Word: biofueled
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fastest way to start a fistfight among environmentalists is to bring up the topic of biofuels - plant-based liquid fuels like ethanol that could potentially take the place of petroleum. Biofuel revolutionaries - like Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla - see plant power as a way to break America's dependence on foreign oil, and produce auto fuel that doesn't kill the climate. Opponents dismiss biofuels - most of which are currently distilled from crops like corn and sugar cane - as a blind alley, one that drives up food prices without saving the earth...
...Farmers in 10 fields of 15 to 20 acres each in Nebraska and North and South Dakota grew switchgrass over five years, and kept track of how much fuel and fertilizer they used during the trials. Vogel and his colleagues showed that switchgrass yielded 540% more energy as a biofuel than the amount of energy used to grow, harvest and process it. (Corn ethanol yields just 25% more energy.) Greenhouse gas emissions from switchgrass fuel would be 94% lower than emissions from petroleum fuel - almost carbon neutral. Previous studies had come up with similar numbers in small-scale trials...
CONTEXT The alternative-fuel boom has caused a leap in demand for corn. In turn, many farmers looking to jump on the biofuel bandwagon have abandoned staples like barley and hops in favor of energy crops. Exacerbating the trend: last year's droughts, floods and unusual temperatures...
Technology has gotten us into the climate change mess, and we assume that technology will get us out of it. Hybrid cars, wind turbines, algae biofuel - businesses and policymakers alike are searching for the technological fixes that will decarbonize our lives. But the deeper problem may be how - and where - we live our lives. The dominant pattern of development in America - large houses and sprawling, auto-dependent suburbs - requires a heavy input of fossil fuels and an output of carbon emissions. The adoption of cleaner technologies will take us part of the way, but what we really need...
...where there were large markets that could benefit from innovation." Khosla hasn't held back - in the first nine months of 2007, Khosla Ventures participated in 14 deals worth nearly $70 million. He has spread his bets along a range of clean-tech sectors, with a particular focus on biofuel start-ups such as Range Fuels, which is close to commercializing biofuel out of agricultural residue like wood chips, rather than food crops. Nothing has paid off big for him yet - in fact, prices for corn-based ethanol, which Khosla has also invested in, crashed in 2007, largely...