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And just like Georgia, other states are encouraging development of cellulosic ethanol.
The state of Michigan is working with Mascoma, a cellulosic ethanol company spun off from Dartmouth College, and said in July that they intend to build a plant in Michigan using wood wastes as feedstock.
Mascoma, also backed by high-profile venture capital firms, has designed organisms that speed up the process of breaking down biomass and converting sugars to ethanol.
Michigan's governor, Jennifer Granholm, is enthusiastic about the plan and says it will help the state economically. The total investment from the state and Mascoma could top $150 million, said Michael Shore, a spokesman from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, a state agency.
"The state of Michigan will be putting some significant dollars on the line. We certainly believe there's a race to be first and we want to be in it," Shore said.
According to local press reports, the total investment of the Soperton, Ga., plant will be $225 million. A Range Fuels representative said that the company and Treutlen County have not finalized all of the incentives, which are said to include free use of land and tax abatements.
Federal mandates are setting a rapid pace in biofuel production and investment. Ethanol, made from corn, is now used as a gasoline addition, and blends with a high concentration of ethanol can power "flex-fuel" cars that run both ethanol and gas.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 set a target of 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2012--a benchmark that is expected to be surpassed as early as next year. The current capacity from U.S. production is more than 6.5 billion gallons, with another 6.4 billion gallons currently under construction, according to the Renewable Fuels Association.
Biofuels today make up a fraction of gasoline consumption, which in the U.S. is about 400 million gallons a day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
By mid-century, domestically grown biofuels could meet one third of current fuel demand, according to a 2005 report from the Departments of Energy and Agriculture. The report assumes a major portion will be derived from forests as well as agricultural waste products.
Deforestation?
As the investments continue to flow toward ethanol and government biofuel production targets rise, environmentalists are taking a closer look.
Making ethanol from the cellulose in agricultural and forestry waste rather than corn produces less greenhouse gases, according to environmental groups. An NRDC study found that, on average, corn-based ethanol reduces greenhouse gas pollution by 18 percent for every gallon of gasoline displaced.
Making ethanol from other sources of biomass can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent to 75 percent depending on the feedstock, the group found. The analysis sought to analyze the emissions through the lifecycle of fuel production. Compared with perennial crops like grasses or managed forests, creating corn ethanol is more polluting because farmers use petroleum-based fertilizer and tractors that consume gas, according to studies.
The NRDC advocates incentives that favor "low-carbon biofuels," an approach that California is taking. Rather than setting biofuels production targets, federal mandates should draw distinctions between different types of biomasses used for fuels, said the NRDC's Greene. Policies should promote fuels that create the least amount of greenhouse gases measured during production, refining and burning of fuels, Greene said.
From the environmental point of view, the Range Fuels plant is notable because it's moving fuel production into the forests and away from competing uses from agricultural land, Greene added.
However, he notes that forests are already under a lot of strain from sprawl and the pulp and paper industries. "Going to the forests is certainly no panacea," he said.
A citizen advocacy group called Food and Water Watch last month published a report last month that criticized the land-grab mentality now hovering around ethanol. It warned that the environmental effects of large-scale cellulosic ethanol production are still not well-understood.
"Even cellulosic ethanol, a considerably better alternative than corn ethanol, is limited by the impacts that large-scale production of feedstocks and fuel would have on the environment," it concluded.
Georgia's Dartnell argues that building a fuel industry around the forests is actually good for trees. He notes that the land being used in the Range Fuels plant is a plantation, where trees are planted in rows for miles, and was converted from cotton and tobacco farms over the past century.
Deforestation should not be a concern, he says, because the state has an inventory process and, at this point, the state is growing trees faster than they consume them. Creating a demand for tree residue will mean that landowners have an interest in managing the resource sustainably, he said.
"In the Forest Commission, our mission statement doesn't say anything about making ethanol," Dartnell said. "It's all about clean air and healthy forests. Part of that is the economic viability of owning forest land."
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this article, instead of the indiscriminate cheerleading that one
often sees in articles about it.
We're just going to grow all of this corn, dumping more fertilizer into the ground and that's better for the environment somehow? Ethanol is not a long term solution.
I think the better energy fuel of the future is in the hydrogen fuel cell technology, where the hydrogen is infinitely recyclable.
And that analysis is not including what it takes to make the original electricity in the first place. The hydrogen economy would be about the worst thing from a total energy consumption stand point this country could do.
As for you're perpetual motion idea of hydrogen being fully recyclable, I'd recommend you go back and take a first-year thermodynamics course in college. Hopefully that will make you realize how out-to-lunch such a idea is! There ain't no such thing as a free lunch and hydrogen is DEFINITELY never going to be 'infinitely renewable'. The current process of electrolysis of water to hydrogen and then recombining hydrogen to form water again in a fuel cell is about 33% efficient with hopes to get it up to about 45% or 50% at some time in the future. What that means is that even before you move your car an inch you've already lost more than half the energy you put in.
Hydrogen fuel cells are a total greenwashing scam that are totally pointless now and will continue to be pointless until we find an extremely abundant, clean, cheap and safe source of electricity. None of the technologies known today, with the possible exception of nuclear fusion, are going to fit that bill.
2500,products can be made from ,not the least of which is ethenol,food,and oil,which is high in omega3 fatty acids,healthy fat, from the seed,which is also high in protien and of course, fuel from the stalks,of cellulose,which by the way,can also be used to make cloth,even soft,silk and linen like, material from.
Since,before the united states,was even a country,hemp ,was used to make sailing cloth ,clothing,rope,etc...
Thomas Jefferson,encouraged farmers ,to grow it ,because, he knew it's value as a crop ,and as a way to ensure prosparity ,for the farmers, and the rest of the country.
While I'm here, Chrysler's ill fated romance with the mini-turbine needs a new look.
time they were experimenting with turbine cars. He got to drive
one of the 50 that were built for road testing and said you could
blow all the leaves off his front lawn with it. It would be cool to
have a turbine car, but unfortunately they are not very efficient
unless run at design conditions, which usually means full rated
power. They might work all right in a hybrid design where they
could be run most efficiently, but frequent shutdowns and
restarts don't sit well with turbines. Uses lots of fuel to start, and
the thermal cycling uses up the turbine life rapidly. Pity.
one thing is recognized and dealt with. There is an incentive
with solar technologies to capture and attempt to use all the
light that falls on them. Since all the energy we use ends up as
heat one way or another, all the energy captured by a solar
collector (heat or PV) ends up as heat. The earth reflects about
30 percent of the incident light back into space, on average. If
solar catches on in a big way due to its perceived "greenness"
and its huge potential, eventually we will have to take into
account that we are capturing more heat than the earth naturally
would. So perhaps we should get used to that up front and make
solar collection technologies heating neutral by making them 30
percent reflective.
Sounds silly, I know, but eventually it will be a problem, as we
always "need" as much energy as we can get, and the potential
here is orders of magnitude greater than anything we have
known before. Might as well admit it up front and deal with it.
If the trees that are going to be used in this experiment were already being cut down and the debris tossed away, wouldn't it be more ecologically sensible to recycle that waste instead of tossing it away?
If the material was going to be wasted and this plan can recycle it in a manner that removes the need for just that much more petroleum based fuel, then I don't see the problem.
There is a common myth going around that ethanol fuels will cause food prices to go up because of all the corn and other products that will be turned to fuel instead of food. It's a myth and been debunked repeatedly. Ethanol production uses the corn waste- not the kernels. All those stalks, husks, etc. All of that would otherwise be burned on the fields would then be collected and converted to ethanol. That is better for the environment and doesn't affect the food prices.
The government is *still* subsidizing farmers to intentionally not plant crops as a means to keeping the market price of food crops high. Imagine what would happen if all those millions of idle acres were turned to producing a product for ethanol instead? The government wouldn't be paying a subsidy, which means less money taken out of your pocket, the farmer could get a profit for crops grown and sold to fuel producers, and the cost of fuel for your own vehicle could potentionally go down.
It's a renewable resource.
I've done the research and all signs point to this being an ecologically sensible and friendly alternative fuel solution.
standpoint. Which probably does make it near-term, once the
taxpayer gets tired of subsiziding it. Oh, but how long before the
government lets us stop subsidizing it?
solar, coal, wind...just words to replace "oil" in conversations that start "we all must".
business efficiences can drive conservation, as soon as business efficiencies are made necessary,
instead of "the way we have always done things" being the answer to every change.
hydrogen has a place. as an example, coastal wind turbines could be aimed at electrolysis off peak, with fuel cell power being added back in on-peak.
wood based ethanol, and methanol, take nothing from lumber. and the net is reducing th aste factor in pulp wppd prodiction.
coal is a subsidy from the planet itself..as is oil. used intelligently, the supply can last quite a while.
no single answer. no monloiths. all that sngls answer solutions have ever done for an economy is empower the few, and leave the rest complaining.
http://www.butanol.com/
Why
Well all this bio fuel requires more messing with nature for the worse whereas coal is just well there and theres plenty of it.
If you really want to help for your children you'll need to rethink what trully important rather than a fear driven new technologies market.
1) Oxidents in the air.
2) The cutting of trees
3) Bio-diversity
The odd thing is with all that C02 outthrere we look set to get more of all 3.
It's a good thing i can see into the future.
mean that if we use them it is automatically good. Nature is already
using 100 percent of them for its own purposes. How can we
contemplate turning them to our uses without considering that
fact?
That's one thing nuclear energy has in its favor. An "unnatural"
energy source to support an "unnatural" level of human population.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/12/185735/038
Last week I read an article analysing the entire 'life cycle' of ethanol and coming to the conclusion it was a net-energy LOSS. From fuel use in farming to trucking feedstock to processing, and energy costs there, to trucking ethanol to point of delivery, and then the 3/5 (?) power ratio wrt gasoline.
Can't find link, my bad. Anyone know if this is a likely scenario?
I imagine a tub of popcorn at the mivie theatre will follow suit.
Seriously, we need to concentrate on crop residues, and alternative crops such as palm trees (which can grow in salty water) to use as fuel feedstocks.
In many applications, especially cooling, it would be more efficient to use Sunlight directly instead of collecting it with chlorophyll.
To all those that blame the cost on food solely with the price of feed stock are over simplifying the commodity market.
True their is a correlation between supply and demand, etc.
But so to is there a correlation between inflation and pricing as well.
But take some time to research the cost of your food stuffs with the cost of commodities over the last 30 to 35 years. You should find that in the last decade or so that the market for corn has been "soft" on a price stand point and supply has been more than ample for need.
Many factors will influence the price on your food dollar, some of which will not be seen at the raw commodity market.
It is good that we are looking at viable energy options.
I expect that what will be provided for as ethanol fuels will be comprised of blended ethanols. Mixing the cellose with the grain and sugar forms as the technology and the chemistry of production improves.
Key factor though when looking at our options is how many products each commodity can provide.
Bent grass as a market right now doesn't exist.
Growing a crop for one purpose isn't sustainable. Where as corn has been developed for many uses (from corn starch package peanuts (dissolve with water or slight heat and are edible) to various forms of foods and fuels.
resources needed to produce significant amounts of fuel from
biofuel resources. Current food inflation may indeed have many
causes. Producing anywhere near enough biofuel to make an
appreciable difference in even our transport fuel supply implies
land usage much greater than that currently used for agriculture
in the US. The danger is that some kinds of biofuel will prove to
be energetically economic enough to foster a growing biofuel
industry on its own. In that case, the incentive will truly be to try
to grow so much feedstock that it has serious implications for
food supply and cost. The alternatives would be either not going
down that road or to prepare to import biofuels and/or food.
Producing hydrogen is more than an order of magnitude better when it comes to conversion efficiency. For example, the direct splitting of water using a catalyst, solar concentrators to produce extremely high pressure and temperature can achieve a direct efficiency of 56%.
But let us say we use PV cells in a conservative estimate with today's technology, which are about 20% efficiency, and the splitting of water via electrolysis at high pressure at 70%, the overall capture of energy is 14% net in the form of hydrogen energy value which are in turn 300% times more better than the best plants of the world. Plants are never nowhere this mark. There is hope in single cell algae that are selected for their near direct production of plant oils though.
But the real value of converting cellulose into fuel is that it could help cut down incidence of large devastating and very polluting forest fires. We just have to divert the energy from these forest fires by proper management of forest litter. We have plenty of forest litter and understorey growth that have plagued many big fires in the US. Forest litter, urban wood waste, farm waste from hay or straws are all good sources of fuel. Rather than let them be and burn whenever nature or arsonists allows, these biomass with uncontrolled burns produce many air pollutants and other noxious emissions. Why not utilize these to produce fuel or electricity. As an example, several biomass powered electricity generating plants have significant emission reductions from the same amount of cellulosic materials, often by more than 90% on the average compared to those emitted during natural burns like forest fires. And the cost of controlling such wayward fires are often massive and there are tremendous loss of properties as well.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/12/185735/038
Last week I read an article analysing the entire 'life cycle' of ethanol and coming to the conclusion it was a net-energy LOSS. From fuel use in farming to trucking feedstock to processing, and energy costs there, to trucking ethanol to point of delivery, and then the 3/5 (?) power ratio wrt gasoline.
Can't find link, my bad. Anyone know if this is a likely scenario?
slight energy sink as studies supporting it being a slight energy
source. Cellulosic? Conjectured to be better. No large-scale
experience.
sawgrass, etc. Will those absolutely not grow somewhere where
they could replace a food crop? If the economic incentive is there,
what would stop them?
But to make it really economical, you need to use the waste left after making the alcohol for energy production or other purposes.
However, public transport is the first of many ways of reducing oil-dependency.
- Biodiesel is here, NOW, and it works very well.
- by haazah August 15, 2007 7:47 PM PDT
- Why wait for a future wonder product when we have a really good fuel right now?
- Like this Reply to this comment
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- Disagree
- by Phillep_H August 16, 2007 2:34 PM PDT
- Biodiesel works out only if you are using waste grease because oil is such a tiny part of the plant, and that means a horrible overall energy harvest per acre.
- Like this
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (75 Comments)To be sure, there's no such thing as a "perfect" fuel. Everything's got its drawbacks. Given the excellent emissions and the wide variety of things you can make biodiesel from (grease, soy oil, canola oil, etc.), and the fact that you can make it at home, it holds great advantages over ethanol. Fact is, you can't make ethanol at home. Okay, you could, but you run a good risk of blowing yourself/your equipment/your garage sky high by doing it. Brewing biodiesel does involve the use of some nasty chemicals, but if you educate yourself or take a class on it, it will come out all right.