While visiting a Franklinton biotech company today, President Bush will promote his call that Americans reduce gasoline consumption by 20 percent in the next decade. Some Triangle residents already exceed that mark, proving it's possible to curb a gasoline habit. But there's nothing simple about it. In our gas-guzzling world, consumers must be highly motivated to use alternative fuels.

Fill-up stations offering a mix of petroleum and high amounts of ethanol, fuel from fermented plant material, can be hard to find. Biodiesels -- fuels made from plant and animal fats sometimes, mixed with petroleum -- are scattered here and there, known mainly to devotees. One provider of nearly pure biodiesel has a limited number of pump stations accessible only at set hours and only to members of a cooperative.

A few people, including Jurgen Henn, have succeeded in driving off the gasoline grid entirely.

Once a week, Henn walks from his Duke University office in Durham's Brightleaf District to collect plastic jugs of used cooking oil that three local restaurants save for him.

In his basement at home in Bahama, Henn blends methanol and potash with the discarded grease in a biodiesel reactor built with plumbing parts and a water heater. When his diesel Volkswagen Jetta runs low on fuel, he just pours in his home brew.

"I try to limit the amount of fossil fuel I use. We need to save that stuff as much as we can for our kids and for their kids," said Henn, a Duke University computer network specialist.

Others buy their biodiesel from a local manufacturer, the Piedmont Biofuels Cooperative. Beth Grabowski, an art professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, is one of 400 members of the co-op. She fills her car with 99.9 percent petroleum-free biodiesel at a pump on Carrboro Public Works property, one of seven co-op pumps in the Triangle. The fuel comes from a reactor the co-op runs in Chatham County that now produces about 1 million gallons of biodiesel a year.

Cost, complications

Buying biodiesel is not hassle free. The public works lot is open only from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, so Grabowski can only fuel up on weekdays. She needs to carry a key to unlock the pump. The fuel station doesn't take credit cards.

From late fall to early spring, she needs to add petroleum-based diesel to her fuel tank, so that her biodiesel, often made with chicken fat, doesn't coagulate in the colder weather. And, at $3.50 a gallon, her fuel is more expensive than what she can get at a gas station down the road.

Still, that is a small price to pay for releasing less greenhouse gas from her tailpipe and for burning less of an unrenewable fuel, Grabowski said.

"We are trying to take some responsibility to be part of the solution, even if that means spending a little bit more," Grabowski said. "It just seems crazy not to."

Consumption of alternative fuels has risen in North Carolina, state energy officials said. When it comes to ethanol, state and local governments are leading consumers. Last year, state government vehicles increased their use of E10, an ethanol blend with 10 percent ethanol, from 641,000 gallons to more than 880,000 gallons. They increased consumption of E85, the 85 percent ethanol blend, from 242,000 gallons to more than 281,000 gallons.

Small market

Individual consumers, however, have not sought out high blends of ethanol fuel as readily as expected, said Edward Holmes, president of Holmes Oil in Chapel Hill.

His company runs Cruizers convenience stores and installed the first E85 ethanol pump in the Triangle, on Sedwick Road in Durham, last summer. The E85 fuel can only be used in specially designed automobiles.

Even though the state energy office estimates there are 16,000 Triangle cars able to use that high level of ethanol -- so-called flexible fuel vehicles -- business has been slow at the pump.

As few as five people use it a day, Holmes said. His company will install a second pump at a convenience store it is opening in Pittsboro, but isn't yet sure there will be enough demand to justify selling it.

"The demand is not what we anticipated," Holmes said.

Supply, of course, could influence demand. Once more alternative fuels are readily available, people will try them, said Anne Tazewell, alternative fuels program manager at the N.C. Solar Center.

One promising option is affordable ethanol made not from starch in corn kernels -- the most common source today -- but from tough cellulose in many different plants. Novozymes, the Danish company running the Franklinton site Bush is visiting today, has conducted significant research in making mass production of such ethanol feasible. The president is expected to sit on a panel discussing progress in developing the new ethanol along with Novozymes staff and university researchers, including Ratna Sharma of N.C. State University.

North Carolina could have a bright future in producing the next generation of ethanol, especially since the state produces a wide range of plants, including corn stalks, wood chips and other plant waste, that could deliver needed biomass.

"We've got a big forestry industry and a sizable agriculture industry," Tazewell said. "We could be the Saudi Arabia of biomass."

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