Green Options

The major problem with corn ethanol doesn’t come in its emissions while a car is in motion; it comes from the energy-intensive process used to make it in the first place, and the fertilizer needed to grow corn.

In a new report, the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) says the events of recent months clearly indicate that production of corn ethanol is not a major driving factor behind the continued high food prices at the supermarket.

In the report, “Will the Plunge in Grain Prices Mean Lower Food Prices at the Supermarket?,” the RFA points out that, while prices for agricultural staple commodities such as corn, wheat, and soybeans have all plummeted by about 50% in the last half year, food prices at the grocery store have remained highly elevated. At the same time, ethanol production has dramatically increased.

When the above factors are taken together, the link between grocery store food prices and corn ethanol production becomes dubious. Not only that, and also somewhat unintuitively, it seems that the diversion of relatively large portions of the US corn crop to ethanol production has very little effect on even the market price of corn.

The EPA, through its Renewable Fuel Standards program, has set a pretty idealist goal for the introduction of cellulosic biofuels, and many are wondering if the goal will be able to be met.

Earlier this year, headlines were made on the announcement of biotech start-up Coskata promising to revolutionize the production of ethanol with a process that could use a variety of feedstocks, ranging from wood chips and switchgrass, to old tires, and even directly from municipal waste. Most importantly, it did not rely on corn or other food stocks in order to produce fuel. At the time, Coskata was predicting an aggressive timeline, with a pilot demonstration plant to begin operation in 2009, and a first full-scale plant to be underway by 2011.

Last week Coskata announced the location for their pilot demonstration plant, a facility that will begin producing 40,000 gallons of ethanol per year, starting in 2009. While that is only a tiny drop in the proverbial bucket, it’s another step along the path to having a full-scale plant in operation and producing 50 to 100 million gallons of ethanol per year.

So, I have a confession. Jeff had to publish my mostly-finished post for our anniversary this week, because I was asleep on a plane. I was invited to Chicago for nine hours (no thanks to the weather) on behalf of GM, to tour the laboratory of Coskata, the auto manufacturer’s newest–and perhaps smartest– investment. The few bloggers and journalists who braved the cold met with the company’s executives for Q&A and a lengthy PowerPoint. (Obviously, GM paid my way for the trip. I’d never pay to go on a trip where air time > ground time.)

I won’t go into the details of the tour, the PowerPoint, the partnership, the process that Coskata uses, the partnership that Coskata announced on the 6th with one of the largest ethanol refinery builders, (under embargo–we can expect details of partnerships like this to literally leak out consistently over the next year, similar to the strategy that GM is using to re-release all of its SUV lines as hybrids) or anything else, because they’ve all been covered so well here:

GroovyGreen’s coverage of the tour and PowerPoint

GM Announces Biofuel Partnership: Cheap, Green Ethanol?

Economic Conditions Shifting in Favor of Ethanol

Coskata partnerhship with ICM Announcement

Update: EcoGeek has a post up too, but they don’t link to any of ours.

When I was a kid on the farm, tiptoeing through a barnyard was a way of life. It was something like playing hopscotch with cow pies. When spring came, it was time to clean out the barn, transfer the winter’s supply of manure, one pitchfork at a time, into a “honey wagon” and take it to the fields to be used as fertilizer. It amazed me how much there was, and until

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