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ethanol

  • What it means to put 4.1 billion bushels of corn into our gas tanks

    The USDA just raised its projection for how much corn it expects the ethanol industry to burn through this year by 150 million bushels. It now expects a total of 4.1 billion bushels of corn to be turned into liquid fuel.  That’s about double the amount of corn that went to ethanol in 2006 (2.1 […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • The discredited agency upholds the biofuel mandate

    The environmental value of corn ethanol got a ringing endorsement Thursday from EPA chief Stephen Johnson. Johnson declined a request to cut the Renewable Fuel Standard embedded in the 2007 Energy Act. The RFS mandates 9 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol be blended into the fuel supply this year, rising steadily to 15 billion gallons […]

    Tom Philpott Politics

  • Globalization failed, cheap oil is gone, local production is the only way forward

    Bigger is always better, isn’t it? Big cars, big houses, big businesses, big farms. If you were big, you made more money. Clearly, that is the way of the world. When Europeans colonized the Americas, they wanted more land — not some of it; all of it. Napoleon wanted more land. Nothing stopped him until […]

    Jim Goodman Technology

  • NYT: Consumers are complaining about ethanol-spiked gasoline

    As ethanol continues to insinuate itself into the fuel supply — propelled by a slew of government goodies — ordinary folks are getting fed up, The New York Times reports: Many consumers complain that ethanol, which constitutes as much as 10 percent of the fuel they buy in most states, hurts gas mileage and chokes […]

    Tom Philpott Climate & Energy

  • If we just trust Monsanto and ADM, we can eat and drive to our heart’s content

    I’ve been a pretty harsh critic of industrial agriculture for a while. I’ve also been known to utter unkind words about the government’s extraordinary, multibillion-dollar effort to promote ethanol. But I’ve changed my mind. I now believe chemical-dependent, monocrop agriculture can be counted on to not only “feed the world,” but also keep its hundreds […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Ugly babies

    “Ethanol is an ugly baby, but it’s our baby. I’m not against any fuel unless it’s foreign.” — oil billionaire and energy independence evangelist T. Boone Pickens

    David Roberts Climate & Energy

  • USDA scientist: Some crop residues may be too valuable for biofuels

    Converting crop residues into cellulosic ethanol sounds to many people like a good idea -- certainly better than using food crops themselves. Yet according to respected USDA soil scientist Ann Kennedy, the stems and leaves left over after crops are harvested may have more value if they are left on the ground, especially in areas receiving less than 25 inches of precipitation annually.

    That includes most of the United States (click on link to see map) west of the 100th meridian, which runs roughly from Bismark, S.D. through Laredo, Texas.

    Ron Steenblik Food

  • Economist says biofuels have pushed up global food prices by 75 percent

    The “Republican war on science” has evidently opened a new front: economics, a discipline often fetishized by the right. In a startling article published July 4, the Guardian reports that in a "secret" study, a World Bank senior economist concluded that the recent explosion in biofuels use has driven global food prices up by 75 […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Lugar calls for end to tariff on Brazilian sugarcane ethanol

    Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) stopped by ($ub. req’d) the American Enterprise Institute yesterday to give a speech arguing that Congress should lift the 54-cents-a-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. “To demonstrate leadership the United States should lift its tariff on Brazilian ethanol that now shelters the U.S. industry,” Lugar told the AEI crowd. Many politicians — […]

    Kate Sheppard Politics