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POPSBring on the switchgrass Though we need to improve upon the methods, it seems to make sense to use plant waste rather than corn to produce ethanol.
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POPSOklahoma: Home To The World's Largest Switchgrass For Energy Field Oklahoma has made an aggressive establishment of 1,000 acres of switchgrass: the first of its size anywhere in the world focused on biomass production. The fields also will serve as a "living classroom" where agricultural producers, policymakers and the general public can see and experience these crops, which will play a key role in the United States' energy future. A unique "living laboratory" to understand the production and long-term impact of bio-energy crops, as well as experiment with new production techniques and critical harvest, collection and transport methods. This dedicated land will allow us to demonstrate the advantages of switchgrass. A cellulosic bio-refinery currently being constructed by in Hugoton, Kansas (less than 35 miles from the fields) to process the switchgrass into bio-fuel. “Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain, and the wavin' switchgrass can sure smell sweet…”
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POPSHas the World gone crazy? We deplete oil, we sacrifice our rainforests, denude and wreck our agricultural land, we see basic food prices disenfranchise the poor - we simply are failing miserably to see the folly of our ways.
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POPSReplacing Petroleum with Switchgrass Ethanol The joint USDA-ARS and Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources study also found greenhouse gas emissions from cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass were 94 percent lower than estimated greenhouse gas emissions from gasoline production.
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POPS Ethanol's Subsidy::It Has No Commercial Merit The truth is that if ethanol has commercial merit, it doesn't need the subsidy. And if it doesn't, no amount of subsidy will bestow it. The U.S. Energy Information Administration believes the practical limit for domestic ethanol production is about 700,000 barrels per day -- in 2030. In 23 years, that will translate into about 6 percent of the U.S. transportation fuels market. Ethanol does not reduce gasoline prices. If you lived in urban areas that used reformulated gasoline last summer -- that's the environmentally "clean" gasoline required for areas with air pollution problems -- you might have paid up to 60 cents a gallon more for gasoline. That's because the federal government required oil refineries to use 4 billion gallons of ethanol in 2006, regardless of price, and gas pump prices last summer reflected the fact that ethanol was twice as expensive as conventional gas in wholesale markets, and far more costly to deliver.
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POPSThe plug-in hybrid-vehicle era begins For years, hobbyists and a few companies have been adding bigger battery packs to hybrid vehicles, which have both battery power and an internal combustion engine, and plugging them into electrical outlets. The idea of the "plug-in hybrid" has now caught the attention of government officials and researchers, who note that gas consumption would plummet if drivers could rely almost exclusively on electricity for average daily driving of about 33 miles.
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POPSCheaper, Cleaner Ethanol from Biotech Corn If the researchers are able to overcome some of these challenges, the biotech corn could lead to more-efficient production of ethanol, starting by making better use of corn kernels. Much of the corn kernel contains cellulose that isn't converted into ethanol in conventional ethanol plants. Some developers are considering adding equipment to existing ethanol plants for processing this corn-grain cellulose.
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POPSBiomass Fuels from Industrial Waste Sites I'm looking forward to seeing the results of this experiment. Can't use the brownfields to grow food crops, because industrial contaminants would be harmful to consumers. But, using these areas to grow fuel crops might work well, and could even lead to a gradual reduction in pollution. Hopefully, they're also looking at whether plowing these areas promotes a spread of contamination as a natural result of rain or irrigation runoff. Click through to read lots more at the Michigan State University site.
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POPSBiofuels is a false hope? An interesting article, but misleading with its statistics. For example, it uses the current measure of cropland acreage to project the potential yield of future ethanol harvests, but it ignores: 1 - biomass crops can grow well where food crops do not; 2 - biomass crops can yield other products in addition to ethanol; 3 - burning ethanol produces less CO2 than burning oil. Overall, I agree that it's a foolish path to replace food with fuel. However, I do believe that replacing some of our petroleum consumption with ethanol is a necessary part of a successul path forward, along with solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, and other clean sources, and let's not forget improved efficiencies (e.g., low power lights and increased miles per gallon) and conservation. Click through for the rest of the original article for more details, including some good points about why recent comparisons of Brazil's ethanol program are not as relevant to the US as you might think.
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POPSSwitchgrass the wonder plant This is warm and wonderful, but the key here is Gov't regulation/policy are what hold it back. If all the billionaire and millionaires in the country would invest and build a few plants, they probably could recoup their money by 2012. Someone should create a site like that kid did for the million pixel, but somehow do it to get enough cash to build this plant. The other option is to get investors to create a new company to fund building a plant. Someone beside the gov't and existing oil companies need to make it happen.
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