peline in 1973, in order to capitalize on domestic oil. (Betz, 1998)
             The early 80's, we saw incredible interest in alternative fuel use spurred on by high fossil fuel cost and a multitude of legislative tax and investment incentives to promote the utilization of alternative fuels. Many of the projects utilizing these alternative type fuels were very profitable. If you combined a tax incentive, with a type of alternative fuel, it would be virtually impossible not to be profitable. Several industries took advantage of these opportunities to experiment with wind, solar and nuclear to offset the high cost of gas and oil. This was a good start in the power generation field but very little was engineered for the changes in the automotive industry.
             Most of these projects and fuel suppliers disappeared during the mid-1980's due to three key factors. First, the price of oil dropped in the second quarter of 1986 from $32 to $13 per barrel. Second, most of the legislative tax incentives were repealed or modified to a point where they lost their original purpose. Third, government sponsorship of R&D efforts has been reduced. Funding for all renewable energy research and development has declined by almost 90% from 1981 to 1990. A tremendous amount of money had been spent in developing technology to make all these alternate type fuels, but by the end of the 80's, virtually all of them were out of business. (Dinnenn, 2001).
             Given that we are all dependant on fossil fuel for our source of energy to live our lifestyles, how long can this continue? Strangely no one really knows the answer. In the 70's when the first worldwide energy crisis erupted, prompted by the purposeful decline in oil production by the OPEC nations. "The experts agreed that the worldwide reserves of subterranean oil would last about 40 years, at best." (Davy, 2005). If that were correct, we would be out of oil by now. Scientist have developed higher fide...