ethanol

Use of distiller grains in livestock rations has exploded

Yesterday, I posted about how feeding cattle distillers grains — the leftover from the corn-based ethanol process — seems to raise the incidence of E. coli 0157. I was a bit vague on precisely how much of the stuff was making it into the livestock-feed supply. Thanks to the indefatigable Ray Wallace, I now know. […]

Feeding ethanol waste to cows

Perhaps the most persistent debate around corn ethanol involves its “net energy balance” — that is, whether it consumes more energy in production than it delivers as a fuel. Even the studies that credit the fuel with a robust energy balance, like this one from the USDA, acknowledge that it’s pretty much a wash unless […]

The global nature of global warming

This is my formal rebuttal to Brooke Coleman (director of the Renewable Energy Action Project), specifically to comments found in Tom Philpott's latest corn ethanol article. I'm using my access to the bully pulpit to pull it out of comments, like I did the last time a corn ethanol enthusiast joined the discussion.

Welcome to the best environmental blog on the planet, Brooke. You don't seem to have a very high opinion of this community, but maybe you'll warm up to us. I don't speak for the whole community of course, I'm just one of the many who come here to learn and engage in reasoned debate.

You seem to think that anything is better than oil. But believe it or not, in the real world, we sometimes have to pick between the lesser of two evils, at least until something better comes along.

Plowing under the world's remaining grasslands and forests to grow industrial agrofuels dwarfs the damage done by oil spills. What happens when you take grain off the world food market and stuff it into American gas tanks? I'll tell you. Someone somewhere on this planet takes advantage of the high prices to plant more of it to fill the hole in the human food chain. Where is the arable land they need to do that? It is under an existing carbon sink or has another crop on it already. The second leading cause of global warming is deforestation. How hard is that concept to understand? Global warming is global. What we do here screws everybody.

The corn industry hopes Congress will pull its fat out of the fire

I used to love to start my writing day by taking a poke or two at the corn-based ethanol industry — you know, the biggest greenwash ever. Photo: mrobenalt These days, the debunking of corn fuel almost seems like it’s piling on. Today, two major newspapers — the LA Times and The Wall Street Journal […]

Is it something in the air?

Interesting things are happening in the francophone world. Last week I reported that the Quebec government had decided to stop supporting any new ethanol plants based on corn as a feedstock. Now the French government, perhaps flowing out of its broad social dialogue on the environment (known as "Le Grenelle français de l'environnement"), is reported to be thinking of slashing subsidies benefiting the production of ethanol in the country.

Ooh la la, what in the world is going on?

Notable quotable

“It certainly appeared a year ago that we were going to have a national push on ethanol, and we wanted to have the vehicles ready. But we always knew that food-based ethanol would not be the answer. The shift to cellulosic ethanol has been slower than we were led to believe. If we don’t end […]

Backing away from corn ethanol

The big news north of the (U.S.) border is that Québec's government has decided that there is no future in corn ethanol.

As explained in an article posted on Canada's Cyberpresse website, back in May 2005 Québec's then Minister for Agriculture, Yvon Vallières, gave a green light, "for obvious economic and ecological reasons," to the construction of the first plant to manufacture ethanol from corn kernels, in the town of Varennes.

However, during an emission of the Enquête television program (click to view) on Radio-Canada last Thursday evening, Québec's Minister for Natural Resources, Claude Béchard, promised that the 120-million-litre-per year Varennes plant would be the first and the last of its kind. "It is necessary to turn to other [feedstock] sources," he said. No other ethanol factory based on corn will be built in Québec.

On Sunday, a leader in one of Montreal's newspapers, The Gazette expressed satisfaction with the decision, declaring, "Backing away from ethanol makes sense."

Delusional Beltway optimism about energy

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a seminar hosted by several departments at the University of Texas on the topic of "peak oil." The occasion was the visit of David Sundalow of the Brookings Institution, who is hawking his new book Freedom from Oil. This was mutually convenient for him and the university, which is trying to carve out a position as an optimistic, rolled-up-sleeves, can-do problem-solver in the fields of energy and water.

I have no objection to that approach and am pleased to be somewhat distantly associated with it. That said, I did not leave the event with great enthusiasm for Sundalow's book. It was worthwhile in that it drew for me a sharp distinction between can-do optimism and unrealistic, delusional optimism.

I think a train wreck of development, energy, food, environment, and warfare, all driven by a hugely overpopulated planet, is going to be very hard to avoid. I think we can avoid it, and even when I am pessimistic I whistle a happy tune and act as if we can avoid it -- because without optimism there is no hope. Optimism is a moral imperative. That said, it needs to be reality-based optimism. Sometimes the things we want to work aren't the things that are going to work.

Politicians and the art of deception

Compare this video (posted by David) of Hillary squirming while she tells a whopper with the video below of McCain being brutally honest (via a comment by greyflcn in same post). Refreshing. We human beings are masters of deception, and of detection of said deception -- the result of an evolutionary arms race:

Update: I didn't realize that this is old footage before his flip flop.