ABSTRACT
In his inaugural address, President Obama declared “We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.” The word “soil” in his address refers to the production of biofuels. The idea of producing liquid biofuels from biomass goes back to 1925 when Henry Ford predicted, “The fuel of the future … is going to come from … every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented” (New York Times, Sept. 24, 1925; Sticklen, 2007). Indeed, Henry Ford’s first car, the 1896 Quadracycle, ran on pure ethanol, and the first gas station to sell 10% ethanol blend in the U.S. opened in 1933 (Sticklen, 2007).
