There’s a kernel of good to this story, if you care about climate change and high food prices.

Sure, ethanol has been a great example of how America can begin to overcome its dependency on foreign fossil fuels. But using a staple like corn to make the biofuel has driven up food prices and displaced other food crops.

Now comes the Obama administration, which has proposed new rules for renewable fuels, aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions. At the same time, he’s vowed to help prop up the corn ethanol industry with stimulus dollars, and commit stimulus funds to biofuel research.

(more…)

A recent post extolling the virtues of trash as an energy source has stirred up a lot of comments.

Those include an e-mail and phone call from the folks at BlueFire Ethanol, who have a patented process that turns garbage into gas, or cellulosic ethanol, to be more precise.

The company is building a plant in Lancaster, California, where it plans to use a Concentrated Acid Hydrolysis Technology Process to convert “green waste” from an adjacent county landfill into as much as 3.7 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year, a company representative says.

(more…)

Courtesy of BP

Exciting news on the cellulosic ethanol front. The promise of next-generation biofuels is moving from the lab to the factory.

BP has announced a joint venture with Verenium to make cellulosic ethanol from grass and other non-edible plants.

(more…)

Courtesy U. of Minnesota

Exit up ahead: A University of Minnesota study has concluded that corn-based ethanol is no better than gasoline.

The Star Tribune says ethanol may even be a bigger polluter, when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions and particulate matter. Cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass and other plant materials is far better for human health, the scientists say.

But the Renewable Fuels Association claims the study is flawed. Among other things, it assumes that grassland will be taken out of the federal Conservation Reserve Program to make more corn-based ethanol. The RFA says most of the increase in corn production in the U.S. has been through higher yields rather than conversion, and there’s no peer-reviewed evidence for the study’s methods. (see the pdf).

(more…)