Piedmont Biofuels, Pittsboro, North Carolina, from the series "Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America"

About this artwork

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Photography and Media

Artist

Joel Sternfeld

Title

Piedmont Biofuels, Pittsboro, North Carolina, from the series "Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America"

Place

United States (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 2005

Medium

Chromogenic print

Inscriptions

No markings recto or verso The original diesel engine invented by Rudolf Diesel in Germany in 1893 ran on peanut oil. Henry Ford, who powered his first cars with ethanol, a plant-derived energy source, shared this belief in biomass fuels and their virtues, but around 1920 the oil industry all but halted their use in America. Leif Forer, Rachel Burton and Lyle Estill founded Piedmont Biofuel Co-op in the fall of 2002. Worker-members produce pure biodiesel (B100) from waste vegetable oil collected from local restaurants. After it has been refined, the vegetable oil can be used in any standard diesel vehicle. The fifty co-op members can fill up their cars from this tank or have it delivered. Although the co-op has been a promoter of “micro-nodal” energy production, offering classes and conferences and helping other small co-ops start up (“We have long suggested that homemade biodiesel holds the promise of upending the overarching, top-down energy infrastructure that holds most of us in its grasp”), when an abandoned chemical factory near the co-op recently became available, the decision was made to expand. The co-op now has the capacity to produce up to one million gallons of biodiesel per year. Besides preventing environmental degradation and scarring of the landscape caused by drilling and other oil infrastructure, biofuels release fewer harmful emissions into the atmosphere. Cars run on biofuel emit sixty-seven percent fewer smog-producing compounds and half as much carbon dioxide as conventional vehicles. With the installation of about eight hundred dollars worth of equipment, any standard diesel vehicle can be converted to run on unrefined vegetable oils, obtainable from any local fast food restaurant. The oil has all the same emissions benefits as refined biofuels—but the exhaust smells like french fries. From the portfolio, Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America, 1982–2005

Dimensions

Image: 26.5 × 33.2 cm (10 7/16 × 13 1/8 in.); Paper: 27.9 × 35.5 cm (11 × 14 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Ralph and Nancy Segall

Reference Number

2008.736

Extended information about this artwork

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