Word: biofuel
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...according to a pair of studies published in the journal Science recently, biofuels may not fulfill that promise - and in fact, may be worse for the climate than the fossil fuels they're meant to supplement. According to researchers at Princeton University and the Nature Conservancy, almost all the biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels, if the full environmental cost of producing them is factored in. As virgin land is converted for growing biofuels, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere; at the same time, biofuel crops themselves are much less effective at absorbing carbon...
Many environmentalists have been making the case against biofuels for some time, arguing that biofuel production takes valuable agricultural land away from food, driving up the price of staple crops like corn. But the Science papers make a more sweeping argument. In their paper, Fargione's team calculated the "carbon debt" created by raising biofuel crops - the amount of carbon released in the process of converting natural landscapes into cropland. They found that corn ethanol produced in the U.S. had a carbon debt of 93 years, meaning it would take nearly a century for ethanol, which does produce fewer greenhouse...
...Others saw in the devastation a blank slate on which Greensburg could build back better, by building back greener - energy-efficient homes and offices, powered by Kansas's abundant wind and biofuel resources. The heartland community could become a mecca for environmentalists, including green businesses that would bring jobs. "This is an amazing opportunity," says Daniel Wallach, an entrepreneur from a nearby town who formed the non-profit Greensburg GreenTown. "It could be a living laboratory to demonstrate to the rest of the country and the world what a town of the future could look like...
...world order in which the alchemy of life is broken down into the ultimate engineering project. Man-made genomes could lead to new species that churn out drugs to treat disease, finely tuned vaccines that target just the right lethal bug, even cells that convert sunlight into a biofuel...
Rural states like Montana - where there is significant capacity for both wind power and biofuels - also stand to benefit from the transition to clean power. Montana can't produce a lot of the corn that currently goes to make most biofuel in the U.S., but it does have vast acreage that could be used to raise waste crops for cellulosic ethanol in the future, or biodiesel today. Schweitzer points out that his administration was able to pass a renewable energy portfolio standard, mandating that 15% of the state's power come from alternative sources by 2015. That's exactly...