It's still (essentially) your great-grandfather's great-grandfat

Did you know that the ethanol in the ethanol-enriched gasoline many Americans are filling up with today is virtually the same alcohol Lewis and Clark burned in their oil lamps back in the 1800s? Or that it's basically the same renewable fuel Henry Ford used to power his horseless carriage?

Since the era of lamp-lit nights and crank-start cars, ethanol production has become exponentially more efficient. History's sporadic support for ethanol has taken an upswing too, pushing biofuels into the media spotlight with President George W. Bush's 2007 State of the Union Address, which called for a fuels standard of 35 billion gallons per year (BGY) of renewable fuels by 2017.

While fuel ethanol itself has remained virtually unchanged, it's come a long way in the past 180 years