United States

Although several key individuals in the Blue Fuel™ world are American, Blue Fuel™ has faded on the radar screen of the US Government, despite a 2005 US Department of Energy study that clearly states, “Compared to other leading alternative fuel candidates, DME appears to have the largest potential impact on society…and should be considered the fuel of choice for eliminating dependency on petroleum.”

At the national level, politically, the will to explore alternative fuels, with the exception of ethanol, has been lacking. (Political winds, however, can change direction.) Further, none of the larger truck or diesel engine manufacturers has demonstrated an interest in manufacturing vehicles or engines that will run on Blue Fuel™. In the US interest in Blue Fuel™ has emerged at the state level (where the governors of seven western states have expressed an interest in producing and using it) in smaller companies, such as Alternative Fuel Technologies (AFT), and in universities and research institutes.

AFT, for example, has stated that it will be ready to begin manufacturing Blue Fuel™ engines as early as 2011, and Nobel Laureate and USC professor George Olah, director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Institute, has eloquently outlined (along with co-authors Alain Goeppert and G. K. Surya Prakash) the remarkable potential for Blue Fuel™ in his 2006 book, Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy.

As for feedstocks, given that the US has the largest coal reserves in the world, coal-based Blue Fuel™ production has been targeted. The abundance of coal in the US is complemented by an abundance of wind from Texas to North Dakota, giving rise to the possibility that these two resources can be integrated to produce acceptably green Blue Fuel™.