Grist | Topics | 173 Results

RESULTS		Results 76 – 100 of 173
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Headline	Author	Published	Section
Welcome to the Fuel World U.S. ethanol boom slowing due to market glut		01 Oct 2007	News
Posted at 6:16 AM on 01 Oct 2007 The ethanol boom in the United States, the political darling of presidential candidates, farm-state lawmakers, and others, has recently been showing signs of slowing due to a market glut that's exacerbated by infrastructure troubles. It seems everyone and their farmer have been constructing ethanol refineries to turn corn into fuel, but the means to get that fuel to gas stations hasn't been k ...
Topics: agriculture, ethanol, news, United States (all these topics)

Live green, go yellow U.S. conservation land may soon end up in your gas tank	David Roberts	27 Sep 2007	Gristmill
Well isn't this delightful (sub rqd): The Agriculture Department may allow farmers to plow up land in conservation agreements to plant row crops, despite a record corn crop this year, fueled by the ethanol industry's thirst for the feedstock. Acting Secretary Chuck Conner told reporters this week that USDA is considering releasing some land currently enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to idle nearly 34 million acres of land for wildl ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, energy, ethanol (all these topics)

The lash is back Stratfor analysis of the backlash against ethanol	David Roberts	13 Sep 2007	Gristmill
Stratfor's Bart Mongoven on why the growing negative buzz around ethanol is having limited political effect:... the backlash against biofuels is in full swing. The critics, however, are running head on into the powerful agricultural lobbies in the United States and Europe that so successfully championed the issue in the first place. These advocates say that ethanol, biodiesel and other nonpetroleum-based transportation fuels reduce pollution, help fight climate change ...
Topics: biofuels, energy, ethanol, politics (all these topics)

The USDA goes all lukewarm on cellulosic ethanol In related news, the '07 corn harvest will break records	Tom Philpott	13 Sep 2007	Gristmill
For decades now, the USDA has been dumping cash into cellulosic ethanol research (most recently through a joint venture with the DOE). So the USDA's analysts should know something about the prospects for mass production of cellulosic ethanol, hailed by its boosters as a panacea that can wean us not only from oil, but also from corn as an ethanol feedstock. So what's the latest from USDA analysts on this miracle fuel? From a report released last week: Althou ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, cellulosic ethanol, Department of Agriculture, energy, ethanol (all these topics)

Notable quotable	David Roberts	07 Sep 2007	Gristmill
From a Washington Post article about the transcendent potential of switchgrass: But such efforts [to persuade farmers to grow switchgrass] have hit a snag: Scientists haven't perfected the process that turns switchgrass into ethanol. So for today, the Crop That Could Change Virginia is just hay with better publicity.
Topics: biofuels, energy, ethanol, quotables (all these topics)

Poplar mechanics A closer look at producing ethanol from poplar trees	Clark Williams-Derry	06 Sep 2007	Gristmill
Oregon Public Broadcasting is reporting on the efforts of a WSU researcher to turn poplar trees into transportation fuel: [P]oplars [are] an on demand fuel source. Trees can be chopped down year round, chipped up and then fermented to create ethanol. According to the researcher, an acre of poplars could supply about one thousand gallons of ethanol per year -- which is about three times the per-acre yield of corn ethanol, with a lot less plowing and ferti ...
Topics: biofuels, energy, ethanol (all these topics)

Regular oil cleaner than ethanol Saving and restoring forests better for climate than switching to biofuels	Glenn Hurowitz	20 Aug 2007	Gristmill
A new study in the journal Science ($ub req'd) validates what many have been saying here in Gristmill: Biofuels, especially those from the tropics, are far worse for the planet than regular old crude oil. The study finds that we could reduce global warming pollution two to nine times more by conserving or restoring forests and grasslands than by razing them and turning them into biofuels plantations -- even if we continue to use fossil fuels as our main source o ...
Topics: biofuels, climate, deforestation, energy, ethanol, greenhouse-gas emissions, oil, rainforests (all these topics)

Brazil be dammed Each country will have to find its own way to carbon neutrality	biodiversivist	17 Aug 2007	Gristmill
Thankfully the lay press has finally stopped calling for the United States to follow Brazil's lead for energy independence. The blogosphere took over where the lay press left off on that misdiagnosis, although I still hear the echo once in a while. Turns out, Brazil may be heading for an energy crunch of its own. According to this article in the Economist, Brazil may be experiencing blackouts within five years if the economy grows as predicted. Because they are f ...
Topics: biofuels, Brazil, energy, ethanol, Sweden (all these topics)

Cane: the cellulosic Godfather A new series pivots around ethanol	David Roberts	13 Aug 2007	Gristmill
Randomly, last night I caught the debut episode of the new CBS series Cane. It's about the Duque family, a Cuban-American clan in both the sugar and rum businesses in South Florida. At the outset of the show, the Duque's long-time rivals, the Samuels -- a drawling family of white Southerners -- offer to buy up their sugar fields, claiming that the sugar business is slow and the real action is on the rum side. "We'll do sugar; you do rum." Family patriarch ...
Topics: agriculture, cellulosic ethanol, energy, ethanol, TV (all these topics)

Q: What's corn ethanol's footprint? A: The cropland area of several states	Ron Steenblik	02 Aug 2007	Gristmill
According to data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), U.S. farmers planted 92.9 million acres of corn in 2007, exceeding last year's corn area by 19 percent and surpassing the USDA's earlier projection (in March) by 3 percent. To put that number into perspective, it is equal to the total arable (cropland) area of four of the nation's leading farm states: Iowa, Illinois, North Dakota and Oklahoma. The Food ...
Topics: biofuels, energy, ethanol (all these topics)

Cellulosic beef It's a thing	David Roberts	02 Aug 2007	Gristmill
Tom Konrad ponders the ethanol situation and wonders: what if, instead of feeding most of our corn to cows, and then growing a bunch of grass to make cellulosic ethanol, we use all the cow corn for ethanol and feed the grass to the cows? Gimmicky hook, but quite a fact-filled, educational article.
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, energy, ethanol, food (all these topics)

George Soros vs. the planet Soros, Goldman Sachs financing destruction of Brazilian forests	Glenn Hurowitz	02 Aug 2007	Gristmill
Well, that whole beating George Bush thing in 2004 didn't work out, so now billionaire financier / Democratic fundraiser / anti-Communist crusader George Soros is back to his first love: making money -- apparently even when it comes at the expense of the planet. Sabrina Valle of the Washington Post is reporting that Soros is one of the biggest investors in growing sugarcane ethanol in the Brazilian cerrado, 'a vast plateau where temperatures range from freezing to ...
Topics: biofuels, Brazil, business, carbon sequestration, consumerism, deforestation, ethanol, rainforests, wildlife (all these topics)

Jeff Goodell doesn't like ethanol His new piece says so in downright shrill terms	David Roberts	01 Aug 2007	Gristmill
Jeff Goodell (see Grist interview) is apparently incapable of writing anything I don't love. The latest is a piece in Rolling Stone called "Ethanol Scam." It's downright shrill! Here's what Goodell has to say about the ethanol hype: This is not just hype -- it's dangerous, delusional bullshit. Ethanol doesn't burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption -- yet it con ...
Topics: biofuels, energy, ethanol (all these topics)

Phin dephends (ha ha!) corn Not very well	David Roberts	30 Jul 2007	Gristmill
As reaction to Sarah's post showed (rather more rudely than strictly necessary, I might add), Grist readers are not big fans of "Project Phin," the online video series launched by the Center for American Progress to promote flex fuels -- i.e., ethanol. Ben Affleck dressed as a corn cob proved particularly irksome. CAP clearly got some outraged emails about the use of corn in the campaign (they sure got one from me). If you're interested, Phin himself has p ...
Topics: biofuels, energy, ethanol (all these topics)

All You Need Is Lovins A conversation with energy guru Amory Lovins	David Roberts	26 Jul 2007	Main Dish
If politicians think in sound bites and intellectuals think in sentences, Amory Lovins thinks in white papers. His speech is studded with pregnant pauses -- you can almost hear the whirs and clicks as an enormous mass of statistics, analyses, and aphorisms is trimmed and edited into a manageable length. I've talked to experts who struggle to substantiate their answers. Lovins struggles to leave thing ...
Topics: Amory Lovins, biofuels, cars, coal, Congress, energy, energy efficiency, ethanol, fuel efficiency, Iraq, renewable energy (all these topics)

The future is solar; politics is ethanol Hillary pays tribute to Iowa politics	David Roberts	23 Jul 2007	Gristmill
This is (bitterly) funny: As Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton climbed onto a makeshift stage at the Iowa State Fairgrounds and embraced motor fuel from corn as a key to America's future, she completed a turnabout from being an ethanol opponent, a position she held only two years ago. ... Political observers view her about-face as a political necessity, saying Iowa's first-in-the-nation's caucuses -- in which residents of the country's biggest corn-producing state v ...
Topics: elections, energy, ethanol, Hillary Clinton, politics, presidential race 08, solar voltaic power (all these topics)

My product rules!	David Roberts	23 Jul 2007	Gristmill
So, I'm reading this incredibly weak defense of corn ethanol, and I'm thinking, "who the hell would put their name on this swill?" Then I get to the bottom: Robert Gallant is president and chief executive officer of GreenField Ethanol, Canada's largest ethanol producer. Ah.
Topics: biofuels, energy, ethanol (all these topics)

Stars align to fight for flex fuels Watch six episodes of 'Project Phin'	Sarah van Schagen	20 Jul 2007	Gristmill
Would seeing Ben Affleck dressed as an ear of corn make you more or less interested in learning about ethanol and supporting legislation requiring service stations to sell it?It's an interesting question -- especially without context -- but one the Center for American Progress is eager to investigate. This week, they launched an online video series, "Project Phin," to address energy issues -- specifically flex fuels. The six-episode series is being releas ...
Topics: biofuels, celebrity, energy, ethanol, green living, video (all these topics)

Gulf Dead Zone: Bigger than ever Thanks in part to that 'green' fuel, corn-based ethanol	Tom Philpott	17 Jul 2007	Gristmill
U.S. farmers planted 92.9 million acres of corn this spring, a 15 percent-plus jump from last year. If you lumped all that land together -- not too hard to imagine, given that corn ag is highly concentrated in the Midwest -- you'd have a monocropped land mass nearly equal in size to the state of California. The jump in corn acreage is excellent news if you own shares in mega meat-processing firms like Tyson and Smithfield. These firms have been complaining bitter ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, ethanol, industrial ag, oceans, water pollution (all these topics)

When it rains, it pours -- out the energy Using molten salt to store solar energy	JMG	16 Jul 2007	Gristmill
We've gone round and round on various ways to store energy from intermittent suppliers like solar and wind before ... The always excellent Robert Rapier has this interesting squib on using molten salt to store thermal energy from solar in his R-Squared Energy Blog.* (While you're there you should check out his terrific posts on ethanol and biodiesel. He is in the interesting position of being a real advocate who can't ignore how oversold they are.)Engineer 'humor' alert ...*
Topics: biofuels, energy, ethanol, renewable energy, solar thermal power (all these topics)

Sushi powered Japan experiments with seaweed as biofuel	Jerome Woody	13 Jul 2007	Gristmill
As birthplace of the Kyoto Protocol, Japan is one of the pioneering countries in climate change policy and research. In 1990, Japan pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 6 percent by 2012. One of their proposed stratagems for meeting this goal is to replace the 132 million gallons of gasoline that Japan car drivers use with a biofuel option. Domestic biofuel production has always been difficult in land-lacking Japan, which in the past had to consider importing bi ...
Topics: biofuels, energy, ethanol, innovation, Japan (all these topics)

Big Al succumbs to ethanomania Predicts rabbit out of hat in three years, too	JMG	30 Jun 2007	Gristmill
Here's a film clip of Al Gore making a firm prediction that 'next generation ethanol' not dependent on corn or food crops will move out of the lab in 'three years.' He discusses the energy balance question, fails to question the use of coal for process heat, and suggests that there is some sort of 'distribution network' that's going to be built. Sad.
Topics: Al Gore, biofuels, energy, ethanol, renewable energy (all these topics)

Ethanol: the drunkard's scourge	David Roberts	26 Jun 2007	Gristmill
OK, ethanol, come on! You effed up the tortillas, you effed up the beer ... now you're effing up the tequila? Is nothing sacred?
Topics: biofuels, energy, ethanol (all these topics)

Thirty years to hone an argument Arguments supporting government subsidies of agrofuels are getting polished	biodiversivist	19 Jun 2007	Gristmill
This is my formal rebuttal to David Morris's 'case for corn-based fuel.' I'm using my access to the bully pulpit to pull it out of the comments field. How did the use of ethanol end up alongside tyranny and torture as an evil to be conquered? That's easy. A whole lot of real smart people have been giving corn ethanol a lot of thought and have found that 'an evil to be conquered' isn't a bad description. In smaller quantities, it does smaller amounts of damage, b ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, biofuels, energy, ethanol, food, industrial ag (all these topics)

Give ethanol a chance: The case for corn-based fuel With the right rules in place, it could work	David Morris	17 Jun 2007	Gristmill
Working Assets is my long-distance phone company. I love it dearly for its combination of business efficiency, social responsibility and progressive politics. Each month, my phone bill carries alerts that urge me to take action on a specific issue or two. Recent Citizen Actions suggest the gravity of the issues chosen: "Save Our Constitution," "Impeach Dick Cheney," "Close Guantanamo." This month Workin ...
Topics: biofuels, cars, climate, climate change mitigation, energy, ethanol, greenhouse-gas emissions, renewable energy (all these topics)

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