Salon | "Switchgrass is cool, dude"

[Shallah Kali]

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/03/01/switchgrass_is_cool

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in East Tennessee is a center of U.S. research into renewable energy, including cellulosic technology, the current holy grail of biofuel dreamers who want to cheaply transform fibrous plant matter into ethanol. Maybe that's why when the topic of switchgrass came up during a Wednesday congressional hearing on energy research and development, Republican Rep. Zach Wamp, whose district is in East Tennessee, was delighted to display some expertise on the subject.

"What is switchgrass? It's a bio-stock," said Wamp, as transcribed by Congressional Quarterly. "It's a feed stock. It grew naturally before we got here, dude. We cut it all down. We need to grow it back in the South. And it will replace tobacco and soybean and a bunch of things. It's really pretty cool. A great feed stock for cellulosic ethanol. And if we took 35 to 40 million acres through the Farm Bill and have an energy title, we could grow cellulosic ethanol and in five years begin seriously changing the fuel consumption in this country with E-85 at the pump and save Ford and G.M."

(E-85 refers to gasoline that is 85 percent ethanol. By "energy title" one assumes that Wamp is suggesting that the Farm Bill should create incentives to dedicate agricultural production toward cellulosic feed stocks, thus weaning the country off its burgeoning, but likely unsustainable, corn-based ethanol habit.)

{snip}

In fact, if there was a consensus on anything at the hearing, in which testimony was heard on prospects for nuclear, solar, geothermal and wind power, along with biofuels, it was that federal and state governments get by far the most bang for their buck by setting, enforcing and encouraging increased energy efficiency. Changing building codes and requiring ever more efficient performance from new machinery is cheap. As one panelist, energy consultant David Nemtzow, observed, if you treated the energy savings from efficiency as an energy source, you would see that "energy efficiency is the number one energy resource in this country, number one ahead of oil, ahead of gas or coal or nuclear or any of the others."

{snip}

There was even a titillating little bit about a new report on peak oil that had been completed by the GAO and handed over to Maryland Republican Roscoe Bartlett and to the House Science Committee. The GAO's Wells said that the report had come to an estimation of what the "consensus" view was on the likely arrival of peak oil, but he frustrated his audience by refusing to tell them exactly what the date was. GAO rules, he said, mandate that the "requesters" of a GAO study get to sit on the information for a maximum of 30 days before the report must be made public.

wiki Switchgrass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switchgrass

Salon | President switchgrass http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2006/02/01/switchgrass/index.html

Switchgrass: The Super Plant Savior?
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Business/story?id=1566784

Most ethanol produced in America is made from corn — a less-efficient material than switchgrass — but corn producers are supported by a large lobby and huge government subsidies. There is no similar lobby or investment for grass or wood.

"When you make ethanol from corn, for every gallon of fuel you get, you put in about seven-tenths of a gallon of fossil energy, oil or natural gas," he said. "That's only a small improvement in terms of greenhouse gases."

On the other hand, he said, "ethanol from cellulose is a great energy strategy because for every gallon of ethanol, a tiny amount of fossil material There's a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gases, so from an energy perspective it's far superior."

{snip}

Corn is an OK source for ethanol," said Daniel Kammen, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and director of its Institute of the Environment. "But if you really want to hit a home run, you need to go to cellulose."

Warts and Ethanol
A new reliance on coal could sap green cred from the ethanol industry
http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2006/05/26/unethacoal

According to recent research on ethanol's environmental benefits from the University of California at Berkeley, corn-derived ethanol produced by a natural-gas powered plant offers a 38 percent greenhouse-gas reduction compared to gasoline, while corn-derived ethanol produced by a coal-fired plant offers a greenhouse-gas benefit of only about 19 percent. Cellulosic ethanol, by comparison, is far more conducive to processing without any fossil fuels, and thus is expected to offer an 88 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions compared to gasoline.

{snip}

nstead of striving to produce the cleanest, greenest ethanol, however, many in the industry want to keep production costs as low as possible, and they're supported by members of Congress who also want to use ethanol's soaring popularity to bolster the coal industry.

In March, the EPA -- reportedly at the behest of at least one corn-state politician -- proposed changing a rule in order to let ethanol-fuel plants more than double their air emissions, from 100 tons per year of any pollutant regulated under the Clean Air Act to 250 tons per year.

{snip}

He points to new corn-ethanol facilities fueled by zero-emission technologies. A plant in Nebraska was built next to a cattle farm so it could use methane from the bovine waste to power its operations. Two others in Minnesota use fuel from gasified biomass, and a demonstration plant being built in Illinois will be powered by solar thermal collectors. These facilities can produce corn ethanol with nearly 70 percent lower greenhouse-gas emissions than gasoline, says Greene. "I suspect we'll see substantial growth in this area," he predicts.

[RedEarth]

1. Great post.......... thanks for all the links........ kr

[Shallah Kali]

2. You are very welcome. I got curious about ethanol and switchgrass and Googled away!

:think:

I Google therefore I am ;)

[amandabeech]

3. Only one of these sources seems to mention EROEI/net energy/

energy balance concept. The general idea is comparing the amount of energy used to get energy into a position to do work. For example, for every barrel of oil pumped in the U.S., many experts say that the energy in one of those barrels is consumed in pumping, transporting and refining the oil. Two barrels are left to power your vehicle.

There is a huge controversy on the EROEI of corn-based ethanol. Pimental and Padzek see corn-based energy as requiring more energy in than the energy that goes out. The estimates that I've seen over a range of internet sites is about 2.0 under ideal growing conditions in the corn belt, coupled with a confined feeding operation cattle factory virtually onsite. The cattle eat the leftovers from the brewing process, which can be transported wet due to the small distance, and produce wastes that can be fermented for biogas to run the distillery. That's assuming that the ethanol will go into local gas tanks--ethanol can't be transported in our petroleum pipelines and must be shipped by truck, train or barge, all of which are more energy intensive than pipelines.

There is a cellulosic ethanol pilot plant in Canada, the name of which escapes me at the moment. The best guesses on EROEI are maxing out at about 2.0.

The big savings with switchgrass over corn is probably the amount of nitrogen fertilizer, made from nat gas and generally imported now, fed to corn plants. Switchgrass doesn't need as much, but does need some, together with phosphorus and potassium and trace minerals, just like other plants. These plant vitamins must be replaced, since removing growing plants, even switchgrass, removes from the ecosystem the vitamins contained in its cellulosic structure. We'll run out of mineable phosphorus in 70 years--nat gas nitrogen fertilizer probably won't be around then anyway.

Just for comparison, Saudi oil was once estimated to be a 100.00 EROEI. With the huge watercut and reaching a peak now or soon, Saudi oil is probably more like 10.

Much more energy must be used to make more energy in an economy running on a 10 EROEI fuel than on a 2. There really are no easy answers.

[Shallah Kali]

4. ah. Thank you for explaining that. So far nothing will match oil in pure portable energy

this means way everything operates can't go on any where near the level we live at today. Some articles call ethanol a choice between food and fuel. I wonder how much damage this will do not just sustainabily. Hunger is often from lack of available food but lack of affordable food. in the world today arable land is devoted to luxuries like flowers instead of food. and food is fed to animals for their meat which as some enjoy pointing out is less efficient than feeding humans the vegetables. so acess to food is being lowered again due to food now being fuel. hope I am coherent because thinking about all of this makes my head spin.

[amandabeech]

5. Yes, you are coherent.

Thinking of the future is really scary. I see a real storm of low energy combining with global-warming exacerbated water problems. Already, farmers in India are sinking 400' wells, which is really, really deep. Without the wells, they cannot keep up their harvests--local rainfall just isn't enough.

China has really serious water problems. There is increasing drought and desertification in the north, but more floods in the south. Everywhere there are enormous problems with pollution, both from human and animal wastes and from an out-of-control industrial sector.

What many people find difficult to talk about is the enormous population pressure that has built over the course of the 20th century. My Rand-McNally 80s vintage atlas shows world population at 1.6 billion in 1900. Now it is something like 6-7 billion. Here in the U.S., population was about 75 million in 1900 and is over 300 million now. There has been no corresponding increase in land or water resources over that time, only increases in agricultural production that may or may not be sustainable.

A large world failure has been the inability or indifference in limiting population increases to those which could reasonably be expected to be fed in difficult times. For example, Mexican women had an average of 6-7 children as late as the 1970s. Due to better public health services, most of those children survived. Those many children need water, food and jobs. The strains in Mexico and the U.S. are obvious and will only get worse as drought persists in the west and southwest here and in Mexico in its north. Had Mexico somehow reduced family size to 2 or so by then (it is now about 2.5), perhaps those strains would not be as great. China has used draconian measures to limit its population increase, but India has not made large strides, and I think will have serious, serious problems in the near future. Their problems will be the world's problems and I only wish I had 0.1% of an answer.

[Shallah Kali]

6. The Aquifers are being drained dry as well all over the world including India

A big part of the problem is the sense of entitlement, that of course there will always be plenty, that growth = plenty. Big = Better. Big = more worth, more respect, more ego. Our culture has forgotten or never bothered to learn that there are limits. The Earth is only so big. There is only so much fresh water. There is only so much arable land, so much oil, coal, precious metals and gems. THERE ARE LIMITS. Some wait for their space brothers to save them. Other for their deity of choice or science to enable all of us - or at least them - to have their cake and eat it too.

It just looks to me like we are in a major mess. We have peak oil. We have global climate change will fry and drown many and then may start another Ice Age. We have water and food shortages as well that experts are predicting wars over very soon. There is no sustainable way to continue on in this wasteful manner. If everyone does not resign ourselves to a reduced standard of living then we won't have anything. Well I suppose some gazillionaires have socked away enough supplies in an undisclosed location to save them, those important to them, and a small supply of servants will still have a decent standard of living just as ancient kings and other robber barons lived high on the hog while their serfs were lucky to make it to 30.

I loved reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books when I was a kid and wished I lived in her era. Then I got older and learned how hard a life it was back then. I don't want to return to that yet it looks like that is the best most can hope for when things reach critical here in the USA.