How Hemp Could Replace Petroleum as a Fuel

This outlawed plant, cultivated by humans for eight millennia, would make a sustainable fuel.

The following is an excerpt from Doug Fine’s book, Hemp Bound (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2014).

It was midday on February 10, 2013, and I was very smoothly cruising south out of Denver, Colorado, in a hemp-powered limo. A sleek cream-colored 1979 Mercedes 300D, in fact, purportedly originally owned by Ferdinand Marcos.

“Plenty of space,” the driver told me as when I asked for the keys to the trunk before the drive. “Imelda’s shoes aren’t in there any more.”

Hemp oil was the fuel, but it’s not the kind of thing that I, the pampered passenger, would notice if I weren’t a cannabis journalist. The vehicle was equipped with a proprietary shock system that results in the sort of sensory experience I normally associate with water beds. The giant back seat (more of a back room) sofa—, indeed, all the seats—, were was covered in sheepskin. There was room enough for me to do my morning yoga back there.

Regardless of the unbelievably comfortable ride’s lineage, Bill Althouse, the chauffeur, was trying to demonstrate something on this enjoyable winter outing to Colorado Springs. What the longtime sustainability consultant and renewable energy engineer was showing is that today, in 2013, a plant cultivated by humans for eight millennia can replace petroleum.

In this same year, 2013 is a year during which, is a year during which [DF1] we same humans will no doubt surpass 2010’s consumption of 37.7 billion barrels of oil—that’s 87 million barrels a day, or a million barrels a second.27

IC’s sense that a hemp application only works in the big leagues if the right varieties are utilized.

- Read the entire article at AlterNet.

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How Hemp Could Replace Petroleum as a Fuel