For more than a century, the vast majority of fuels used as energy sources to power operations in the world’s transportation, industrial, commercial, and residential sectors have been produced through the refinement and consumption of petroleum-based substances and coal. These energy sources, derived from fossil fuels, have been used to propel vehicles, illuminate lights, heat gas and electric stoves, and essentially make the world a more livable and prosperous place.

Over the years, great pains have been taken to develop cleaner alternative forms of energy. Being that it is the most easily tracked and recognizable, the transportation sector is the area in which the most identifiable gains have been made in the last three or four decades

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) launched the AFDC in 1991 in response to the Alternative Motor Fuels Act of 1988 and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. It originally served as a repository for alternative fuel vehicle performance data. - Department of Energy

MOTOR FUELS

In fact, the Alternative Fuels Data Center (AFDC), which is a project of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, launched in 1991, lists seven motor fuels today that can be seen as common alternatives to traditional gasoline and diesel.

Since the development of new fuel sources is a perpetual process, the AFDC also identifies a number of what it calls “emerging” fuels, which can be considered alternative fuels, that are in various stages of development and use. So, get ready to hear more about biobutanol (butanol made from biomass feedstocks), dimethyl ether (a synthetically produced colorless gas that is an alternative to diesel), and renewable gasoline (produced from biomass sources through a variety of biological, thermal, and chemical processes)