Robert Kennedy Jr. promotes cellulosic ethanol instead of corn ethanol
Robert Kennedy Jr. recently spoke at a press conference in the Bloomington, Illinios area, and gave his opinions on ethanol production. Kennedy suggests, quite correctly, that it takes too much corn from the food arena to create ethanol fuel from that particular crop, and instead believes that cellulosic ethanol from crops such as switchgrass makes much more sense. Kennedy also said that the actual environmental benefit of ethanol is reduced dramatically because of all the mechanized equipment required to farm the corn. These sentiments were given to area television stations shortly before an address sponsored in part by the Illinois Corn Growers Association.
We have pointed out many times in the past that ethanol has some benefits to fossil fuels, and could even provide a performance benefit if used instead of gasoline, however, the potential of ethanol as a fuel source is limited by the amount of crops available for fuel use. Using corn to create ethanol is rather inefficient, and there are many better choices as a starting crop. I was going to make links out of that entire sentence above, but figured you'd get the picture even if I stopped there.
[Source: Myke Feinman / Grainnet]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mike Z 5:46PM (3/30/2007)
I've never really like Kennedy's environmental ideas to be honest. As far as I know he opposes just about every source of energy that exists (Coal, Nuclear, Cape Wind, Drilling for Nat gas, etc). Not that I support many of them either, but Kennedy takes is an environmental cornucopia thinking that unless we can power the world with kitten farts, there should be no power energy at all.
That said I put the odds of cellulosic working at 40%, PHEV at 60%.
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GhostDoggy 8:45AM (4/01/2007)
Do farmers really care what the grow as long as they can a) grow 'it', and b) make money at it? Switchgrass does have a higher proficiecy for energy return, though. If farmers can make a golden crop from it then I could care less what Kennedy has to say on the matter.
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