Vinod you are still totally clueless about energy issues. You may have made money in other areas but you will loose on this one unless you wake up and question the assumptions.
The flawed assumption is that it makes any sense to transport 150 lbs humans in 2 ton 10% machines. Most of the flaws in biofuels become obvious when you change the system to one that is over 90% efficient. There is no ICE vehicle that can compete in the marketplace with EVs on Miles Per Dollar(MP$). If your car gets 10mpg and gas is $3/Gal you are getting 10MP$. Any electric car will get you 100MP$. Wake up Vinod!
As for celuosic ethanol its total BS and thats not just for the fertilizer.
There is no solution in crops for machines that are so inefficient that they require 10 million barrels a day for the US. To produce the equivalent of 1 million barrels of ethanol fuel from something solid and woody like switchgrass would require hundreds of thousands of truck transporting the switchgrass to the processing plant every day. That simply is not possible in areas where you could grow that much switchgrass on marginal land there aren't enough people to drive the trucks. Do a well to wheels calculation and you will see its simply unworkably inefficient.

   It is lovely to say that the poor will benefit, but as usual, no one ever says "when".  It reminds me of the old song "There'll be pie in the sky by and by."

   It is certainly true that some farmers will benefit from biofuels.  It is also true that right NOW, the urban poor are beginning to hurt.

   Of course, police agencies will benefit (more police needed to control starving rioters), arms manufacturers (they ALWAYS benefit... funny, eh?), oil companies (they will buy up the production and distribution systems when it becomes worthwhile).

   And some day.... (when, oh, when??) the poor will somehow (how, oh, how???) benefit.

   In all of this Mr. Khosla has never answered the critics (look at the UN) who point out that biofuels are causing serious food inflation already, BEFORE they are a massive part of the energy equation.

   They are a dangerous choice.  

patrick in Beijing

Whilst agreeing with much in this article, the genetic improvement possible is currently based, by researchers, on being able to sell SEED. With rhizomatous crops like Miscanthus, this will not compete, and creates issues about longer term infield crop structure. Having to buy new seed and resow regularly (which is want the breeders want, of course) will also reduce energy and carbon balances and increase costs.
We believe that rhizome production delivers cheaper establishment costs of such crops, and at a superior energy balance. Breeding companies therefore need to focus their strategy on earning their returns from other than easy to manage seed.

Bical Miscanthus

I suggest you look at Miscanthus. Currently, anyone can plant and multiply planting stock. When land and costs are low (as is the case with poor communities) this crop CAN be established at very low cost. Furthermore, it produces its highest yields in tropical climates, with no need for fertiliser and sprays. The barriers to preventing this?? Politics and big business interests.
With support from humanitarian organisations and govt, we plan to introduce planting programmes into suitable areas to trial in the third world in the next year or two.

Bical Miscanthus

Vinod can't get past the first built in fallacy of biofuels bio-d.  So he uses self delusion and expands that into mass delusion.  Hiding the mistake with the diversion of over complication.

The mistaken notion is that growing fuel and burning it provides a closed cycle for carbon/CO2.  The biomass fuel is burned, the CO2 is absorbed to make more biomass fuel, and so forth.  Over and over, the CO2 released into the atmosphere, is extracted by the plants producing the biomass.

But he forgot that the land used to produce the biomass, would otherwise sequester carbon, the plants growing there removing CO2 from the atmosphere.  By burning the biomass, that removal of CO2 is prevented.

Excuses like, oh we will use depleted land that is not now storing carbon by extracting CO2 to produce biofuel, will not cut it.  Depleted land should be restored as carbon sink, not continuing to be part of the GHG balance problem.  

The carbon stripped from the depleted soil, with chemical agriculture, continues to add to the GHG problem as long as it is not restored to carbon sink activity.  And it amounts to millenia of carbon in the case of prairie, wetlands, and forests.  This is a largely unnoticed cause of gHG climate disaster, the advent of chemical agriculture.

One way that biofuel would not take carbon sink potential out of the atmospheric GHG balance equation, is by producing that fuel from algae in solar collectors on rooftops or over parking lots and highways, on land already devestated for human use.

Another way would be to recycle waste, manure and biomass waste, using biogas digestion, with the remainder of the biodigestor products returned as soil amenment and fertilizer to the soil.  This allows for food production and the use of organic farming to maintain land and soil as a carbon sink even as fiood energy and biogas energy is extracted.  

The increase in the efficiency of solar energy conversion with this method of organic farming would make up for the energy extracted and GHG given off by human and animal respiration.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

If carbon is sequestered in below ground plant material before harvest, harvesting the above ground crop does not break the cycle.  This is the nature of miscanthus.

Tom Harrington Bical North America Miscanthus for Energy

I have a guaranteed process to turn lead into gold. No really. All I need is unlimited financial support for the next ten years or so from the King Government so I can work out the details.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

One could harvest say one third of prairie grass in a rotational strip manner that would substitue for natural prairie fire.  Then use the celllulose to make fuel.  liquid ethanol to guzzle in a flex fuel SUV.

Or you could use that biomass to produce biogas and organic fertilizer and soil amendment.  The carbon not converted to methane would go back into the soil with the organic fertilizer embedded in it.  

The biogas could backup a solar, wind, water powered distributed smart grid that would strategically charge plugin hybrids.

Which is the better plan?

Either way, natural prairie grass from a natural ecosystem, a system that sequesters 1.8 tons of cO2 per acre per year out of the atmosphere is the way to go.  Forget chemical ag crops, they burn the soil and stop carbon sink activity.

Biodiversity on true conservation land.  Land that can host huge wind farms.  That's where to get some biomass for energy.  But only harvest what nature would harvest with fire.  Atmospheric balance can be restored.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

There are those who believe it's a smart idea to base our nation's energy policies for the next twenty years or so on a yet-undiscovered technology which involves an untested plan to cover millions of acres of biologically important and ecologically diverse "marginal" land with mass plantings of a non-native species that may just turn out to be the next kudzu.

And those that think ... that this is some of the dumbest sh*t they ever heard.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

1.3 billion dry tons of biomass in the U.S. (most of our biomass needs) and still be able to meet all food, feed, and export demands. This would be an alternative scenario to get biomass without energy crops.

Might guess is that It will matter to the working poor in rural areas as a potential ray of hope.

Growing 20 ft. tall sorghum sounds like heaven to me. Planting trees in that same field also sounds nice.

I planted 3 nice little trees just the other day along the 300 ft. fence line back to the creek. Need to plant about 200 more. Takes a while to dig the holes with a good shovel as the dirt is hard, but as I understand, this is a good time, as it allows the roots recovery in order to then soak up the spring rain.

They say this will all be re-zoned commerical soon, however my guess is the trees i plant will be allowed to stay. I will need to keep the horses off of them until they have a chance to grow up. I believe that any good green manager of the land can make it better. Tree planting is a very important part of that effort. Paying the loans off is another. I recommend it to anyone who loves the land.

Ecosystems empowerment for the rural poor.

Hi Vinod

You have written an excellent article. Additionally growing Miscanthus will usually increase carbon storage in the soil, and its use can be genuinely carbon negative. Thus EU researchers are claiming that it will be possible to generate electricity from Miscanthus and at the same time significantly reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
This crop will soon be widely commercially available in USA and Canada, as it is already in the EU.
Best Wishes for your brave ventures in cellulosic conversions, I am particularly impressed by the potential from Range Fuels and other gasification based conversions, and would be interested to learn more about these.
It looks like some of your ventures will soon be very profitable.
Those of us commercially developing Miscanthus would like you batting on our side, this last sentence includes a cricketing term but I guess you can cope with that

Jonathan Harvey

Jonathan Harvey