The trick is going to be getting farmers to grow the stuff. Now that food crops are way up in price, crops are going to be competing for the avalable crop land. And lets not forget, more farming—more pesticides and fertilizers end up in the soil, groundwaters, and streams. Furthermore, don’t think for a minute that the environmentalists aren’t going to start sceaming the minute land where some obscure species hangs out is threatened, or worse, protected federal lands.
“The trick is going to be getting farmers to grow the stuff. Now that food crops are way up in price, crops are going to be competing for the avalable crop land. And lets not forget, more farming—more pesticides and fertilizers end up in the soil, groundwaters, and streams. Furthermore, don’t think for a minute that the environmentalists aren’t going to start sceaming the minute land where some obscure species hangs out is threatened, or worse, protected federal lands.”
The switch grass grows in areas you can’t till or are difficult to till. In 1999 there were about 90 million acreas in the CRP program, that is land that you and I are paying farmers not to farm.
Just getting that land out of CRP will save billions of dollars.
If you look at my posts, I am not a big believer in the ethanol economy. It is just too expensive and inefficient to convert food or biomass into ethanol.
Now if you compress the grass into pellets, you have a cheap heating fuel. One acre could provide the equivalent of about 4,000 gallons of heating oil. Pellets are easy to handle and would be about as convenient as heating with oil.
The problem with pellets is that they don’t burn in internal combustion engines. But this is a problem that should be solved in the next five years. Direct heat to electricity systems are being developed. They will make coal plants much more efficient but will also open the posibility of using pelletized fuel for transportation fuel. At this point, petroleum is in trouble and has to compete with the agricultural industry on price. This will keep the price of petroleum and biomass low. Assuming the government does not get involved.