Alan,

Great point about who benefits from the building of a biorefinery.

Coop Power, a consumer owned renewable energy coop, which was profiled on Grist the other day (Small Potatoes) is operating on a model that will benefit the little city of Greenfield its (soon to launch) biodiesel refinery is in, directly, with good manufacturing jobs for folks from all walks. It will also produce a premium product from a waste stream that will generate a lot of sales locally to benefit the local economy. Coop Power's model is replicable elsewhere and is a way that we can all harness our collective buying power as consumers to root capital for renewable energy in our home places. More here: http://cooppower.coop

Erik Hoffner
Board member,
Coop Power

In Los Angeles there is biofuels production plan that would provide environmental justice in waste management. It would spread new jobs that are currently located in an affluent area to seven different sites throughout the county. The plan is called RENEW L.A. and it is revolutionary in its concept and positive impact on environmental justice and quality of life.

Problem is that the plan cannot be deployed until regulatory control and permitting rules are changed in Sacramento. This plan, which would expand recycling and divert huge amounts of unrecyclable material waste toward the clean production of biofuels and electricity, has been blocked by Californians Against Waste (CAW) - the entrenched recycling establishment of California. They have no earthly reason to obstruct positive programs like RENEW L.A.

Anyone who can help convince CAW to support the regulatory changes that need to be made will be helping L.A. achieve some environmental justice - along with cleaner air, less dependence on landfills, green electricity generation, and production of biofuels.

Ethanol power brokers are honing their arguments (thanks in large part to all of the critique they have received). They didn't use to have such sophisticated comebacks. The main argument has now boiled down to this: You must support corn ethanol and all of its environmental destructiveness, and happily pay all of the subsidies if you want new and improved biofuels to replace it.

Don't buy it. If government support for corn ethanol stopped today, corn ethanol production would stop. Research into cellulosic would continue and could even be funded like a Manhattan project, at a fraction of the cost of today's subsidies. If research finally finds the magic bullets to make cellulosic economically viable, the infrastructure to make and distribute it would pop up and be in place in just a few years. We don't need to build an infrastructure in anticipation of cellulosic becoming economically viable.

Khosla is preaching to the choir here about cellulosic ethanol. It beats hell out of corn. But even it has drawbacks. He starts by telling us we should put the 40 million acres of wildlife habitat and carbons sinks of the conservation reserve program back into production. Add to that, the 80 million acres of corn exported. Never mind that food production has to increase 50% in the next 50 years to feed the world's 50% increase in population. If we stop feeding the world's hungry, and instead feed our cars, new ecosystems must fall to plant crops to take over for the shortfall in world food supply--simple math.

You see these people make protests about corn ethanol. To me, those are people with an agenda...

Damn. He stopped short of saying what that agenda is, or who those people are (environmentalists). Saving the planet would be my guess. Makes me wonder what his agenda is?

...because nobody in their right mind is proposing we get all our ethanol from corn.

True, so lets just chalk that statement up as one of those worthless strawman arguments.

First and foremost, I'm suggesting we reduce subsidies on ethanol and make them countercyclical.

That is not a reduction in subsidies. It simply makes the subsidy an inverse percentage of the price of oil. It would greatly increase subsidies when the price of oil drops.

You have to think about the way the investment world works: Corn ethanol is establishing that there's a market for ethanol.

It does not take a rocket scientist to understand how markets work. The only market for ethanol is the one forced onto consumers by government mandates. Drop the mandates and subsidies and the market would vanish in about a day, along with the investors skimming profit from those tax dollars. Not many people will deliberately pay more for a fuel that gets 30% worse gas mileage. I'm guessing he has been too busy to read this article from Consumer Reports.

Nobody's going to take the risk of cellulosic and other investments if the market doesn't exist

If that is his way of saying that power brokers won't invest in a dog like corn ethanol unless the government covers their profit margin, well, yes, that's true. And, other than the Canadians, very few are investing in cellulosic except for research.

So, practically speaking, we could have a seamless transition from a corn-ethanol system to a cellulosic ethanol system?

"In cars, absolutely. In infrastructure, absolutely. The production is different but the use is not".

Now there's a confusing statement. It is rather obvious that flex fuel cars and ethanol gas pumps are two parts of the infrastructure that can use ethanol, regardless of how it is made. America's new car fleet could be made flex fuel in one year should the need arrive, at negligible costs. Hungry businessmen looking for profit could also put ethanol compatible pumps in place in very short order if so motivated by demand for the fuel. There is no need to grease the skids for a technology like cellulosic before it arrives (assuming it ever does).

The production part of the infrastructure is different at the front end, similar at the back. How seamless these big ticket items will transition won't be known until the engineers finish the task of determining whether or not it will be cheaper to convert an existing corn ethanol plant into a cellulosic one, or starting over. Dumping the existing infrastructure will not be cheap and somebody will not be happy, all assuming cellulosic has enough technological breakthroughs to finally become economically viable.

So it's really a question of price, not a question of can we do it.

Talk about your Darwinian IQ test. I mean, give me a break (to borrow a couple of phrases).

I read a report from the [Government Accountability Office] that official direct subsidies to oil are over $140 billion. That's not a free market. The best thing for ethanol would be to allow it to compete in a real free market.

I find it interesting that power brokers are supposedly lobbying our government to subsidize oil, while other power brokers are lobbying it to support alcohol. If this 140 billion-dollar annual subsidy is real, then by eliminating it, ethanol should be able to stand on its own without subsidy. Am I the only one who sees the absurdity of having the government subsidizing forms of competing energy? Maybe the answer is to convince our government to stop listening to what power brokers tell it to subsidize?

I've been a lifelong registered Republican. I'm a free-market person.

I've been a lifelong registered Democrat. I'm also a free-market person, who does not support government subsidies (contracyclical or otherwise).

And we have to include in the price of oil the hidden costs -- the environmental and military costs.

Ironic statement coming from a supporter of the dimwit who got us into this God-awful war with erroneous data (essentially by accident), and then managed to convince most Americans that it had something to do with the terrorists who took down the twin towers. Me, I don't trust Bush, and by association, power brokers who support him.

to about 1.5 million barrels per day in the same years it has been raising ethanol production to, in energetic terms, about a seventh of this.

Engineer-Poet did, on "The Oil Drum" a while back, explain why Khosla is at best an idiot.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Boron: internal combustion with nuclear cachet

Right. Producing fuels from biomass is viable in most countries, whether you're India or China or the U.S. Agrarian cultures in the developing world, especially Africa, could benefit hugely from a growing biofuels market. In fact, the biggest single thing we could do for poverty would be if biomass became the source of our energy.

This post by Julia Armstead tells us about how the president of Ugunda is razing rain forests to grow palm oil and sugarcane. The price of cane being driven up by ethanol production.

Destroying rain forest carbon sinks to grow food for your people is forgivable, destroying them to feed the forests to our cars is not.  

I know this thread is a bit stale, but I'd like to correct an error in case anyone else stumbles across this. The cost of cellulase enzymes is no longer a major barrier to cellulosic ethanol production. Enzyme developers such as Novozymes have used "directed evolution" techniques to generate cellulases with higher activites. With more efficient enzymes, less is required, reducing costs. Here is a link to a Novozymes powerpoint presentation, see slide 24 for a cost breakdown.

http://www.novozymes.com/NR/rdonlyres/A0E8CDF5-DC67-42E7- ...

For daily updated news on bioenergy, ethanol and climate issues, please visit:
http://www.ethanol-news.de

I really like driving cars which are environment friendly like hybrid cars...Fuel efficiency and is not that a great issue when choosing cars 'coz, there's already a lot of car manufacturers who's designs were meant to solve that concern...
So,anyway, just a reminder, your vehicle's  catalytic converter plays an essential role in reducing harmful emissions. When your catalytic converter is working properly it successfully changes auto emissions into harmless water vapor. When your catalytic converter is malfunctioning, the pollutants leaving your vehicle can exacerbate local pollution levels.There are four ways for you to determine whether your catalytic converter needs replacing or not:1.Busted or rusted out converter body or end tubes.2.Small pieces of substrate in other areas of the exhaust system.3.No rattle in a pellitized converter (If the converter does not rattle, the pellets may have melted together or fallen out).4.A rattle in a monolithic converter (A rattle in this kind of converter indicates the substrate has separated.)If you are unable to determine failure your state, provincial, or local vehicle inspection program will reveal that to you the next time your car comes up for inspection. If your car fails its inspection, you will have to replace your catalytic converter before you car can be passed.Replacement of your catalytic converter is a procedure that can be done by professionals such as through your dealer's service department, through a muffler shop, or by a local garage. If you are handy, you can do the work yourself and save money on parts as well as on labor costs.Only purchase a catalytic converter that meets or exceeds your vehicle.I have here my catalytic converter and Dodge fuel door, and I am well satisfied with it...Again, driving without a catalytic converter is illegal and the potential harm you create to the atmosphere simply isn't worth it

Okay..

I am doing some research about different types of candle holders until these things comes to my mind... It is not a homework... Just research on how biofuels will be beneficial for us in the years coming.. I know about the environment and how it will reduce CO2 emissions but thats all I got... I'm very interested in this research... Please help guys!