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ethanol

  • The trouble with Brazil’s much-celebrated ethanol ‘miracle’

    Not as sweet as advertised: industrial-scale sugarcane production in Brazil.This is a post about Brazil’s sugarcane-ethanol “miracle,” but I can’t resist starting off with a look askance at our own corn-derived ethanol phenomenon. Has there ever been a “green” technology more ecologically discredited than corn-based ethanol? It may yield slightly more energy than it consumes […]

    Tom Philpott Politics

  • Bizarre ag policy, ethanol cage match, and more

    When my info-larder gets too packed, it’s time to serve up some choice nuggets from around the Web. —————- Get ’em while they’re hot.  • Time’s Michael Grunwald on a truly absurd twist in U.S. farm/trade policy: in order to maintain subsidies to U.S. cotton farmers and avoid a trade war with Brazil, the U.S. […]

    Tom Philpott Food and Agriculture

  • Why are we propping up corn production, again?

    News flash: high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a lousy product. As Tom Laskawy reported here Tuesday, a recent study by Princeton researchers found that rats fed chow laced with HFCS gained more weight than rats fed equal calories of table sugar. All processed sweeteners add empty calories to food; but calorie for calorie, HFCS appears […]

    Tom Philpott Politics

  • EPA capitulates on ethanol, hearts clean coal

    Expect to see a lot more of this kind of thing. The press release could have come straight out of the utterly disgraced Bush EPA–and if it had, I can well imagine the howls of outrage it would have provoked, because I would have joined the chorus. Its headline read as follows: “Obama Announces Steps […]

    Tom Philpott Politics

  • U.S. feeds one quarter of its grain to cars while hunger is on the rise

    The 107 million tons of grain that went to U.S. ethanol distilleries in 2009 was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels. More than a quarter of the total U.S. grain crop was turned into ethanol to fuel cars last year. With 200 ethanol distilleries in the country […]

    Lester Brown Technology

  • Getting at the roots of unsustainable U.S. ag policy

    Cross-posted from Civil Eats. Around one third of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the way we produce, process, distribute, and consume the food we eat according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Meanwhile, farmers the world over will be the most affected by climate change, as higher carbon in the atmosphere and […]

    Paula Crossfield Politics

  • Cellulosic ethanol: time to ‘party like it’s 2014’?

    Cellulosic ethanol, after 30 years of R&D (much of it on the public dime), is ready to deliver on its promises. No longer perpetually five years away from commercial viability, the technology has come into its own. Unlike pretender energy sources like wind and solar, cellulosic is the “‘shovel-ready,’ ‘fire when ready’ technology for short-term […]

    Tom Philpott Technology

  • EPA punts on raising ethanol ‘blend wall’

    I have been following the Great Ethanol Blend Wall fight for some time. In a nutshell, ethanol companies have been struggling mightily during the recession. In response, industry group Growth Energy petitioned the EPA to allow gasoline to contain up to 15 percent ethanol rather than the current 10 percent. This demand also had the […]

    Tom Laskawy Technology

  • More power, less roadkill: How one professor’s landscape has shifted

    I took Environmental Studies 101 during my first college semester 20 years ago with Dick Andrus, a professor who has just marked 36 years of teaching at Binghamton University. I thought it’d be good to check back with him and see what he’s talking about in that class now. Q. What are your new Envi […]

    Erik Hoffner Culture