Reply #24: He was talking about cellulosic ethanol, which can be made from [View All]

[JohnWxy]

'energy' crops such as switchgrass (native to the plains, does not need much water and little to no fertilizer and no pesticides). Cellulosic ethanol can be made from agricultural and forest product waste - which we produce tons of each year and currently bury or burn.


Oak Ridge National Laboratory has estimated ethanol's potential for the U.S. at 30% of total gasoline demand (given current state of the technology). (I dont' know if this includes anything for ethanol production from energy crops such as switch grasss which can be grown on agriculturally marginal ground - i.e. ground not currently being used for growing crops.).

Ethanol may not be the whole answer but it certainly will be a part of the answer to fossil fuel dependence.

An important thing about corn ethanol is that we are currently producting it, it is practical now and it can be scaled up in production quicker than any other alternative fuel source we now have.

...this is important because one of the things we have to be concerned about is a crimp in the oil supply due to human induced (terrorist attaack) or natural disaster (anther hurricane season like 2005). This is somethnig we may have to deal with in the next 3 to 5 years. IF 5-6% of our fuel supply was being met with corn ethanol this would give considerabel protection from a reduction in the gas supply. We should be trying to double our ethanol production as quickly as we can.