It’s been two years and 10 months since Rob Del Bueno drove his biodiesel-powered 1974 Mercedes Benz 132 miles from Atlanta to Plains, Ga., for a meeting with state lawmakers, Jimmy Carter, and other entrepreneurs wanting to jumpstart an alternative fuel industry in Georgia.

The barbecue/meeting took place about six months after the president stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier with a “Mission Accomplished” banner draped behind him. It was two years before Hurricane Katrina, and long before Bush’s speech about ending America’s oil addiction.

Oil was $36 a barrel back then, roughly half what it is now. The biodiesel revolution Del Bueno aimed to begin was barely in its infancy. At the time, he gathered used vegetable grease from intown Atlanta restaurants and mixed batches of fuel that he sold from his driveway in Reynoldstown. Back then, there was a moderate amount of interest in biodiesel, but no action.

Nothing came of that meeting in Plains. None of the contacts he’d made, or the half-ass legislation the Georgia General Assembly has since passed, did anything to help grow his homemade setup into a large-scale manufacturing operation. Nevertheless, Del Bueno’s vision is less than a month away from becoming a reality.

After the politicians and Fortune 500 business executives told him, “We’ll call you,” but never did, he sought help from like-minded folks with deep pockets who would seem to jive with his screw-Big-Oil-let’s-help-mom-and-pop-restaurant owners-and-Georgia-farmers mission. And even though he was the bass player and the mad scientist stage prop maker for the seminal punk surf rock band Man, or Astroman?, Del Bueno got zero response from REM.

Likewise, the alternative energy experts working for Ted Turner, the ultimate environmentally-conscious billionaire maverick, at least met with Del Bueno. But that was about it.

Still, there was something about biodiesel and the ideals behind it that clicked with people. It’s made from vegetable oil grown by American farmers. It can also be made from used vegetable oil, which restaurants pay to have hauled away. Burning that is the same thing as recycling it, only better. Or, biodiesel can be made from animal parts that are byproducts of food processing. Some researchers are even making biodiesel from algae that feed on municipal sewage. All of these methods of production mean it doesn’t come from Middle Eastern countries known to support terrorist groups.

Biodiesel also burns vastly cleaner than gasoline and diesel made from fossil fuels. While it does produce NOx, the stuff that under certain conditions helps to make ground-level ozone, it emits zero greenhouse gases. There’s nothing like the first time you fill up your tank on Del Bueno’s biodiesel, and drive away knowing that you are no longer contributing to the cataclysmic warming of the Earth.

When he first started selling his fuel about three years ago, the price of Del Bueno’s biodiesel was $3 a gallon. It still costs $3 a gallon. In the past three years, Del Bueno’s biodiesel has, at different times, been a buck more than petroleum diesel. Other times it was a quarter, dime or a nickel cheaper per gallon. Turns out, the price wasn’t important.
“The cool thing is that the price of biodiesel was $3 back then and it’s still $3, but it’s still growing. More and more people want it,” he says.

As for the hefty price, Del Bueno says, “People are always saying, ‘I thought it was going to be cheap.’ Well, the vegetable oil is cheap, and practically free. But biodiesel isn’t. It’s a clean alternative to petrol-diesel, and it was inexpensive fuel that got us into this mess in the first place.”

The thing is, he’s not interested in producing a cheap fuel. He believes in producing a clean fuel, one that’s not produced by the world’s most profitable and morally corrupt corporations.

That idealism helps to explain why his customer base has yet to stop growing, despite certain inconveniences that would have perturbed most Americans accustomed to instant gratification.

Until earlier this year, if you wanted to buy biodiesel from Del Bueno, you had to call him and schedule a time to meet him in his driveway. Sometimes he didn’t have any fuel.

When he did have some, it would be sold to other customers in less than two days. It’s an awful, sick feeling to go a gas station, and re-fuel with petrol-diesel because Del Bueno is out of fuel.

Last winter, Del Bueno began selling fuel every Wednesday at 6 p.m. from a garage on DeKalb Avenue in Atlanta. There’s usually a wait that’s three cars long (they’re almost always old Mercedes Benz’s, or newer Volkswagens.)

Despite brisk sales, Del Bueno’s biodiesel enterprises haven’t earned him one penny. In fact he’s poured more of his own money into this dream of his then he’d like to admit, all the while running Zero Return Studios, one of the last purely analog recording studios in the Southeast.

However, considering the ever increasing price of oil and the likelihood that the world’s oil supply will soon peak if it hasn’t already, it’s probable that he’ll be able to make a comfortable living selling biodiesel one day soon.

He’s earned a few extra dollars - and kept his alternative fuel dream alive - by installing vegetable oil conversion kits in diesel cars.

The kits allow diesel drivers to run on filtered vegetable oil, usually the used gunk that sits in containers behind every McDonalds, Waffle House and Chick-fil-a in the country.

(True to form, he got so good at it that he made an instructional DVD for others, and he figured out several ways to improve the performance and function of the vegetable oil conversions, with a patent pending on a tank that he designed.)

One day about a year and a half ago, Vanessa Vadim hired Del Bueno to install a vegetable oil conversion kit in her old Mercedes Benz diesel. She and Del Bueno became friends and she eventually embraced his mission to create a biodiesel market in Atlanta with gusto. Vadim, it should be noted, is the daughter of Jane Fonda. Last summer, she told Del Bueno that she’d give him around $65,000 to enlarge his operation, and enable him to mass produce and sell biodiesel on a commercial scale. To date, she’s contributed about $50,000 to the cause.

And late last year, Del Bueno and Vadim teamed up with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. SACE agreed to hire Del Bueno to build what’s likely the nation’s first and only free-standing, 24-hour, not-for-profit fueling station. Imagine: a not-for-profit fueling station. Much like “military intelligence,” it’s got an oxymoronic ring to it.

In some circles across the South, and in Europe, Man, Or Astroman? has a cult-like following. I remember seeing Man Or Astroman? play at Vincent Van Gogh Goghs in Mobile, Ala., about 15 years ago, and again a few years later in Auburn. It was straight up surf rock, with the craziest stage set up I’ve ever seen.

It’s easy to see why they’re a cult favorite. Before there was greased back hair, six-inch sideburns, and stand-up bass players with their blue jeans rolled-up three inches too high, there was Man Or Astroman?; psychedelic rockabilly surf rock from deep in outer space.

After a show that took place Jan. 1, 2002 at the Echo Lounge, the band decided to take a break which lasted so long that Man Or Astroman? simply dissolved, with several members starting other bands. They never really officially broke up, they just, kind of, stopped playing together.

The announcement on the group’s website simply stated, “After 10 years of touring like crazy, the time has come for the Astromen to take a load off. Currently there are no plans for upcoming shows or releases. We will keep you posted of future astro-happenings.”

That was it, the end of Man Or Astroman?

But in less than two weeks, the band will play together for the first time in almost five years, sharing the stage with the likes of Shellac, Black Heart Procession, Girls Against Boys, Big Black and Pinback at the Touch and Go Records 25th anniversary show in Chicago.

Rehearsals are underway and, yes, it’s a little weird. Del Bueno seriously doubts there’ll be any more shows after the Touch and Go celebration.

“We ended it perfectly, right at the top of the arc,” he says. “How many bands can you say have done that? They’ll get back together and never be as good as they were before. I don’t want to do that.”

In January, Del Bueno received his first check from the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, and began designing a plant that’s capable of making 250,000 gallons of biodiesel a year. He’ll get much of the vegetable oil he needs to process into fuel from Emory University’s campus restaurants. In return, Emory will get a discount on Del Bueno’s biodiesel.

He designed the plant from scratch himself, and that goes for the automatic, 24-hour fuel kiosk he’s building at 1996 DeKalb Ave. He’ll sell a blend that’s 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent regular diesel that can be bought with the swipe of an ATM or credit card. He’ll also have a pump for 100 percent biodiesel.

These days, he’s waiting to hear back from the group that certifies the quality of biodiesel whether his fuel is up to snuff. Once he gets their blessings, he’ll flip the switch on his homemade plant in southeast Atlanta, truck the fuel to the kiosk on DeKalb Avenue, and begin selling biodiesel like a real filling station.

That’ll be the moment when Rob Del Bueno’s dream is realized, three years after he first started his crusade. Sure, they’ll be a big unveiling party for the media, with snacks donated by Whole Foods, and beer provided by Sweetwater.

But the moment of truth will happen when that very first customer drives into the station on DeKalb Avenue, swipes his or her card, and pulls the trigger on the biodiesel pump. That will be the real beginning of Del Bueno’s biodiesel revolution. And I just hope to God that first person is me.

Atlanta resident Michael Wall is a seventh generation Georgian.