Throwing more fuel on ethanol debate

A little frustrated… What I heard out of this report was that corn-based ethanol was bad and converting prairie land to agriculture was devastating. I’d really like a study that looks at the costs and benefits of turning agriculture land back into prairie and using that as our fuel source. Corn-based ethanol is not the solution, but I’m afraid we’re just confusing people and not giving the clear information on our options.

Probably not an option Turning land back into prairie means that it has a tremendous amount of biodiversity, which also means that it has a lot of space taken up by plants that don’t produce a lot of cellulose.  If switchgrass were cultivated, it might be usable, but that’s a very different thing.  In addition, the best methods for turning cellulose into glucose sugar for fermentation are still rather inefficient and rely on some nasty things like sulphuric acid.

It may be possible that ethanol has a future, but there is little doubt that it’s a ways away – and that what is going on right now is a massive waste of both money and land.  Research into more viable fuels needs to be done in a hurry.  The main problem is that producing ethanol by fermentation is rather inefficient and produces a small, volatile molecule.  What we know we need has 8-10 carbons on it or so, not 2.  That’s where we should focus our efforts if we’re going to move towards a genuinely sustainable fuel that doesn’t treat the land like one more stripmine.

But that’s a generation away, at least.  And no one is funding that research – partly because the money is going into ethanol production.

A little frustrated… What I heard out of this report was that corn-based ethanol was bad and converting prairie land to agriculture was devastating. I'd really like a study that looks at the costs and benefits of turning agriculture land back into prairie and using that as our fuel source. Corn-based ethanol is not the solution, but I'm afraid we're just confusing people and not giving the clear information on our options.

Probably not an option Turning land back into prairie means that it has a tremendous amount of biodiversity, which also means that it has a lot of space taken up by plants that don't produce a lot of cellulose.  If switchgrass were cultivated, it might be usable, but that's a very different thing.  In addition, the best methods for turning cellulose into glucose sugar for fermentation are still rather inefficient and rely on some nasty things like sulphuric acid.

It may be possible that ethanol has a future, but there is little doubt that it's a ways away – and that what is going on right now is a massive waste of both money and land.  Research into more viable fuels needs to be done in a hurry.  The main problem is that producing ethanol by fermentation is rather inefficient and produces a small, volatile molecule.  What we know we need has 8-10 carbons on it or so, not 2.  That's where we should focus our efforts if we're going to move towards a genuinely sustainable fuel that doesn't treat the land like one more stripmine.

But that's a generation away, at least.  And no one is funding that research – partly because the money is going into ethanol production.