The partnering states want to reduce the amount greenhouse gases coming from car tailpipes. (Photo by Ben VonWaggoner)
Eleven Northeastern states are working together to create a new fuel standard that will mean lower greenhouse gases.
Julie Grant reports that means, when you fill up your car in those states, the gas won’t be quite as bad for the environment:
Transcript
Eleven Northeastern states are working together to create a new fuel standard that will mean lower greenhouse gases.
Julie Grant reports that means, when you fill up your car in those states, the gas won’t be quite as bad for the environment:
The partnering states want to reduce the amount greenhouse gases coming from car tailpipes.
Ian Bowles is Secretary of Energy with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.
He says the states would prefer that the federal government take the lead on this issue, but they’re doing what they can to limit carbon emissions from cars and trucks as soon as possible.
“If everyone waits and sits on their hands until there’s a global agreement, it’s going to take a long time to get anything done.”
Bowles expects the eleven-state agreement to spur investment into new types of ethanol and biofuels. And he says that will mean new jobs in science, engineering, and at fuel refineries.
“We’ll be creating a much bigger market for biofuels. Jobs will get created and greenhouse gasses will be cut.”
The states expect to have a legally binding agreement on the low carbon fuel standard by the end of the year.
If you’ve ever lived in the south, or even just gone for a visit, you
know kudzu. It’s an invasive weed that grows like crazy in the southern states. Rebecca Williams reports on a new use for the weed:
Transcript
If you’ve ever lived in the south, or even just gone for a visit, you
know kudzu. It’s an invasive weed that grows like crazy in the southern states. Rebecca Williams reports on a new use for the weed:
Kudzu grows about a foot a day.
“And it covers trees, fences, houses – it’ll cover you if you stand still too long.”
That’s Doug Mizell. He says he can run everything from cars to lawnmowers on his kudzunol. It’s a fuel-grade ethanol made from kudzu. He says he got sick of fighting kudzu and decided to figure out how to use it.
“And I thought well, I’m just gonna sit down and make myself a tabletop still and see if I can’t extract some sugars from this stuff and see if I can make some moonshine. And sure enough I was able to do that and the idea of kudzunol kinda grew from that.”
He says kudzunol smells like gin. Right now he’s working on getting patents – and money – to build a commercial plant to make it. He says with those things in place… he’s hoping to sell kudzunol as soon as six months from now.
This E85 pump is one of two publicly
available in the city of Chicago - a
city of nearly three million people
and dozens of dealerships that sell E-85
compatible cars. The federal government
provided incentives to manufacture E85-
compatible vehicles, but the fuel
infrastructure hasn't kept up. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
If you’ve kicked the tires around
a new car lot recently, your dealer may
have told you about “flex fuel” cars. These
Flex Fuel Vehicles run on gas or they can
burn “E85” – a mix of ethanol and gasoline.
Congress promoted Flex Fuel Vehicles to cut
oil imports, but Shawn Allee reports
on why it really hasn’t helped:
Transcript
If you’ve kicked the tires around
a new car lot recently, your dealer may
have told you about “flex fuel” cars. These
Flex Fuel Vehicles run on gas or they can
burn “E85” – a mix of ethanol and gasoline.
Congress promoted Flex Fuel Vehicles to cut
oil imports, but Shawn Allee reports
on why it really hasn’t helped:
I’m in my car across the street from a gas station. It’s raining right now. Keeping my
distance.
I’ve been watching a pump that dispenses that E85 blend – it’s the stuff with 85% ethanol.
Anyway, this is a very lonely gas pump. I’ve been here for something like an hour and
half and no one’s filled up on E85.
So, I’m gonna head in and talk to a manager to see whether this is normal.
(sound of bell)
Allee: “What’s your name sir?”
McLemen: “Greg McLemen.”
Allee: “How often do you see people fill up on E85?”
McLemen: “It depends on the location. Mostly people just don’t know what it is. They
see a little pump over there that says E85. A lot of vehicles take it, and they don’t even
know it.”
McLemen pulls out a flier that shows which vehicles can use E85.
He says lots of these models pull in, but often pass up his E85 pump.
(sound of crinkling)
McLemen: “You can see most of them are General Motors.”
Allee: “A lot of General Motors – Tahoe, Avalanche, Uplanders.”
McLemen: “We always recommend they go online or check the owner’s manual.”
But there’s something most Flex-Fuel owners manuals don’t tell you.
Nationwide, only about 1% of stations have an E85 pump.
E85 is supposed to cut gasoline use.
So it begs the questions: If there’s not much E85 around, why can so many Flex Fuel cars
use it?
“Currently, auto companies receive a fuel economy credit for producing a flex-fuel
vehicle.”
Environmentalist Roland Hwang tracks car policy for the Natural Resources Defense
Council.
He says the Flex Fuel incentives infuriate him – because they’ve made us waste gasoline,
not save it.
“Just very roughly speaking, like a twenty per mile gallon car might be treated like a
forty mile per gallon, almost like a hybrid-level of efficiency, under these fuel economy
credits. Thereby allowing the auto companies actually to build a less-efficient vehicle
fleet than they would have had to build.”
You don’t have to take Hwang’s word for it – energy analysts in the government agree the
incentives have wasted gasoline.
But some of these analysts say there is a bright side to the Flex Fuel vehicle incentives.
One is Paul Leiby of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Leiby: “The important side of effect Flexible Fuel incentives is that we actually can begin
to achieve energy security with the enhanced capability to use alternative fuels even if
we’re not yet using them.”
Allee: “You mean the flex fuel vehicle program wastes some gas, but having flex fuel
vehicles around is like an insurance policy, for an oil shock or something?”
Leiby: “That’s exactly right. If we have to do something very fast, within one to three
years, we already have some vehicles on the road, that can quickly switch to ethanol.”
Leiby says Congress really believed this “insurance policy” idea, so it let Flex Fuel
vehicle incentives for automakers go on for more than a decade – even while we were
just spinning our wheels when it came to actually saving gas.
But now, the game could be changing.
Congress is phasing out Flex Fuel credits for the car makers.
And, there’s talk about making all cars flex fuel.
It’s a move Detroit doesn’t want to make. Because then they’ll have to actually have to
meet the government’s requirements of a more fuel efficient fleet.
The seven million or so Flex Fuel Vehicles
are just a small portion of the 200-million
or so vehicles in the American fleet, but
there could many, more in the future.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
For most drivers, filling up at the
pump’s a pretty easy operation – you drive
up, you fill up, and you drive out. But people
who have Flex Fuel Vehicles have another choice.
They can fill up on gas or E-85, that 85 percent
ethanol blend – if they find the right station.
Shawn Allee reports a lot more of us
could have to make that same choice in the future:
Transcript
For most drivers, filling up at the
pump’s a pretty easy operation – you drive
up, you fill up, and you drive out. But people
who have Flex Fuel Vehicles have another choice.
They can fill up on gas or E-85, that 85 percent
ethanol blend – if they find the right station.
Shawn Allee reports a lot more of us
could have to make that same choice in the future:
I’m at a car lot in my home town. I’m not actually in the car market, but I am
curious what these E85 compatible Flex Fuel vehicles look like. I don’t own one
myself.
Anyway, I’m here with Edgar Moreno. He sells cars on this lot. He’s gonna show
me one of these vehicles here.
Allee: “Edgar, what can you show me?”
Moreno: “The Chevy Impala.”
Allee: “I actually don’t see anything that would tell me it’s a Flex-fuel vehicle.”
Moreno: “Usually it says on the gas cap whether you can use E85 or not.”
(sound of twist)
Allee: “It’s bright yellow. It says E85. In fact it says E85-slash-gasoline. What does
that mean?”
Moreno: “You can fill it with either, or.”
Allee: “How many stations are there available where I could fill this Impala up with
E85?”
Moreno: “I think there’s one in the area, but you have to drive quite a bit to get
there.”
Allee: “So, it’s one of those situations where, if I take this Impala off the lot, I could
still use it at a regular gas station, but I might have to search around for an E85
station?”
Moreno: “Yes, you do. Yep.”
Congress and both presidential candidates are considering making every car a Flex
Fuel Vehicle.
Detroit has spent a lot of money promoting E85 vehicles, and you might think they’d
be in favor of this.
Well, I called Ford Motor Company about this and found out that’s not the case.
“You could mandate every vehicle on the road to be a flex fuel vehicle. It would be a
great cost to our industry.”
Curt Magleby is Ford’s point-man on ethanol regulations.
He says if Congress gets its way there’d be more Flex Fuel Vehicles, but not necessarily
more E85 pumps.
“So you can mandate the vehicle side, but unless there’s a real focus on distribution,
it’s wasted money – we’d be putting dollars on the hoods of our vehicles for no
reason.”
So, Ford and the other car makers could make less profit on Flex Fuel Vehicles if there’s
a mandate.
At one time, they got government incentives to build Flex Fuel Vehicles, but those will
phase out.
So there’d be no benefit for the automakers.
And there’s another twist in the E-85 story.
The fuel industry is pushing to distribute ethanol in a way that might not require flex fuel
cars at all.
This is a little technical, but most gas already has 10% ethanol in it.
The fuel industry wants to sell 20% or even 30% ethanol blends because it saves oil
companies money. The government subsidized ethanol is cheaper than refining oil for
gasoline.
Ford and other car-makers are fighting this.
Magleby says burning E-20 or E-30 blends would be a disaster for existing cars.
“Ethanol is corrosive and it burns hotter, so you have to have a different fuel tank.
You have to have stainless steel fuel lines. You have to have hardened valves in your
engine.”
Car companies say burning 20% or 30% ethanol blends could hurt existing cars.
Scientists are checking whether that’s the case.
In the meantime, Congress is deciding exactly how it will promote ethanol.
It could mandate all cars be E85 Flex Fuel vehicles or it could promote lower-level
ethanol blends in gasoline.
Either way, over the next few years, we’re going to see big changes in our cars or our gas
pumps.
Getting fuel from plants like corn
and sugar cane is not that efficient. That’s
why researchers are working on so-called
cellulosic biofuels. The process turns things
like corn stalks, wood chips, and grasses into
fuel. As Mark Brush reports, some new
cellulosic refineries are breaking ground:
Transcript
Getting fuel from plants like corn
and sugar cane is not that efficient. That’s
why researchers are working on so-called
cellulosic biofuels. The process turns things
like corn stalks, wood chips, and grasses into
fuel. As Mark Brush reports, some new
cellulosic refineries are breaking ground:
The new refineries are being built with money from the federal government. The hope is
to perfect a fuel source that a) doesn’t come from food, and b) is much more efficient
than corn-based ethanol.
The problem is it’s hard to get at the sugars inside the
plants. But the payback could be big. For every one unit of energy going in,
cellulosic ethanol could spit out about five to ten units of energy.
Brian Davidson is with the BioEnergy Science Center. He says industry officials are
hopeful, but he thinks these new refineries are just a first step.
“They believe that those technologies will be more widely applicable, but I actually
believe that we’re going to need further technology improvements to go from these first
few handful of plants, handful of bio-refineries, to make them widespread.”
Davidson says scientists still have not perfected ways to break down the plants in a
cost-effective way.
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)
Stephen John is an agronomist with the Agricultural
Watershed Institute, which is helping the area around Decatur, Illinois cut down on soil erosion and fertilizer pollution; he
believes perennial grasses such as miscanthus may be part of
the solution.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Gary Letterly dips his hand into a hopper of miscanthus
pellets in the furnace room of his University of Illinois Extension
Service office in Taylorville, Illinois.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
These pellets were produced from miscanthus grown in
Illinois; they're fed into a modified corn furnace to heat office space.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
This furnace was originally built to burn pelletized corn, but
Gary Letterly had an Illinois manufacturer modify it to burn miscanthus
pellets; corn and grass (miscanthus and other grasses such as switchgrass)
produce different amounts of ash when burned.
(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.
Ethanol can be made from material that would end up in a landfill (Source: Patrick-br at Wikimedia Commons)
For the past few years, ethanol’s been
a political darling, but lately it seems the
party’s over. There’s concern the industry’s
using too much corn. That’s contributing to
rising food prices. Well, some companies want
to avoid the controversy. Reporter Shawn Allee explains they want to make ethanol from
stuff we leave behind at the dinner table:
Transcript
For the past few years, ethanol’s been
a political darling, but lately it seems the
party’s over. There’s concern the industry’s
using too much corn. That’s contributing to
rising food prices. Well, some companies want
to avoid the controversy. Reporter Shawn Allee explains they want to make ethanol from
stuff we leave behind at the dinner table:
To give you a sense of how touchy the ethanol issue’s gotten, consider what happened to Presidential
candidate Barack Obama. Last year, he supported mandates to add billions of gallons of ethanol to our
fuel stream. But recently, on ‘Meet the Press’, he was defensive.
“If it turns out, we got to make changes to our ethanol policy to help people get something
to eat, that’s the step we take. But I also believe ethanol has been an important
transitional tool for us to start dealing with our long-term energy crisis.”
Obama and other ethanol backers say we’re not stuck with corn-based ethanol. We can use wood chips
or energy crops like switchgrass.
But this cellulosic ethanol is a ways off.
First, the technology’s expensive. Plus, farmers don’t even grow energy crops now.
So, some companies hope to make ethanol from stuff that doesn’t need farms at all. It would come
from garbage cans, like this one at a coffee shop.
“In that receptacle there’s a lot of paper, and there’s some food bits and there’s some
scraps. So, we’re able to turn that into sugar. And the weak sugar, then we ferment, we distill into alcohol, and we get the ethanol.”
Zig Resiak is with a start-up company called Indiana Ethanol Power. He says garbage could compete
with corn.
“If you have a corn-to-ethanol facility, you’re going to pay for the feedstock. Trash, as a feedstock, we don’t
pay for it. The municipalities actually pay us to take the trash, just like a
landfill will take the trash.”
Resiak’s company isn’t the only one to figure this out. At least three other ethanol firms are asking
cities to hand over their trash, and cash. Besides being cheaper, there might be other advantages to
using garbage for ethanol.
Bob Dineen is with the industry group the Renewable Fuels Association.
“We have garbage all across the country.”
Here’s why that matters.
Before it makes it to the pump, ethanol needs to be blended at refineries. Dineens says those
refineries are far from corn farms and rural ethanol plants, but refineries are often close to big metro
areas, and big-city trash.
“A company that is able to produce from local landfill refuse – he’s clearly going to have an
advantage in terms of transportation, feedstock costs, and all the rest.”
Well, that’s the theory, anyway. The market hasn’t tested garbage-based ethanol yet.
So, what exactly is stopping companies like Indiana Ethanol Power from giving it a go?
Resiak says it’s simple – cities just haven’t been willing to part with their trash.
“Municipalities are very comfortable with putting it in the back of a truck and letting it go to the landfill. They don’t think about it twice. But for us to come in and say we’re going to
take it cheaper and we’re going to save you millions of dollars a year on your tipping fee – that’s different
and that’s kind of scary, and they want to take a good, strong look at that.”
Resiak predicts by the time cities do come around to the idea, there will be even more companies ready to
take garbage bags out of their hands.
Jeffrey Langbehn beside one his family's hunting catches. He directs the Lake County Solid Waste Management District. His enthusiasm for the outdoors is one reason he says he supports the idea of finding landfill alternatives. The prospect of lower waste-handling costs is another. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Trash is usually out of sight, out of mind, but occasionally garbage grabs attention – especially when it starts costing a lot. Landfill fees are rising, and with higher costs to ship or truck garbage, a lot of communities are scrounging for alternatives to landfills. Reporter Shawn Allee found one community that hopes a trendy fuel might solve its garbage problem:
Transcript
Trash is usually out of sight, out of mind, but occasionally garbage grabs attention – especially when it starts costing a lot. Landfill fees are rising, and with higher costs to ship or truck garbage, a lot of communities are scrounging for alternatives to landfills. Reporter Shawn Allee found one community that hopes a trendy fuel might solve its garbage problem:
For most of us, there’s nothing less sexy than trash. But in part of Indiana, that’s changing.
“One second.”
“Take your time.”
I’m waiting for Jeff Langbehn. He heads a solid waste district in Northwest Indiana.
Lately, Langbehn’s phone is ringing off the hook – from reporters and colleagues. And why are they calling? Basically, it’s because Langbehn’s county is leaning toward doing something new with garbage – something that intrigues trash bureaucrats, maybe even the one in your town.
You see, Lake County Indiana is this close to letting companies convert most of its garbage into ethanol, you know, to run cars. Langbehn says his landfill costs are rising quickly. In his case, that would be 42 dollars per ton.
“The two garbage to ethanol providers were for $17.50 ton. Those savings alone made our board say, hey, we have to pay attention to this.”
And so Lake County Indiana sat down with the ethanol operators.
“And we asked the hard questions like, ‘are there any of these things operating in the country?’ All the standard questions you would ask.”
Shawn Allee: “Wait a minute, when you asked who else has done this and they said, no one, what did you think?”
“Well, the fact of the matter is that the components are being used, and have been used for a very, very long time.”
Sure, some components of garbage-to-ethanol technology have been around for a while. But, if you ask ethanol producers where they actually turn trash into ethanol, they say they can do it in labs, or in test facilities. That’s got some folks in the trash biz nervous.
“I guess I’d say I’m cautious and wary of using any new technology to process solid waste.”
Jeremy O’Brien researches trash for the Solid Waste Association of North America – a trade group. He’s seen landfill alternatives come and go.
“Early on in the 1970s we tried a number of technologies including composting the waste stream, anaerobic digestion, and then we also tried incineration.”
Of those, only incineration survived, but early incinerators had a nasty habit of spewing toxic pollutants, stuff like dioxin, out their smokestacks. O’Brien says incinerators are now cleaner.
His point, though, is that it takes time to improve technology. He worries some communities bent on turning garbage into ethanol could end up holding the bag.
“The facility could fail early on and they’d be stuck without having a place to put their waste.”
Indiana’s Jeff Langbehn says that won’t happen to his county. He says the ethanol companies will cover their own financing, and the county will have insurance as a backup. But speaking of backups, there already is another landfill alternative, right?
Shawn Allee: “Why can’t we just recycle all this and make it into stuff people buy again?”
“There are a number of people out there that could give a rat’s patoot about recycling. And that’s the waste stream we’re having to deal with. The other reality is, recycling is expensive, so I don’t believe it’s a realistic possibility for us to recycle everything, both from a cost standpoint and a societal standpoint.”
So, Langbehn says recycling helps, but ethanol might do more. He says he kind of wishes someone else would try trash-to-ethanol technology first, but it’s worth testing out.
And he says it might be so cheap he won’t even have to hold his nose.
Bion's proposed project would consist of 84,000 beef cattle (Photo by Bill Tarpenning, courtesy of the USDA)
Corporations are taking a new approach to farming. They’re combining ethanol production with feeding animals. The corporations need land, water, and a willing community. They turn to economically depressed rural communities and promise jobs. But some researchers think these rural communities could end up with more problems than benefits. Kinna Ohman reports:
Transcript
Corporations are taking a new approach to farming. They’re combining ethanol production with feeding animals. The corporations need land, water, and a willing community. They turn to economically depressed rural communities and promise jobs.But some researchers think these rural communities could end up with more problems than benefits. Kinna Ohman reports:
Bion Environmental Technologies is just like a lot of big businesses trying to capitalize on the ethanol trend.
Over the past year, people from Bion have been working with local officials in St. Lawrence County, a rural area of northern New York. Bion plans to build their first project there. It’ll be a huge indoor feedlot for eighty four thousand beef cattle and a large corn ethanol plant.
They have everything accounted for – they’ll ship cattle and corn in from the Midwest. They’ll use distiller’s grain from the ethanol plant to help feed the cattle. And they’ll even use manure from the cattle to power the ethanol plant.
Jeff Kappell is a manager with Bion. He says this kind of scale and integration is the future of agriculture. And he thinks it’ll be great for the community,
“Establishing a brand and establishing the ability, the knowledge in a consumer marketplace that there is value associated with activity in St. Lawrence County is a tide that can rise all boats. So we see this as symbiotic.”
But not everyone agrees. They wonder how much water the project will need. And they wonder about pollution from all those cattle.
Shane Rogers knows a lot about pollution from factory farms. He’s a professor of environmental engineering at Clarkson University in St. Lawrence County. He tests for certain pollutants in the water and soil around factory farms. Rogers often finds antibiotic resistant E-Coli and other pathogens. He says that type of discharge can happen every day – even at the best run facilities.
”And these are from operations with good practices. Or what we would call good practice because they’re following nutrient management plans. Because they’re treating their manures the way they’re supposed to be before applying them to land. Because they’re collecting and doing things the way they’re supposed to be. But they still can contribute pathogens to the environment and those pathogens still affect us.”
Rogers says factory farms don’t need to remove these pollutants. But people at Bion say their system will remove a lot of them.
James Morris is one of their engineers. He says they’re motivated to keep environmental impacts low,
“A facility of this sort wants to have the minimum possible environmental liability. Because that lowers the risk and raises the probability of profits. And we’re in the business to make money.
But researchers are still unconvinced. And some think there are better ways to provide meat and dairy products for the country.
Doug Gurian-Sherman’s with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He’s the lead author of a new report critical of large factory farms. He says small and medium sized farms can provide what people need without the risks to those in rural communities.
“When you spread these animals out, and you have smaller operations you have benefits to rural communities in terms of not as many problems with the pathogens, or the odors or the nutrient problems. What we’re talking about are sophisticated, smart alternatives that work with nature rather than against it.”
But Bion insists their large integrated project will work. And they expect to receive millions in taxpayer subsidies to help make it work. It’s unclear what the costs will be to the community. In the meantime, the trend continues. Bion plans to build at least five more of these projects throughout the country.
James Dumesic of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his former student George Huber, now at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, are breaking new ground in the development of an alternative fuel called "green gasoline."
(Photo by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, courtesy of the National Science Foundation)
Components for green gasoline can be sythesized in a laboratory from agricultural waste. New processes are breaking the barriers to producing green gasoline on the large scale needed for industrial produciton. (Photo by Ben Barnhart, courtesy of the National Science Foundation)
Emerging research is proving gasoline and jet
fuel don’t have to be made from petroleum. Lisa Ann
Pinkerton reports the next generation of fuel might
just grow on trees:
Transcript
Emerging research is proving gasoline and jet
fuel don’t have to be made from petroleum. Lisa Ann
Pinkerton reports the next generation of fuel might
just grow on trees:
Researchers from the National Science Foundation say they’re using switchgrass
and agricultural waste, such as corn stalks, to make liquids very similar to gasoline and
jet fuel.
Spokesman John Regalbuto says, unlike ethanol, these new systems
don’t result in a 30% drop in mileage and the fuels can be distributed by today’s system.
“So you can use them in your car right now with no alteration of the engines. You
can ship them in pipelines, you
can use them in existing petroleum refineries.”
It might be 5 to 10 years before green gasoline or jet fuel make it to mass
production, but Regalbuto says the research published in this month’s Journal of
Chemistry & Sustainability shows that it can be done.
For the Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton
The partnering states want to reduce the amount greenhouse gases coming from car tailpipes. (Photo by Ben VonWaggoner)
