Coyote Gulch

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Energy policy: Ethanol

Here's an article about the effects of corn ethanol production's impacts on Colorado's water from The Rocky Mountain News. They write:

Colorado's eastern plains could be a big player in producing automobile fuels in the next decade, but there are downsides, a National Academy of Sciences report says. The fascination with corn- based ethanol for cars likely will strain America's water quality, loading rivers and groundwater with pesticides and fertilizers, the report says. The report's authors said that rather than using "row crops" such as corn, farmers could consider the switch grass, miscanthus, poplar and willows that are part of the prairie ecosystem. Those would hold the soil and nutrients in place better and wouldn't need nearly as much water, fertilizer or pesticides.

The prairie ecosystem is comprised mainly of cellulose, rather than glucose, the sugar that is in corn kernels, said Bryan Willson, interim director of the Clean Energy Supercluster at Colorado State University. That's a plus in that cellulose requires few chemicals and not much additional water in this climate, he said. "There's a lot of concern that using corn for biofuels could tax our resources, particularly water, pulling down the aquifers for irrigation," Willson said. But cellulose has a problem. The sugar in corn is right at the surface, but cellulose material holds onto sugars. Researchers at CSU, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden and other Colorado universities are using enzymes to transform cellulose -into sugar in the labs.
"2008 pres"
6:00:01 AM