Word: corns
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Last week, while the financial world was obsessing over stress tests for fragile banks, the environmental and agricultural worlds were watching the results of the Obama Administration's stress tests for renewable fuels. An outgrowth of the 2007 energy bill, the tests were supposed to document whether corn ethanol and other biofuels designed to replace fossil fuels would accelerate or alleviate global warming overall. But like the much-criticized bank checkups, these stress tests don't seem particularly stressful...
...draft conclusions announced by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lisa Jackson were that cellulosic ethanol and other next-generation renewables will dramatically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions over their entire life cycle, but that in some scenarios, corn ethanol (as well as lesser-used soy biodiesel) can produce even more emissions than gasoline. Some environmentalists and journalists have portrayed this as a courageous rebuke to the powerful agro-fuels lobby, while some advocates for farmers have complained that the stress tests were too tough. At a hearing after the announcement, House Agriculture Committee chairman Collin Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat, accused...
...people, they'll be having a sandwich on white bread with turkey. Okay, well, the turkey's probably processed, meaning it's got nitrates in it. And of course white bread doesn't grow white. It's stripped of all its nutrients and all its fiber. High fructose corn syrup: poison. Artificial sweeteners: poison. Artificial coloring: poison. MSG: poison. Nitrates: poison. Unload all those things and you're off to a good start. (See the truth about 10 dieting myths...
...every acre of land planted with an energy crop - like corn or switchgrass - turning that biomass into electricity gives you more "miles per acre" than converting it to liquid ethanol, which is how biomass is used today, according to the study. A small SUV powered by bioelectricity could travel nearly 14,000 miles on the energy produced by an acre of switchgrass, while an ethanol-powered SUV could go only 9,000 miles. "It looks like converting biomass to electricity, instead of using it to make ethanol, makes the most sense for both transport and the climate," says Elliott Campbell...
Still, the ethanol industry's days may be numbered. Ethanol wouldn't exist but for government subsidies, yet in the 2007 energy bill, Congress ruled that to be eligible for support, corn ethanol has to emit 20% less climate pollution than gasoline. If you include the indirect land-use effects of ethanol - the increase in deforestation caused by using land to grow fuel - it's unlikely to hit that target. On May 5, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a proposed rule that would take into account indirect land-use effects when judging just how green corn ethanol is. Unless...