Well tickle my toes and call me Elmo! If it isn't a big story -- a cover story, no less -- in a major American newsweekly that resists the siren song of ethanol.
Kudos to Marianne Lavelle and Bret Schulte, whose U.S. News & World Report piece systematically deconstructs the ethanol craze, from twisted economics to limited supply to environmental degradation. And most pleasing to me, they didn't do the standard pivot from "yeah, corn ethanol sucks" to "but cellulosic will save us!" In fact, they capture the problems with cellulosic in a few cutting paragraphs:
In the laboratory, so-called cellulosic ethanol can be wrung from fibrous materials like cornhusks and rice hulls, as well as fast-growing reedy crops that require little fertilizer or tending, like switch grass, and timber industry excess. This would ease reliance on edible grain and spread the economic benefits beyond corn communities. Another bonus: Biotech enzymes rather than heat energy would break down the cellulose to fuel, reducing greenhouse gases to a fraction of those produced by corn.
But it has never been tried commercially, and it's unlikely that the fuel will go from zero to 20 billion gallons in 10 years. Just to get to 1 billion gallons of ethanol production, the corn industry took 13 years. The government estimates the capital cost of cellulosic is very likely five times that of corn. The expense surely would be driven down if production scales up, but a "chicken and egg problem" exists, says Harkin. "Investors are not investing in cellulosic plants because there's no supply," he says. "And farmers are not planting switch grass or other energy crops because there's no market." He has pledged to "jump-start" both demand and supply with research money and loan guarantees in a new farm bill.
But it will take more than money for new cellulosic technology to substantially weaken the grip of the nation's oil addiction. Lee Lynd, Dartmouth College engineering professor and cellulosic pioneer, who founded Mascoma, a company that is building a pilot plant outside Rochester, N.Y., believes cellulosic will make "a much more limited contribution to energy supply" if behaviors don't change as well as technologies. Ethanol would make its greatest dent if Americans drove less and highly efficient cars were deployed widely, he says.
Word to that.
Comments
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Ron Steenblik Posted 3:36 am
06 Feb 2007
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amazingdrx Posted 3:47 am
06 Feb 2007
Corpoate media turning on ethanol, amazing!
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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DBLJ Posted 5:24 am
06 Feb 2007
the argument made by Harkin is bogus, while it does take some time (approximatley 2-3 years) for perennial plants to come into full production; corn stover, and expiring CRP acres are readily available to fill in the gap TEMPORARILY (for stover)
The enzyme approach (sugar platform) is always touted as the way to proceed for cellulosic ethanol, and agian in this article it is protrayed as a "bonus" but I am not as convinced.
The feeling I get is that the companies that are doing the R & D of anzymes to break down the cellulosic material are in some way connected to the seed industry so that they can also design crops that work particularly well with thier enzyme thus having 2 revenue streams: selling enzymes to the processing facility and selling seeds to the farmers. Ideally the process would be feedstock neutral.
At any rate we NEED cellulosic fuels; for many reasons but none as importnat as the potential benefits that could be seen in the agricultural industry.
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JMG Posted 4:06 pm
06 Feb 2007
What we need is for people to pull thier heads out and realize that the AUTO AGE HAS TO END NOW IF THE PLANET IS TO SURVIVE.
There's plenty of oil around for its rational use. Ethanol (and the ethanomaniacs pushing it) is/are nothing but fraudulent attempt to deny the reality of a limited planet.
Regardless of the weaknesses in the USWR piece, that SOMEONE in the mainstream is sounding the cautionary note on ethanomania is to be celebrated.
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spaceshaper Posted 9:51 pm
06 Feb 2007
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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