- Ethanol was one of the very first "alternative" fuels, but wasn't originally intended as such. No one really knows when mankind first began distilling ethanol, since the distillation actually predates recorded history to the neolithic period. Also known as "moonshine," ethanol was fairly popular as a fuel at the dawn of the 20th century, but fell out of favor when prohibitionists accused manufacturers of making cash on the sly by selling some of the excess to rum runners.
- In the modern sense, the two most common hybridization elements used in gasoline and diesel are biofuels. Ethanol came into vogue in the late 1990s as a possible solution to America's fuel crisis. At the time, Brazil was almost completely independent of foreign oil because it produced ethanol locally to use as a fuel. About the same time, biofuels made from used vegetable oil came into the mainstream as an additive and possible outright replacement for petroleum-derived diesel.
- Hybrid fuels generally burn cleaner and more efficiently than straight petroleum fuels. Additionally, biofuel components can be produce locally. Every dollar's worth of biofuel is one less that goes to Saudi Arabia and one more that goes to Oklahoma. Biofuels are also made from (theoretically) infinitely renewable resources, causing less concern about running out of gas in a century's time.
- Some fuels such as E20 and BioWillie (produced by a company founded by country music legend Willie Nelson) use as much as 20 percent biofuels by volume. But such fuels require crops such as corn, soy and rapeseed to produce. Those crops often require irrigation from middle America's largest underground aquifer (the Ogallala), which can only provide so much water before it runs dry. Countries like Brazil can produce almost endless quantities of ethanol because it is located in the middle of a massive rainforest. Its fuel crops get all the water they need without requiring additional irrigation.
- Biofuel producers are already moving away from traditionally crop-derived biofuels and toward far simpler and more sustainable sources, although there are still some obstacles, according to a report at esciencenews.com. "Cellulosic" ethanol is more expensive to produce, but can be made from wood chips, corn cobs and switchgrass (the most common grass in America). Algae contains massive amounts of potential fuel energy and can grow anywhere with water, carbon dioxide and organic matter to digest. On a large enough scale, algal fuel plants stand a chance of helping to reduce (or at least somewhat offset) global warming by removing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and replacing them with oxygen from the plant's photosynthetic reaction.