David Blume


David Blume is an American permaculture teacher and entrepreneur. He has been an especially prolific public speaker, and is a vocal advocate for production of ethanol fuel, especially at local, small and medium scales.

Major work

Blume is the author of Alcohol Can Be A Gas!, a review of the history of alcohol used as a fuel, together with an extensive investigation of how to produce alcohol fuel from different crops, using a variety of tools and techniques, and with an explanation of relevant laws and industry practices. The focus of the book is on how to set up and run crops and facilities for local ethanol use, as opposed to large-scale industrial or commercial use.
The book was originally written in 1983 for release with Alcohol as Fuel, a 10-episode how-to series on PBS produced by KQED in San Francisco. Copies of the original book and TV series, which was only aired on KQED, have since been nearly impossible to obtain. The book was rewritten and expanded to 640 pages over several years and re-released with the same title on November 1, 2007.
Blume's primary insight follows from that of Buckminster Fuller, who wrote the foreword to the book in 1983: that alcohol is a renewable variety of solar energy in liquid form, the cultivation of which can enhance soils, be used as a minimally- or non-polluting fuel, and enable farmers and individuals at large to make fuel locally.

Other projects

At one time or another Blume has been involved in the following projects.