The Greaseball Challenge charity car rally is kicking off this week with a launch party on Thursday and to celebrate Emily Horgan and her team have launched the official Greaseball website and blog. Four teams are leaving from Washington, D.C. in two Mercedes, a VW Rabbit and a van while a fifth team departs from Denver, Colorado in a pick-up. Grease for fuel is being supplied this week by the World Bank and the Hard Rock cafe.

One of the entries, Team ZERO, manufactures hydrogen cars in Norway while other nationalities represented in the rally include the U.S., U.K., Belgium, Sweden, and South Africa.

Analysis: It should be a lot of fun to keep up with the Greaseballers' adventures on their way down through Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

Related:

• Greaseball Challenge charity rally takes biofuel message to Central America
• Interview with Emily Horgan, Director of the Greaseball Challenge

[Source: Greaseball Challenge]

Emily Horgan, making the world a better place, one charity rally at a time!

This is the second part in an interview with Emily Horgan, Director of the Greaseball Challenge, where she talks about her work with the World Bank, reducing your environmental footprint and what makes a great Greaseballer. In the first part of the interview, Emily shared with us some amazing stories of her past charity rally adventures as well as her motivations for creating the Greaseball Challenge. Click here to go to part one of the interview.

If you haven't already, be sure to read our article on the Greaseball Challenge first as background to this remarkable interview.

ABG: Through your work with the World Bank, and during the various charity rallies that you have participated in, what would you say was the most inspiring renewable energy project that you've seen?

EH: The most inspiring project is not necessarily one I have seen but there are plenty out there that get me excited - usually they are small-scale interventions that really make a big impact at the grassroots level but also have the potential to be scaled up to a massive level. For example, there is a solar LED lantern project supported by IFC which aims to provide an affordable lighting solution to people without access to electricity. The pilot projects in Ghana and Kenya will replace dirty kerosene lamps with these solar lanterns. It's amazing to think that one billion people worldwide do not have access to electricity and projects like this not only help light up homes but reduce indoor air pollution which is a major health hazard and enable school children to read after dark.

Interview continues after the jump.

Emily Horgan, Director of the Greaseball Challenge, ready for adventure!

It is my pleasure to bring you a comprehensive interview with Emily Horgan, Director of the Greaseball Challenge charity rally. The Challenge is set to take place in April with participants driving from the U.S. down through Central America promoting biofuels and green adventure travel.

If you haven't already, be sure to read our article on the Greaseball Challenge as background to this remarkable interview (seriously, Emily has some great stories to tell). Emily, who originally sent us details on the Greaseball Challenge herself, was incredibly generous with her time in answering my questions with the final interview being quite long for a single post. As such, I have split the interview in half and we'll will run it over two days.

Today, we cover Emily's charity rally background and her motivation for creating the Greaseball Challenge.

ABG: It sounds like you have been involved in a few charity rallies over the years. Where in the world have you been?

EH: I've driven twice from the UK to West Africa as part of the Plymouth-Banjul Challenge - down through France, Spain, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal to the Gambia, the final destination. That's around 4,500 miles including three days off-roading through the Sahara Desert! The first year, December 2004, I did the rally in a 1991 Ford Fiesta with two friends. Ford Fiestas are known for being very, very bad or very, very good. We were lucky - the engine on the car had been rebuilt by a Fiat mechanic in Turin and the only real problem we had was a dead fan motor which caused us to overheat in the desert. We had the heating on full to draw the heat off the engine, but when we were stuck in a dune with steam pouring from the hood and the clutch burning out it was a make or break moment!

Interview continues after the break.

The first ever Greaseball Challenge charity car rally will take place in April when five teams will drive from the U.S. to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama in under four weeks promoting biofuels and green adventure travel. Designed to show that you can use locally-available fuels as viable alternatives to petroleum fuels, the participating Greaseballers are out to have a good time and promote a great cause.

The rules are simple:

• Teams must acquire a diesel vehicle on a shoestring budget (under $200) by resourcefulness, sponsorship or mechanical ingenuity.
• Teams are on their own! (i.e. unsupported for the duration of the rally).
• Vehicles are powered using alternative fuels - biodiesel, vegetable oil, waste grease, or any renewable fuel source.
• All vehicles are donated in the destination countries to benefit local environmental projects.

The 2007 Challenge is a pilot run with plans to expand the event in 2008 to include 100+ teams participating in cars, buses, and trucks. This time around though, teams will be driving diesel vehicles including two vintage Mercedes and a 72-seater school bus, running on biodiesel, waste grease and vegetable oil sourced from biodiesel producers, diners, fast-food outlets, markets, factories and farmers.

Along the way, teams will be stopping by biofuel projects to meet biofuels producers, distributors, farmers, community cooperatives, entrepreneurs and NGOs actively working in this field. At the end of the run, all the vehicles and funds raised will be donated to biofuel-related projects in the destination country.

Analysis: Sounds like a good cause and great fun! I think this one is going on my life list.

Stay tuned for more coverage of the Greaseball Challenge.

Related:

• Hybrid and alternative-fueled rally cars set to race in New Zealand
• Sir Paul McCartney's hybrid concept for sale at Barrett-Jackson
• First ever North American E85-powered rally car to compete in 2007 Rally America Group 2

[Source: Greaseball Challenge]

It's time again to check in with our biodiesel-loving Panamericana 2006 team, driving from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in three green Volkswagen SUVs in 15 days. You can see what they were up to recently here, or jump into the most recent news from the team's daily (belated) updates below.

May 10 – Traveling through the Central American countries is proving difficult to the Panamericana team, and daily detailed updates are impossible, says team member Matthias Jeschke. The short version is that the group is running quite late (showing up to the Guatemalan city of Escuintla nine hours late), and lunch stops are short breaks while tires are changed and other mechanical work is completed. A media event in El Salvador had to be canceled because of the time pressure. In Honduras, a military escort shepherds the SUVs through the country.

May 11 – The time pressure builds because the SUVs need to be on a cargo flight over the Panama Canal by 7:45 on the 12th. At the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border, though, another border guard stymies the entire convoy until he is convinced by someone high in the Foreign Ministry to let the SUVs pass. Now running later than ever, it's not much further to the Canal. We'll have to wait until the next update to see how they fared.

[Source: Panamericana]