Cellulosic ethanol is one of those energy techologies that's very exciting to explore, but the excitement has to be tempered with a hard look at the costs of production and how those costs stack up relative to other fuels. There's still a lot of debate about whether the true "carbon costs" of producing cellulosic ethanol might actually add more carbon to the atmosphere than the carbon presumably saved by not burning an equivalent amount of gasoline. Nevertheless, research and funding is streaming into this category.
As explain in tonight's "Green Options" report, this type of ethanol is brewed from the tough, fibrous material of leftover plant material. We're talking about sugar cane stalks, wood chips and bark, specially grown types of grasses, or even yard waste.
George Phillipidis, associate director at the Florida International University Applied Research Center, tells us that a key cost of cellulosic ethanol is the time and expense of collecting the plant matter. If you're going to grow thousands of acres of wiregrass, and harvest it, and then brew it into ethanol, you'll have large upfront expenses that are difficult for many growers to adequately handle. That's why Phillipidis is concentrating, for now, on developing cellulosic ethanol from sugar cane bagasse. Growers harvest the cane for making sugar, and the bagasse is essentially a "free" waste byproduct.
Comments
I remember a lesion from junior high physical science that mentions the idea that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another. I think people need to be reminded that the earth is basically a closed system and its only source of energy is what has been collected from the sun. What modern society has managed to convert into heat during its recent encounter with the wonders of petroleum took mother nature perhaps billions of years to store up in its potential form. Is it any wonder that the system needs to make radical adjustments to maintain some semblance of stability? Any talk about renewable energy sources is in fact nothing but a smokescreen floated by the salesmen of the perpetual motion machine. Let’s face it, the only hope is to learn to enjoy life without making so much hot air; or at least not waist so much of it.
Watching your series on ethanol I notice the absence of one word, water!. The ethanol plants use huge amounts of water. They need 4 to 5 gallons of water to make one gallon of ethanol. Not to mention what they use to irrigate the crop. There are cases around Minnesota of ethanol plants having to drill area residents new wells because the water table has been lowered 90 feet. One plant had to build a pipeline about 40 miles to a well that would furnish enough water flow. As I see it, the ethanol plants are pumping up water fron 500 feet or more. Water that has been percolating through the aquifer for centries and needs little treatment to make it good drinking water this water is been turned into polluted ground water. I think we are going to regret doing this.
Toes & User -
Thank you for your comments about my report. I'd love to do follow-up report about Brazilian ethanol production, but I don't think I'll be getting to South America anytime soon.
To find answers to some of your questions, you might want to read this report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute: The Brazilian Sugarcane Ethanol Experience.
As the report explains, there are two main reasons why ethanol production from sugarcane is more economical in Brazil than it is in the U.S. Those reasons are climate and labor.
Brazil's climate is suited to growing large crops of sugarcane. Only some parts of the U.S. can grow sugarcane -- Florida, Louisiana, and parts of Texas and Hawaii, I believe. In addition, if the U.S. could grow large enough crops of sugarcane for ethanol production, who would work the fields? Sugarcane growing and harvesting is very labor intensive. Brazil has the unskilled labor to handle it. The U.S. does not.
Of course, all this does not mean that ethanol production from sugarcane can't help solve some of America's fuel needs, it just means the U.S. is unlikely to repeat Brazil's example.
I watched your report about cellulosic ethanol. I was left with a lot of questions about Brazil. How is Brazil able to produce cellulosic ethanol from sugarcane? If Brazil can produce ethanol, it should be affordable, right?
My question is why is seemingly no one in the US making ethanol from sugarcane itself in the US instead of corn? Your program did not air in my viewing area late night and I can't get the sound to work on my home computer but I'll get to work early and watch your program there.