I believe that. I have no doubt about it.There is no doubt we can solve this problem. In fact, we have a moral obligation to do so. Small changes to your daily routine can add up to big differences in helping to stop global warming. The time to come together to solve this problem is now – TAKE ACTION
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/busin ... ref=sloginRise in Ethanol Raises Concerns About Corn as a Food
CHICAGO, Jan. 4 — Renewing concerns about whether there will be enough corn to support the demand for both fuel and food, a new study has found that ethanol plants could use as much as half of America’s corn crop next year.
Dozens of new ethanol plants are being built by farmers and investors in a furious gold rush, spurred by a call last year from the Bush administration and politicians from farm states to produce more renewable fuels to curb America’s reliance on oil. But the new study by the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental group, found that the number of ethanol plants coming on line has been underreported by more than 25 percent by both the Agriculture Department and the Renewable Fuels Association, the ethanol industry’s main lobbying group.
The Earth Policy Institute says that 79 ethanol plants are under construction, which would more than double ethanol production capacity to 11 billion gallons by 2008. Yet late last month, the Renewable Fuels Association said there were 62 plants under construction.
The lower tally has led to an underestimate of the grain that would be needed for ethanol, clouding the debate over the priorities of allocating corn for food and fuel, said Lester R. Brown, who has written more than a dozen books on environmental issues and is the president of the Earth Policy Institute. “This unprecedented diversion of corn to fuel production will affect food prices everywhere,” Mr. Brown said.
Also another good source I recommend is Discover OnlineSource:
http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/agriculture.php
4 January 2007
Media Information: David Garner 01904 432153
York-Sichuan link to study biodiesel production
Biologists at the University of York have established new research links with Chinese scientists to investigate biodiesel – a cleaner, more environmentally friendly alternative to petroleum.
Professor Ian Graham led a delegation of scientists from the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP) at York to Sichuan University in China. The trip was funded by the British Consulate-General Office in Chongqing as part of the UK-China Partners in Science Programme.
Tim Summers, British Consul-General for Chongqing, said: "Renewable energy is one of the agreed priority areas for future co-operation between the two countries, and we hope this visit to Chengdu will be the first of many by Professor Graham and his colleagues."
"CNAP’s outstanding expertise in the whole biorenewables area is further enhanced by [this partnership]" Professor Ian Graham
The CNAP scientists participated in a workshop arranged to explore production of biodiesel from the bush Jatropha curcas - a tree that grows in the tropics and produces oil-rich seeds that can be used to make biofuel. The York delegation included Professor Simon McQueen-Mason, Dr Yi Li, Dr Tony Larson and Dr Andrew King.
Professor Graham said: "We have successfully established collaborative links with Sichuan University, specifically focussing on biodiesel. CNAP’s outstanding expertise in the whole biorenewables area is further enhanced by such partnerships."
While in China, Professor Graham and Professor McQueen-Mason were awarded Guest Professorships from Sichuan University. Professor McQueen-Mason said: "We are greatly honoured by the award and very excited by the opportunity of interacting with Chinese scientists in this very important area."
ENDS
Notes to editors
* CNAP, the (External) Centre for Novel Agricultural Products , is a research centre in the Department of Biology at the University of York and was established through a benefaction from the Garfield Weston Foundation and funding from UK Government. The University of York was awarded a Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in 2006 for its work in CNAP. The aim of CNAP's research is to realise the potential of plant-and microbial-based renewable resources through gene discovery to make products needed by society. CNAP research in plant and microbial sciences is supported by the UK Research Councils, particularly the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), as well as the DTI and DEFRA, and funding from European and US organisations.
© University of York
Communications Office - University of York - Heslington - YORK - YO10 5DD - tel: +44 (0)1904 43 2029 -
fax: +44 (0)1904 43 4466 - email: pressoffice@york.ac.uk
Both links have areas and articles free to the public and do not require membership to access.Life After Oil
Everyone from GM to President Bush is suddenly infatuated with ethanol. Here's how Big Corn could really replace Big Oil.
By Robb Mandelbaum
DISCOVER Vol. 27 No. 08 | August 2006 | Environment
Continue:
http://www.discover.com/issues/aug-06/f ... /afteroil/
excerpt:
... Because ethanol is made from plants that pull carbon from the atmosphere as they grow, it could drastically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from automobiles, the second largest source here, behind power plants. Although President Bush did not say as much, the Department of Energy is also pursuing an even more ambitious outcome—a "biorefinery" that could make not only fuel but also plastics and other products currently derived from petroleum.
Those claims sound less outrageous when you consider that they are being realized abroad right now. In Brazil—a country of 188 million people with the world's 14th largest economy—about 40 percent of the fuel burned in passenger vehicles is ethanol derived from sugarcane. The pump price for ethanol is roughly half that of gasoline. Seventy percent of new cars in Brazil are sold with "flex fuel" engines, which can run on pure gasoline or E85, a blend of up to 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, and the Brazilian government has announced that it will wean itself from foreign oil imports completely by the end of this year. All this is happening with a fundamentally American technology: The flex-fuel engine and its precursor—the Model T, which Henry Ford expected to run on ethanol—were invented in the United States.
In fact, ethanol is already creeping into the mainstream. Last year about 1.6 billion bushels of corn were fermented in the United States to produce 4 billion gallons of ethanol, double the amount for 2001. Three percent of all gasoline pumped in this country is actually ethanol, which is often added as a component of low-emission "reformulated" gasoline. Some 5 million automobiles here can run on E85, even though most of their drivers probably don't know it. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires the use of 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol by 2012, and the industry is ahead of the target. Thirty-five new plants, capable of producing another 2 billion gallons, are under construction. In small but significant ways, at various labs, factories, and filling stations around the country, an energy revolution is under way.
<>
At some point, though, corn ethanol will hit a wall. Even if the United States decided to ferment its entire corn crop, that would displace less than 20 percent of our gasoline consumption. A more realistic, if still optimistic, scenario sketched by the National Corn Growers Association anticipates that corn ethanol production will quadruple to 16 billion gallons by 2015, not quite 7 percent of the likely demand. That's where President Bush picks up the story.
It turns out that Rick Lunz left a lot of energy out in his field that night. Corn stover—the husks, stalks, and cobs chewed up and spit out by the combine—is, in a sense, about two-thirds sugar. The problem is that the sugar is accessible only after it is chemically converted from the tough molecules that make up the walls of plant cells: fibrous cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin.
Lignocellulosic biomass, as it is called, represents a vast, untapped natural resource. If we could find an effective way to convert it, corn residue could provide another 20 billion gallons of ethanol by around 2040, according to a recent report from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Better yet, every plant contains cellulose, so there is no need to restrict the fermentation process to corn stover.
Switchgrass, a tall prairie grass native to North America, is a much more promising raw material. It can reach nine feet high, and it grows easily from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian plains, from the Rockies to the Atlantic Coast. It can grow in poor soil as well as in dry climates, says agronomist David Bransby of Auburn University, so it requires little fertilizer and water and can grow in places that are not now useful cropland. An acre of switchgrass can produce more than twice as much ethanol as an acre of corn. By 2030 the Department of Energy envisions American farmers harvesting fields of switchgrass purely for their energy content.
People have coveted that energy for a long time. "When I first looked into the ethanol industry, there was this promise that the cellulose technology was just a few years away," Lunz recalled. "Well, it's been 25 years now." Biomass research that began at the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden, Colorado, during the Carter years nearly came to a halt in the early 1980s and did not revive until George H. W. Bush became president. President Clinton expanded the facility, now called NREL, short for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Researchers there say they are tantalizingly close to fulfilling that early promise.
The environment and particularly fuel for autos is such a fast moving/changing field right now, so it's best to stay updated and not get too attached to any one way as THE solution; too many different things involved. However, these new directions are offering some good, well thought out choices. Much better than a quick "fast food" - "One Size Fits All" type of solution (way of thinking) that has been such a big part of the problem in the past.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0928/p02s01-usec.html
Race to make clean, fuel-sipping cars revs up
Honda pushes clean diesels. GM takes big step with hydrogen. But can anybody outdo gas-electric hybrids?
By Mark Clayton
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0925/p03s ... ml?s=widep
A reality check on plug-in hybrids
Vehicles that draw power from the electricity grid offer uneven benefits, a new study finds.
By Mark Clayton
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0801/p01s ... ml?s=widep
Gasoline's fledgling rivals: the race to power your car
As pump prices soar, the push intensifies to find cheaper and greener options.
By Mark Clayton
i got to do some homework. I think that is dis-information. Yes they run off the grid but it works out they they run on 30% of the gas that it takes to run a hybrid. But I am not talking about hybrids, no infernal combustion engine, pure electric like the ones that ran so good General Motors had to destroy them. There was a law in california that 10 percent of the cars on the road had to be electric. The law was subverted overthorown I forget the details but big oil got the law revoked and then the cars were destroyed. A fuking shame.A reality check on plug-in hybrids
Vehicles that draw power from the electricity grid offer uneven benefits, a new study finds.
By Mark Clayton
Jack - seriously; if you are genuinely concerned you need to do more 'homework' and that means staying current because this is a fast moving/changing field and it's very simple to do:stilltrucking wrote:You know they use a lot of fertilizer to grow those fuel crops, where do you think they get the chemicals for that?
Our ground water is so polluted now, have you ever heard of MTBE's.
(MTBE contamination of ground water )
One of California's less successful attempts to clean up auto exhaust.
Didn't even take a minute for me to stay/be on top of the latest research and find an article with current research results addressing your concerns about the use of fertilizer and pesticide in the processing of biofuels - plus much, much more.Public release date: 10-Jul-2006
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Contact: Mark Cassutt
cassu003@umn.edu
612-624-8038
University of Minnesota
Researchers identify energy gains and environmental impacts of corn ethanol and soybean biodiesel
The first comprehensive analysis of the full life cycles of soybean biodiesel and corn grain ethanol shows that biodiesel has much less of an impact on the environment and a much higher net energy benefit than corn ethanol, but that neither can do much to meet U.S. energy demand.
The study will be published in the July 11 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers tracked all the energy used for growing corn and soybeans and converting the crops into biofuels. They also looked at how much fertilizer and pesticide corn and soybeans required and how much greenhouse gases and nitrogen, phosphorus, and pesticide pollutants each released into the environment.
"Quantifying the benefits and costs of biofuels throughout their life cycles allows us not only to make sound choices today but also to identify better biofuels for the future," said Jason Hill, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of ecology, evolution, and behavior and the department of applied economics and lead author of the study.
The study showed that both corn grain ethanol and soybean biodiesel produce more energy than is needed to grow the crops and convert them into biofuels. This finding refutes other studies claiming that these biofuels require more energy to produce than they provide. The amount of energy each returns differs greatly, however. Soybean biodiesel returns 93 percent more energy than is used to produce it, while corn grain ethanol currently provides only 25 percent more energy.
Still, the researchers caution that neither biofuel can come close to meeting the growing demand for alternatives to petroleum. Dedicating all current U.S. corn and soybean production to biofuels would meet only 12 percent of gasoline demand and 6 percent of diesel demand. Meanwhile, global population growth and increasingly affluent societies will increase demand for corn and soybeans for food.
The authors showed that the environmental impacts of the two biofuels also differ. Soybean biodiesel produces 41 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than diesel fuel whereas corn grain ethanol produces 12 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline. Soybeans have another environmental advantage over corn because they require much less nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides, which get into groundwater, streams, rivers and oceans. These agricultural chemicals pollute drinking water, and nitrogen decreases biodiversity in global ecosystems. Nitrogen fertilizer, mainly from corn, causes the 'dead zone' in the Gulf of Mexico.
"We did this study to learn from ethanol and biodiesel," says David Tilman, Regents Professor of Ecology and a co-author of the study. "Producing biofuel for transportation is a fledgling industry. Corn ethanol and soybean biodiesel are successful first generation biofuels. The next step is a biofuel crop that requires low chemical and energy inputs and can give us much greater energy and environmental returns. Prairie grasses have great potential."
Biofuels such as switchgrass, mixed prairie grasses and woody plants produced on marginally productive agricultural land or biofuels produced from agricultural or forestry waste have the potential to provide much larger biofuel supplies with greater environmental benefits than corn ethanol and soybean biodiesel.
According to Douglas Tiffany, research fellow, department of applied economics and another co-author of the study, ethanol and biodiesel plants are early biorefineries that in the future will be capable of using different kinds of biomass and conversion technologies to produce a variety of biofuels and other products, depending upon market demands.
Hill adds that both ethanol and biodiesel have a long-term value as additives because they oxygenate fossil fuels, which allows them to burn cleaner. Biodiesel also protects engine parts when blended with diesel.
"There is plenty of demand for ethanol as an additive," Hill says. "The ethanol industry was built on using ethanol as an additive rather than a fuel. Using it as a biofuel such as E85 is a recent and currently unsustainable development. As is, there is barely enough corn grown to meet demand for ethanol as a 10 percent additive."
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The film came out last year and I’ve seen large excerpts of it from when I’ve gone to films. There is a large section of it included in Al Gore's film, but I haven't seen it in full yet.stilltrucking wrote: have you seen that Now show about Who killed the electric car?
I have no doubt we will solve this problem when oil reaches 200 dollars a barellNew EPA regulations for the 2008 model year are reportedly going to lower mileage estimates on hybrids by roughly 30%
http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2006 ... age_1.html
The environmental problems, and their first solutions, are being faced wholistically as needed, and that’s as it should be for that’s what’s best for all concerned. We are showing we’ve not only learned from our past mistakes and mishaps but our current ones as well – and are continuing improvements while still staying mindful and true to beyond that; to our future.
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