Some who have participated in past transportation related threads may have heard me posit this before: using biomass to produce ethanol may have its advantages but burning it to produce electricity would be more efficient.
The Science article pdf is, I think behind a subscription wall, but points out that “electricity produced from biomass is a near term renewable resource that can be implemented with biomass boilers, Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plants, or co-combustion with coal” Carbon sequestration, if applied, would be gravy. (Not mentioned in the article is the potential for biochar to sequester carbon longterm as well)
Now please note, I recognize that currently our transportation infrastructure is ill suited for using pure BEVs for long distance transport and that that fact, combined with the current costs of batteries make pure BEVs as no more ready to take over fueling all our transportation needs than cellulosic ethanol is. There is a place for liquid fuel and cellulosic ethanol is a top possibility for that need. But overall using biomass for electricity generation is a better choice and, well, readier.
While I hate to be the only responder to my own op some additional bits of information are of note.
The problem with using bioenergy crops like switchgrass for electricity generation (as opposed to waste biomass in the biochar model) is competing with coal on a cost basis. Optimistic estimates for switchgrass:
While biomass to electricity beats biomass to ethanol by a long shot, it cannot beat coal on a cost basis unless the other advantages of biomass use are monetized. As that same second cite continues -
And that I believe does not include the biochar option.
Is any of this really surprising? The requirement for corn ethanol is gasoline has nothing to do with reducing pollution, increasing efficiency, or establishing energy independence; many studies have shown that more energy goes into producing ethanol than comes out of it. The only reason why the requirement exists is to help rich agricultural corporations get even richer. That’s why it was required in states where those corporations were powerful, such as Wisconsin and Illinois, several years before it was required at the national level.
For as long as large corporations rule America, there will not be any progress towards greener, more efficient energy in this country.
The requirement for corn ethanol is gasoline does nothing to reduce overall pollution, but I thought it reduced it where the cars burned it. In other words, the pollution was released in the corn fields and not city streets. I know of no other advantage, except as you say to make money for big farm corporations.
I would, but I’d much rather read the original article prior to commenting, and even though I have paid access to the Science journals, I somehow cannot download the article.
Several years ago when ethanol from corn became a big deal, I was responsible for buying commodities for use in animal feed production. The effect on the price of corn by creating a new market was huge. Feed manufacturers tried reformulating the diets using other grains and products, which caused new demand, and price increases for those. Driving up the prices for not just corn based feeds and human food, but many unrelated foods. Well meaning people jumped on the band wagon and made ethanol in gas a requirement. The government subsidized production of ethanol and tax credits for manufacturing plant construction.
The problem with using corn is that it is not something just laying around looking for a good use. All the corn was already being used. It’s not like we are making an oil substitute out of a waste product. Diverting a large amount to non-feed/food uses is hard on developing countries that buy our US exported corn. The price is artificially inflated beyond what it should be. And this is very regressive, the burden for these price increases fall on the backs of the poor. And government subsidized ethanol is a huge windfall for large agri-business’.
Corn also takes a huge amount of fuel, water and land to produce. It sounded like a good idea and now that we have had several years to see the results, it no longer seems desireable.
I concur, with the full weight of my expertise behind it. Corn just ain’t it.
I remain optimistic. I am firmly convinced that bio-engineering is the tsunami of the future, and we’ve barely gotten our feet wet. I lean so strongly towards bio-energy mostly because it seems so obvious that the Goddess has already figured out how to convert the suns energy about a thousand different ways, and the needle of cheap, clean energy lies in that haystack.
Bio-energy, brothers and sisters, pals and gals, the Green Flame of Progress that…what?..oh, my time’s up?..I didn’t know about any time…yes, well, OK, don’t want to be pushy, or anything…
Well, I think you meant to say Boondogglier, as in more boondoggley. As it reads it sounds like you are saying that Ethanol gained a person who boondoggles. I opened the thread just to figure out how that made any grammatical sense.