Ethanol

October 21, 2008 -- Filed under Clean Diesel by Andrew Macdonald

The October 12, 2008 New York Times Magazine cover story “Food Fights” featured a slow-motion still of an exploding corn cob. Our friends at autobloggreen.com talk about increasing the volume of Western Canadian wheat genetically modified to maximize ethanol output.

Have you recently participated in a conversation on the safety of our food supply and how food is sourced and distributed? Mention corn as an alternative fuel supply and the discussion heats up!

The last time this happened for me, I looked across the room and counted fourteen hands with glasses containing some form of liquid libation for adults. In other words, everyone was drinking ethanol.

So, has the discussion on biomass fuels become too narrow, too polarized? (Yes, biomass is a more accurate term for describing energy units derived from photosynthesis, i.e. sun + soil + water = plant material)

Wiki ethanol and you’ll read that ethanol is an alcohol – a psychoactive drug. So some of us are guilty of using “food for drugs.” Cows are guilty of food for gas. Not THAT gas, most of the methane gas from a cow is exhausted as a burp!

Biomass will play a role in the future energy mix with feedstock evolving with research. Biofuels are still in their infancy. The adolescence of Biofuels 2.0 will require considerable investment from global industry. Volkswagen is playing a role with equity stakes in Iogen, a global leader in the research and production of cellulosic ethanol and Choren (”kor – in”) with second-generation biodiesel and the “SunFuels” of tomorrow. One of the biomass crops under development with Volkswagen is hemp. See this great one-minute clip of a Volkswagen executive walking through a field of plants destined for SunFuel production.

Other biofuels are derived from municipal waste, landfill gas, and algae; cellulosic ethanol is made from non-edible parts of plants. Development of future fuels (often referred to as BTL, biomass-to-liquid fuels) will be the focus of much research in the near future and represents a very important business opportunity.

If biofuels become a subject of conversation around your dinner table, it might be the perfect opportunity to promote what the author of the Times food article referred to as “replacing oil with the sun’s energy.”

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