Eric Rund raises corn and soy on his Illinois farm but is experimenting with 'Miscanthus x giganteus', a hybrid grass that could become a major feedstock for cellulosic ethanol - if the market ever matures. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
The US is in the middle of an
ethanol revolution, or at least it’s
supposed to be. Scientists want to
develop ethanol that doesn’t use corn
– so food prices won’t go up. They’ve
found a tall grass called miscanthus that
can produce loads of ethanol – but they
haven’t perfected it yet. Shawn Allee reports some are trying to grow
miscanthus before the ethanol revolution
arrives:
Transcript
The US is in the middle of an
ethanol revolution, or at least it’s
supposed to be. Scientists want to
develop ethanol that doesn’t use corn
– so food prices won’t go up. They’ve
found a tall grass called miscanthus that
can produce loads of ethanol – but they
haven’t perfected it yet. Shawn Allee reports some are trying to grow
miscanthus before the ethanol revolution
arrives:
You won’t find much miscanthus near Decatur, Illinois.
Nope. Corn is crop number one.
But all this corn-growing has a downside.
Agronomist Stephen John offers to show it to me.
Shawn Allee: “Where are we?”
Stephan John: “Well, we’re near the upper end of Lake Decatur, looking across at
the city’s dredge. Right now that dredge that is sucking up sediment from the lake
bottom.”
John says corn can leave ground bare, and rain washes dirt and fertilizer pollution into
this lake.
“Some of that nitrogen gets into streams and ditches into Lake Decatur, which had
to develop a facility to protect drinking water.”
John wants farmers to protect soil from erosion and use less fertilizer.
One option is to grow grasses that hold soil and use less nitrogen. One candidate is that
miscanthus grass the ethanol industry’s interested in.
Problem is, no one buys miscanthus yet.
“So, the trick is how do you make it economically viable to get those grasses onto the
land, how do you make that attractive?”
John says people are working on that problem.
Farmer Eric Rund stands near a patch of miscanthus grass. He’s a pretty tall guy, but the
grass is even taller.
Shawn Allee: “I’m putting my hand through here.”
Eric Rund: “It’s like a jungle in there, it’s like bamboo growth or something.”
Rund says corn farmers get kinda freaked out by miscanthus. It doesn’t grow from seed,
and unlike corn, it takes years to produce.
He says farmers need to experiment with it.
“And if we do that now, when ethanol production comes along, we will then have a
reliable source of biomass for the ethanol plant.”
Rund says some farmers would grow miscanthus just to protect water and soil. But to
make it mainstream, it’s gotta be profitable.
“That’s the key. No farmer’s going to plant much of it unless there’s a market for it
and there’s no market for it unless there’s a steady supply of it, so the two are going
to have to grow together.”
But what if that takes a while for the ethanol industry to come knocking? Who would use
Rund’s miscanthus?
I meet a guy who’s working on a solution.
Gary Letterly: “What would you like to do, where would you like to start?”
Shawn Allee: “I want to see your furnace.”
I’m with Gary Letterly. He works with the University of Illinois.
He says in corn country, some people heat their homes with corn pellets.
That gave him an idea on how to heat his office.
“And what you see here, it was a corn furnace, and we thought it would be just
great if we could use that furnace and burn grass pellets.
Right next to the modified furnace, there’s a plastic hopper full of miscanthus pellets.
They look like rabbit or hamster food, and they smell like grass.
“Look at high energy costs. This was very competitive with natural gas, and the very
nice thing is being able to keep this value very close to home. The grass was
produced within fifteen miles, the furnaces were produced within five miles, and the
grass was processed into a pellet within 30 miles.”
Letterly says miscanthus offers enough local economic and environmental benefits that
people should look into it now.
It already has potential to be a kind of super-star plant, with or without help from an
ethanol industry may never come.
For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.