A Sociological Look at Biofuels: Ethanol in the Early Decades of the Twentieth Century and Lessons for Today

This article develops a broad sociological understanding of why biofuels lost out to leaded gasoline as the fuel par excellence of the twentieth century, while drawing comparisons with biofuels today. It begins by briefly discussing the fuel‐scape in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, examining the farm chemurgic movement, New Deal agricultural policies, mechanization trends within agriculture, and, finally, the invention of leaded gasoline. The second half of the article applies insights from that historical analysis to the biofuel craze currently under way. By employing a political‐economy interpretation of the socioeconomic context combined with a path‐dependency‐informed analysis of the technological trajectories, the article reveals the social forces that structured the trends and outcomes in biofuel innovations across the two eras.