Comments on: Khosla: Setting the story straight

Vinod Khosla responds to the editorial, "Khosla's Conspiracy," in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal.

[SteveLafferty]

Could someone explain to me what Khosla means by "food-based ethanol"? I'm all for a good stiff drink after work, but I am pretty sure that the road to ruin is paved with ethanol shooters.

[SteveLafferty]

Could someone explain to me what Khosla means by "food-based ethanol"? I'm all for a good stiff drink after work, but I am pretty sure that the road to ruin is paved with ethanol shooters.

[Maisycq]

Could someone explain to me what Khosla means by "food-based ethanol"? I'm all for a good stiff drink after work, but I am pretty sure that the road to ruin is paved with ethanol shooters.

[ca-ftf-iuf]

"food-based ethanol" is ethanol produced from a commodity normally used by humans for food. For example, Corn, Sugar, etc...

[kgsbca]

Food-based ethanol is ethanol that uses corn or other crops that could be used for food as the feedstock. Khosla's investments in ethanol have been in companies that use things like switchgrass (a weed that nobody eats) or wood chips (waste from turning trees into lumber or paper). Brazil, the leader in ethanol, uses sugar cane, which many people consider a food, but really should be classified as an anti-food, as it is one of the most unhealthy things that people can eat. I have no problem with using sugar cane to make ethanol, I hope it drives up the price of sugar 10-fold (for that matter, the US would be a lot less obese if the price of corn syrup skyrocketed).

If you want to read about why we should embrace the use of corn as a feedstock for ethanol, read "The Omnivore's Dilemma". It doesn't talk about ethanol at all, but it does give a jaw-dropping description of the corn industry and its' impact on the health of this country.

[OklahomaMike]

The argument that because sugar is unhealthy, than sugar ethanol shouldn't be called food based would really require the same thing of corn based ethanol in that the corn being displaced would otherwise have been used for corn syrup. Whether healthy or not, it still has an impact on food prices- albeit an exaggerated one. Corn based ethanol and a shift from corn syrup might be a good move for the way we eat- but it wouldn't really be a good move environmentally or economically. There is too much energy invested into growing corn and into its transformation to ethanol for it to be a good return.

My huge problem with sugar based ethanol is that the expansion of sugar based ethanol means greater encroachment into south american rain forests. Ethanol that utilizes waste products or that uses plant material that can be quickly cultivated in an environmentally low impact and sustainable manner would be the ideal if the transformation of that cellular product were efficient.