Word: ethanol
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Once touted as an environmental and economic cure-all, corn ethanol has had a rough year. The collapse in grain and oil prices, preceded by overinvestment in refineries over the past few years, badly hurt ethanol producers. Meanwhile, environmentalists have steadily chipped away at ethanol's green credentials. Far from being better for the planet than gasoline, many scientists now argue that ethanol actually has a sizable carbon footprint, because when farmers in the U.S. use their land to grow corn for fuel rather than food, farmers in the developing world end up cutting down more forests to pick...
...study makes the case that ethanol isn't even the greenest way to use biomass as a fuel. In an article published in the May 8 issue of Science, researchers from the Carnegie Institution, Stanford University and the University of California-Merced (UCM) used life-cycle analysis - which takes into account the entire impact of a biofuel from field to vehicle - to show that converting biomass to electricity (to power electric cars) produces 80% more transportation energy than turning it into ethanol (to power a flex-fuel car), with a carbon footprint that is half as small. (Bioelectricity is created...
...psychological laboratory.But this focus on the mundane never detracts from the movie’s charm. Luminous details—like Brian’s earnest attempts to adopt a Chinese baby despite his young bachelorhood, and Larry’s inexplicable penchant for mixing purple vodka with pure ethanol while on the job—give each character an idiosyncratic tint. The debut script from Adam Nagata and director Matt Aselton is fresh and quirky; the dialogue alone could drive the awkward humor of the piece even without the nuanced talent of Dano and Deschanel.Furthermore, the film manages...
...When growing tobacco started to become less profitable for farmers, they rotated some portion of their land to growing corn. Between feed and the ethanol industry they did well. As a matter of fact, the ethanol industry had a supplier and that allowed the alternative energy movement to grow into an industry. Alternative use of assets is central to a number of industries that need to be revitalized. The car business has a chance to use its strengths to gain back some of its vitality permanently if it can make this transition...
...technologies have taken off. At the moment, Germany has some 60% of the solar panels in the world, thanks in part to the so-called feed-in tariff, which guarantees that utility companies will buy renewably generated power at above market rates. But further growth could stall. Corn ethanol in the U.S. - which many environmentalists believe doesn't deserve the term "renewable" - has cratered, also hurt by rapidly falling gas prices. Most of all, however, clean tech businesses generally lack the political weight to jostle for the bailout funds won by older and bigger industries like the automobile manufacturers...