According to a recent survey made by Renewable Fuels Now, 74 percent of Americans say that the US should increase domestic production of renewable fuels, including ethanol. The poll also mentions that Americans support the idea of the Federal Government helping develop the biofuel industry (87 percent) and increasing biofuel blends at the pumps (77 percent).
We've heard plenty about how biodiesel feedstock from palm plantations in SE Asia contributes to forest devastation there, but the cry from Brazil has not been nearly as loud. Of course, that country's biofuel industry also has an impact on the natural landscape, as this article explains.
Food & Water Watch, the Network for Energy Choices and the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School are on the quest of creating a report called "The Rush to Ethanol: Not all BioFuels are created equal". They affirm that, "ethanol is no silver bullet solution for fossil fuel dependence, energy independence or curbing emissions".
All the money rolling into the ethanol/corn industries may come to a screeching halt in a year or two, say researchers at Iowa State University. Inside Green Tech spoke to Bruce Babcock, economist and director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at ISU, who say that, "We think the expected returns to an ethanol plant are zero or negative in 2008."
A company based in Wisconsin called ENCAP has attracted some attention from investors when they recently found an agricultural product with which they can produce using the byproducts from the creation of biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel. In fact, they can use "almost any inert material, including byproducts of the sugar cane process, or dried distillers grains from the corn ethanol process", according to Michael Krysiak, presi
Energy companies like Chevron cannot throw enough money at ethanol research these days. It certainly wasn't always like this. In 1999, a Chevron exec, Patricia Woertz, who was then head of refining, said it was "time to stop mixing agricultural policy with fuels policy." Today, Woertz has seen the light, and it is a corn-powered green.
