Great Crap!

This is the kind of alternative fuel article I love to see.

It's a concept and technology that more and more small farming operations are adopting. Methane from animal crap and ethanol from switch grass (as opposed to ethanol from corn) and the like are such promising resources that cannot be ignored by the US for much longer simply because of the greater and greater ease of accessibility and cost effectiveness.

The article I linked to at the start of this blog indicates an equivalent production cost per gallon of ethanol in the US between $2 and $3. For those who are not clear on the misleading nature of this statistic, check out Brazil compared to the US and note that not only is the US government subsidizing the US corn-ethanol industry but it's also imposing a pretty hefty tariff per gallon on imported ethanol.

The most common misconception in America in terms of ethanol production is that corn is where the US should maintain its focus for this type of fuel generation. Know that although the US is not an ideal place for growing sugar cane it (along with pretty much every other less-than-arid area) is capable of growing copious amounts of switch grass which, unlike corn, has %100 of the plant used in the generation of ethanol and not just the "fruit." Also, switch grass actively extracts CO2 from the air and pumps it into the soil making for more fertile soil. Corn, on the other hand, needs a lot of fertilizers to help it grow. Switch grass yield per square acre (or hectare...whatever area you measure out in your country...) are double that of corn and, again I'll say, %100 percent of the plant is used to make ethanol.

There are several videos , videos, videos, you can check out that talk about the merits of grass-based ethanol vs. corn ethanol.

Let's go Brazilian!

I'm talking about ethanol fuel here. There are plenty of other great things about Brazil (AKA Brasil), but I'll talk about those things another time.

Before watching this video I was "on the fence" in regards to whether I was convinced in the economic and overall environmental benefits of the United States making the move to ethanol. I now think it's not a matter of whether we should move to ethanol or not, but rather what percentage of each type of ethanol generating items should be included in the move to ethanol.

So here's the scoop:
The guy who helped create Sun Systems & the Java programming language, Vinod Khosla, started a venture capitalist organization and his main focus in recent years has been bio-fuel production.

This video is about an hour long in total but the main "meat" of the idea is in the first 20-30 minutes.

It's worth noting that this presentation was given in 2006 just before Prop 87 was put on the ballot in California and was subsequently defeated. Another key point I would like to make is the current price of oil is, in fact, hovering around the critical $35/barrel price tag that would make ethanol less profitable than petrol/gas.

I have been to Brazil and used both gas (petrol) and ethanol (alcohol) in the same car while there. There was a slightly noticeable decline in acceleration with ethanol but the price difference far outweighed the compromise in performance.

At a time when the Federal government has the U.S. auto industry by the short-&-curlies and Obama will be in charge of making the call of whether or not they are economically viable (not that I agree with that concept, but there it is...), a critical point ought to be that ALL new vehicles be compatible with ethanol and gasoline. It's a simple and inexpensive (approximately $100 per auto) procedure on the assembly line and the Brazilians have already been there for over 20 years. Let's join them.