Free Republic

... Though biofuels have been touted for their ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, assessing the environmental impact of bioethanol requires including greenhouse gas emissions related to the crops needed for its production. And "the carbon balance of ethanol relative to gasoline isn't as good as it was originally anticipated," Tyler Lark, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison told AFP. In 2005, Congress passed a "Renewable Fuel Standard," which required transportation fuel to include a volume of biofuel that increased over time. The law was further expanded in 2007. As a result, 2.8 million additional hectares of corn were...

Facility Offers Promise of Producing Fuel Out of Everything From Grass to Garbage A Florida plant started commercial-scale production of advanced ethanol, its owners said Wednesday, marking the first time a U.S. facility has made large quantities of the fuel from the inedible parts of plants. The news was a milestone for the renewable fuels industry, which has been dogged by criticism that its current method of making fuel from corn or sugar diverts those crops from the food chain and raises food prices. If INEOS Bio can sustain production at the Florida plant, it would offer the promise of...

It may be slimy, slippery and rather unpleasant, but seaweed actually has a surprisingly wide range of uses, being a common source of food, chemicals, medicines and cosmetics. It may soon also be a source of biofuel, thanks to an engineered microbe able to transform seaweed directly into ethanol. Seaweed has a number of important advantages over other biofuel feedstocks. Unlike maize and sugarcane, it isn't grown on fields that otherwise would be producing food and unlike wood and energy crops, such as switchgrass, it doesn't contain any lignin, which makes the sugar molecules in it much easier to release.  As a...

The European Commission launched an investigation on Friday over complaints that U.S. bioethanol exporters are using unfair state subsidies to sell their fuel to Europe at illegally low prices, a statement in the EU official journal showed. The investigation follows a formal complaint by EU bioethanol industry association ePURE in October, which alleged that tax credits in the United States allow its exporters to cut their EU selling price by about 40 percent, EU diplomats said. If the EU authorities find evidence of unfair trade practices, it could result in import tariffs on millions of liters (gallons) of bioethanol imports...

Aberdeen, South Dakota—“I’ve always wanted to know, can you drink what you guys make?,” I asked, sitting in Jim Lane’s office at the Advanced Bioenergy ethanol plant in Aberdeen, South Dakota. After all, ethanol plants ferment corn just like bourbon distilleries do. Lane smiled, pointed to a small jar of water-clear fluid on the table at which we were sitting, and said, “Open it up. Give it a smell.” I did. It felt like several layers of the cells lining my nostrils were being burned off. Lane smiled some more. The obvious answer was no. He explained that toxic stench...

Crops give more kilometres per hectare if used to power electric vehicles.Electric cars powered by biomass could be greener than cars that run on biofuel.Punchstock / Cultura Vehicles propelled by biomass-fired electricity would travel farther on a given crop and produce fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than vehicles powered by ethanol, researchers report today.Burning biomass to produce electricity is generally more efficient than converting it into ethanol. And electric vehicles — although often more expensive to make and maintain than many vehicles with internal combustion engines — are also more efficient at converting that energy into motion.In the current study, the researchers,...

These days, it's routine for businesses to fail, get rescued by the government, and then continue to fail. But ethanol, which survives only because of its iron lung of subsidies and mandates, is a special case. Naturally, the industry is demanding even more government life support. Corn ethanol producers -- led by Wesley Clark, the retired general turned chairman of a new biofuels lobbying outfit called Growth Energy -- want the Obama Administration to make their guaranteed market even larger. Recall that the 2007 energy bill requires refiners to mix 36 billion gallons into the gasoline supply by 2022. The...

President Obama drew rave reviews for his unorthodox selection of Dr. Sanjay Gupta as the nation's surgeon general. Not only is Dr. Gupta an accomplished neurosurgeon, but as CNN's in-house doc he has also proven himself a bona fide celebrity. People magazine tagged him as one of 2003's "Sexiest Men Alive," and the swooning that met Obama's announcement suggests... --snip-- TAKING THE IDEA mainstream has brought its share of problems, though. The Los Angeles Times profiled a mechanic last year who has converted his fleet of vehicles to be fueled by fryer grease from a local chowder house. Then Sacramento...

As everyone knows by this point, we are in the midst of a food crisis. Domestic prices of basic foods have risen by 46% over the past year, putting even more pressure on already stressed consumers. Overseas, food riots have occurred in Haiti, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Indonesia, Yemen, and as close to our borders as Mexico. These riots were severe enough to bring down the Haitian government of Jacques Edouard Alexis. Others may follow. Any number of explanations have been offered. Global warming has taken its accustomed bow, only to be immediately pushed to one side by other candidates...

Congress is finalizing an energy bill that should come to a vote before the end of 2007. Although all the details of the newly negotiated bill are not yet public, an earlier draft mandated that refiners annually blend 20.5 billion gallons of ethanol into transport fuels by 2015, with 5.5 billion gallons of that coming from non-food sources like cellulosic ethanol. The mandate would rise to 36 billion gallons by 2022. This more than quadruples the 2005 directive of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012.Promoters of the ethanol mandate assert that it would help the United States achieve energy independence and...