellent high cetane distillate (F-T distillate is used by German diesel race cars) which could cut the biodiesel during cold weather into a usable product. Also, F-T produces CO2 like crazy. That CO2 could be captured and bubbled into the algae water to accelerate algae growth to industrial rates.