Word: switchgrass
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...fairness, corn ethanol was already pretty much a done deal; Congress demanded 15 billion gallons in annual production by 2022, and the industry is already almost there. That is why the real stress tests that mattered were the ones concerning biofuels of the future like cellulosic ethanol grown from switchgrass - which has not been proven commercially viable but has been hailed as a kind of magic weed. Once again, the EPA used rosy life-cycle assumptions to conclude that next-generation biofuels will reduce billions of tons of emissions over the next century, ultimately reducing our oil consumption...
...intensive plants that convert the crops into fuel and the trucks that transport the fuel to market. A slew of studies have concluded that when you include all these life-cycle emissions, corn ethanol only produces about 20% fewer emissions than gasoline, although cellulosic ethanol produced from feedstocks like switchgrass can reduce emissions around...
...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...
...idea, I realize, is to lure the Von Drehle clan out of our gas hog and into a phone booth-sized vehicle powered by switchgrass and meditation. Unfortunately, with four kids, all in grade school, we need a minivan. So is this program for us? To find out, I took a ride on the information superhighway to www.fueleconomy.gov, which is an easy way to compare the efficiency of just about every car imaginable...
...fact, the jury is still out even on advanced biofuels; switchgrass would clearly be a big improvement on corn, but it's not yet clear if it would be an improvement on gasoline if there isn't enough unproductive land. Perhaps advanced biofuels from crop waste or even municipal waste would work better. In any case, it was interesting to see Obama make two references Wednesday to "advanced biofuels" and none to ethanol. And it's interesting that Vilsack has thought about this stuff in some detail...