10 Most Offbeat Stories of the Year: a Biofuels Digest anniversary special report

#1. A favorite story this year was the vote by the Vermont State Senate to approve hemp cultivation for the production of ethanol. That is ethanol, a/k/a/ “moonshine whiskey” and hemp a/k/a “marijuana”. The Digest “moonshine from marijuana” story took a look at Henry Ford Sr’s love affair with hemp, including sponsoring the construction of a hemp fiber car powered by hemp ethanol and known as the Hempmobile. The story includes links to footage from the Depression era of the Hempmobile in motion.

#2. A Brazilian ethanol plant with an allegedly deplorable record in abusive worker conditions reveals that among its investors are…wait for it…Bill and Hillary Clinton. The story did not back up too much on Hillary during the campaign, but was a distraction to say the least when the story surfaced in March.

#3. When in doubt, try coffee. A process called torrefaction used for roasting coffee beans was tested successfully as a means of reducing the cost of transporting biomass for cellulosic ethanol feedstock. Starbucks has not subsequently announced an entry into the ethanol field.

#4. Organized crime moves into….grease theft! A 250 percent rise in grease pilfering is attributed to organized criminal activity as the rising cost of feedstock creates an arbitrage opportunity for enterprising mafioso. In this story, crime had spread into more than 10 states but police were too busy laughing to do much crime prevention. Victims of the thefts are not quite sure why police think that this type of crime is beneath their dignity to investigate.

#5. The funniest climate change ad ever comes from Australia, in which the Get Up Australia! creates a fake organization called Fuel Watch that determines that fuel is f***ing expensive.

#6. In this story, enterprising Europeans convert unsold wine into ethanol, creating new uses for the “wine lakes” that have long been the butt of European jokes and a headache for European officials eager to protect the wine industry. Later in the year, it was revealed that Prince of Wales also is using biofuel made from undrinkable wines.

#7. An enterprising group of anti-biofuels demonstrators invaded a British biofuels conference and managed to land a pie in the face of the CEO of BP Fuels.

#8. Nigeria decides to ban ethanol because the oil-rich country cannot afford equipment to test imported gasoline for ethanol content, resulting in an embarrassment when E22 is imported from (presumably) Brazil and ruins the hoses and engines of thousands of cars that have an E10 limit. Why is Nigeria importing fuel, anyway?

#9. Myanmar wins international support for its plan to cultivate 7,000,000 acres of jatropha, despite rumors of heavy-handed army supervision of a forced conversion from food to fuel production. It all seemed great, that is, until someone realized that the country had disastrously miscalculated the acreage and a famine broke out in the formerly rice-rich country due, observers said, to the jatropha program. How drought-tolerant jatropha was cultivated in former rice paddies is something the foreign observers did not feel compelled to explain.

#10. The always-quotable Bob Lutz, vice-chairman and hybrids chief of General Motors, provided a lulu when he called global warming a “crock of s**t”. (Speaking of lulus, did you know that addition to Brazil’s Lula and India’s Lalu, one of the leaders in the Third World sustainable agriculture movement is Prince Lelei Lelaulu?)