Tennessee Living

About the Author - Pettus L. Read

Pettus L. Read is editor of the Tennessee Farm Bureau News and director of communications for the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation. He may be contacted by e-mail at .

In a non-imposing brick and metal building, located behind the Stark Agribusiness and Agriscience Center on the campus of Middle Tennessee State University, the future of America’s energy woes just may be found under a brown greasy tarp. There are no signs warning that it is a restricted area. You will not find square-jawed, mirrored sunglass wearing security guards posted in conspicuous locations on every corner armed with armor piercing ammo to protect a national secret. Nope. This is not your average research facility that may hold the future of a nation.

Instead, it is a vocational agriculture teacher training classroom/shop that most days holds the future of the next generation of agricultural teachers for our state. But, for over thirty years a professor in that building has been predicting our energy future without even receiving the fanfare that a carnival fortune teller gets on a shopping center parking lot.

My first meeting with Dr. Cliff Ricketts, professor of Agricultural Education at MTSU, was several years before he attempted to harness the energy of the sun and make fuel from water. We were both farm boys and agricultural students. Our goals at that time were to harness some grades that would earn us a degree that could help both our current futures, never the less the world’s. As a student, Cliff was one who did affect the grades of many of his classmates by throwing the grade curve out the window and sending some of us to extra hours of studying. I knew way back then that he had the potential to make a difference, if only people would listen. He was ingrained in wondering “what if?” and he has not changed since those college days of long ago.

For years, Cliff has been building alternative fuel engines. He was hybrid before hybrid was fashionable and before the folks across the waters put all of us over a barrel. An oil barrel, that is. Cliff was building ethanol engines in the early 80s and even gave presentations on corn-derived fuel at the World’s Fair in Knoxville. I interviewed him way back then and at that time he was urging research to go further in corn and soybean derived fuels, but no one really wanted to listen. Fuel prices were not all that bad and we were pumping oil right here at home, as well as in other places of the world. Why change to something else when we would never run out of gasoline or have to pay much for it? Gas was under a buck fifty. No, we really didn’t need engines that could run on other fuels.

But, Cliff went on with his dreams and wonderings of “what if?” With the help of select students in his classes and a few special ones with talents to envision some of the same dreams Cliff has, he developed cars that used methane from cow manure, ethanol from soybean oil and fibrous plants, solar from the sun and now hydrogen from water. He and his students have set land- speed records with different cars and engines on the Great Salt Flats and held the record for a hydrogen car for 15 years. 

In May of 2006, Cliff appeared before a congressional hearing as an expert witness and said, “I believe the alleviation of the future U.S. energy crisis lies within plug-in flex fuel hybrid vehicles.” Even at that time the term hybrid was seen as way out there for many of us, but not today. Cliff’s “what ifs” are coming true. The farm boy’s predictions are becoming more understandable.

Back in 1978 when he discussed using ethanol to run an old farm truck, he never realized that we would today be involved in a biofuels effort in this state that could bring worldwide attention to Tennessee. Just recently, the Tennessee Biofuels Initiative, which was begun in 2007, received a shot in the arm with DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol LLC (DDCE) and the University of Tennessee (UT) Research Foundation, through its Genera Energy LLC, announcing a partnership to construct an innovative pilot-scale biorefinery and state-of-the-art research and development facility for cellulosic ethanol in Vonore, Tenn. The project will utilize UT’s world-class expertise in cellulosic feedstock production and co-product research, as well as its work with Tennessee farmers to develop the first dedicated cellulosic energy crop supply chain for cellulosic biorefineries utilizing switchgrass. The Tennessee Biofuels Initiative is a farm-to-fuel business plan developed by UT Institute of Agriculture researchers that models a biofuels industry capable of supplementing 30 percent of Tennessee’s current petroleum consumption. This is just another example of energy problems being solved by agriculture. Using a feedstock to produce a fuel will take farmers and we have some of the best.

Dr. Ricketts is now working on a project to drive from one end of Tennessee to the other using nothing but sun and water. What a concept! I have no doubt he will do it. If only folks had listened to him in 1978. 

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Magazine:
Tennessee Home & Farm, Summer 2010 Edition Edition

Headline:
Will It Be Left Up To Agriculture To Solve Our Energy Problems?

Summary:
Back in 1978 when Dr. Cliff Ricketts discussed using ethanol to run an old farm truck, he never realized that we would today be involved in a biofuels effort in this state that could bring worldwide attention to Tennessee.

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