I’ve been swamped, blah blah blah, here’s some cool stuff you should read.
* The Watt reminds you that gas isn’t really that expensive. Soda, however, is.
* Alex has an interesting interview with Davis Guggenheim, director of An Inconvenient Truth.
* Robert Rapier loves him some debunking. He takes on a Consumers Union report on how oil companies are ripping off the public (no they aren’t) and eviscerates last night’s 60 Minutes report on how ethanol is the answer to our energy woes (no it isn’t). The latter, in particular, should not be missed.
* Speaking of ethanol cheerleading, Tom Daschle and Vinod Khosla have an op-ed in today’s NYT arguing for a “Carbon Alternative Fuel Equivalent” standard (CAFE, get it?). As usual in this sort of piece, everything they say is obviously about corn, but in the throw-away line about carbon-dioxide emissions, there’s a token mention of “ethanol produced from perennial energy crops like switch grass.” Where is all that switch grass, anyway? Cause all I’m seeing is corn from sea to shining sea.
* OK, well, here’s some switch grass:
Iogen Corporation announced May 1st that Goldman Sachs & Co. has invested $30 Million (CDN), ($27 million US) in its renewable cellulose ethanol technology. Iogen operates the worlds largest pilot/demonstration plant that makes cellulosic ethanol.
* Meanwhile, Carl Pope says that the real CAFE standards may be making a political comeback.
* And speaking of big oil companies, BusinessWeek says despite their recent mega-profits, they’re actually in quite a bit of trouble in the long term.
* MIT is wading into the energy issue, big time, with plans to open a permanent energy research center in the next five years. Also, the university’s Energy Research Council issued a report (PDF) on the energy situation and MIT’s possible contribution to it, the result of a year-long study (I’ll attempt to read it and may comment more later). Here’s an interview with the co-chair of the council.
