[elalmhicabalp]

Environment News Service



By the Numbers, U.S. Traffic Congestion Worse Than Ever

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, May 10, 2005 (ENS) - Traffic congestion continues to thicken across the United States, costing Americans $63.1 billion a year, according to the latest annual traffic study of 85 urban areas by the Texas Transportation Institute. Released Monday, the 2005 Urban Mobility Report measures traffic congestion trends from 1982 to 2003, reflecting the most recent data available.

Drivers in large, medium and small cities all experienced more severe congestion lasting a longer period of time and affecting more of the transportation network in 2003 than in the baseline year of 1982, this year's study shows. In 2003, the total amount of delay reached 3.7 billion hours, and 2.3 billion gallons of fuel were lost as engines sat idling in traffic jams.

In 1982 a motorist driving at the peak periods sat in traffic an average of 16 hours during the entire year. In 2003, that person sat in traffic for 47 hours, nearly three times as long.

In very large urban areas with more than three million people, the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana area of California is the most congested, with the San Francisco-Oakland area not far behind.

Washington, DC is in third place, Atlanta, Georgia is the fourth most congested very large urban area, and Houston, Texas is fifth, the study shows.

Rush hour traffic in the Houston, Texas urban area (Photo courtesy TTI)

Congestion occurs during longer portions of the day and delays more travelers and goods than ever before, the study shows. And congestion is more severe in larger urban areas.

If the current fuel prices are used, what the researchers call "the congestion invoice" climbs another $1.7 billion, which would bring the total cost to about $65 billion.

The invoice considers the value of extra travel time and the extra fuel consumed by vehicles traveling at slower speeds. Travel time has a value of $13.75 per person-hour and $72.65 per truck-hour in 2003. Fuel cost per gallon is the average price for each state.

"Congestion is a complicated issue and can’t be solved with one approach nationwide," says study author Tim Lomax, a research engineer at the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI). "We need to think about how policies and programs enacted at the federal, state and local levels affect congestion."

Despite slow growth in jobs and travel, urban areas are not adding enough capacity, improving operations or managing demand well enough to keep traffic congestion from growing larger, the study shows.

Lomax and co-author David Schrank found that the number of urban areas with more than 20 hours of annual delay per peak traveler has grown from only five in 1982 to 51 in 2003.

Over the most recent three years, the contribution of operations improvements has grown from 260 to 340 million hours of congestion relief, but delay has increased by 300 million hours over the same period.

The study comes at a time when Congress is considering legislation to re-authorize funding for transportation programs and projects across the nation. The House passed a version of the six-year bill that includes a Congestion Relief Program to address urban congestion problems.

"The bill includes important sections dedicated to developing a strategy to improve mobility by attacking congestion in a systematic way using an array of traffic congestion relief activities," says Lomax.

Building more road and public transportation capacity, operating that capacity for the most efficient service, and innovative pricing and truck-only lane projects are among the relief measures authorized by the House bill, known as the Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users. The bill has been placed on the Calendar in the Senate.

Delays that waste time and fuel are more frequent and last longer than before. (Photo courtesy TTI)

"There is no single solution that can reverse the growth in congestion," Lomax says. "The deliberations in Congress, decisions by state and local elected officials, the results of voter initiatives last fall, and our research findings recognize that reality."

The study shows that regular route public transportation service on buses and trains provides a significant amount of peak period travel in the most congested corridors and urban areas.

If public transportation service was discontinued and the riders traveled in private vehicles, the 85 urban areas studied would have suffered an additional 1.1 billion hours of delay in 2003. That figure represents a 27 percent increase in delay and an additional congestion cost of $18 billion.

Useful solutions to delay shown by the study include high-occupancy vehicle lanes - also known as diamond lanes, bus and carpool lanes, or transitways. Data for the 19 congested corridors studied showed a saving equivalent to 10 to 15 years worth of congestion growth in the average area. "These HOV lanes carry one-third of the peak direction passenger load, providing significant passenger movement at much higher speeds and with more reliable travel times than the congested mainlanes," the study says.

Entrance ramp meters that regulate the flow of traffic on freeway entrance ramps using traffic signals are another useful solution. Designed to create more space between entering vehicles so those vehicles do not disrupt the mainlane traffic flow, the signals allow one vehicle to enter the freeway every two to five seconds. They also reduce the number of entering vehicles due to the short distance trips that are encouraged to use the parallel streets to avoid the ramp wait time.

Twenty-five of the urban areas reported ramp metering on some portion of their freeway system in 2003 for a total of 33 percent of the freeway miles. The effect was to reduce delay by 102 million person hours, approximately five percent of the freeway delay in those areas.

Also useful in reducing delays are the freeway incident management programs - such as Freeway Service Patrol, Highway Angel, Highway Helper, The Minutemen and Motorists Assistance Patrol - that attempt to remove crashed and disabled vehicles from the freeway lanes and shoulders by working in conjunction with surveillance cameras, cell phone and reported incident call-in programs.

Another accident slows traffic on a California roadway. (Photo courtesy Rialto Police Department)

In the 71 areas studied that have such programs, the effect was to reduce delay by 177 million person hours, approximately seven percent of the freeway delay in those areas.

Other helpful strategies are traffic signal coordination and arterial street access management.

The data suggest that nine percent of the roadway delay is being addressed by these four operational treatments for a total of 336 million hours in 2003, Lomax and Schrank report. And if these treatments were deployed on all major freeways and streets, the benefit would expand to about 15 percent of delay.

The authors point out that these techniques can be enacted much more quickly than major roadway or public transportation system expansions can occur. "But the operational treatments do not replace the need for those expansions," they say.

"Congestion is a complicated issue and can’t be solved with one approach nationwide," Lomax says, "We need to think about how policies and programs enacted at the federal, state and local levels affect congestion."

2005 Urban Mobility Report

See table on page 16 of summary report.

[kanchouska]

As a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the growing uncertainty with the situation in the Middle East, South America and Europe, the United States is now forced to re-think its energy policy so that it can lower energy consumption of and dependence on foreign oil. Just as the automobile replaced the horse-drawn carriage so it is time for the electric battery to replace the gasoline engine. We are at the dawn of a new age when one can plug their car into an electric outlet and re-charge it for travel up to sixty miles or more. But with any wholesale change comes the requirement of a transitional mechanism. Hence the need for a vehicle that can run alternatively on both gasoline and electricity. The goal of course would be to make a total conversion within a reasonable amount of time. Most of the electricity produced in the United States comes from coal-fired power plants so the concern by some is that a reduction in tailpipe emissions would be offset by an increase in air pollution from the power plants. Others argue that the sheer volume of reduced vehicle emissions would fall far greater than plant-produced air pollution. We may even see a coalition of military hawks and environmentalists as fuel efficiency brings about both security and a better climate.

Few would argue that two factors influence consumer's choice of transportation more than anything else: gas mileage and appearance. Ever since the automobile became available to the average consumer, it has always been considered a status symbol much like the clothing we wear and the houses we live in. The price of electricity is pale compared to the price of gasoline so this factor is virtually a no-brainer. The choice of appearance however, will always linger as long as we believe that "appearance makes the person". But this factor can also be addressed during the transition phase since it appears that most vehicles today can be modified to use both fuel sources. As for the future, the old tried and true marketing techniques will convince most people that buying the style of car available will guarantee that the "future won't pass them by". Just as Japanese cars promoting fuel efficiency in response to the oil embargo of the 1970's sparked the Big Three to respond accordingly so will the shift to electric vehicles change the market once again. Perhaps this time General Motors, Ford and Daimler Chrysler will get the "jump on the competition" and in so doing, save themselves from bankruptcy.

[NumStulpata]

I've merged another thread with this one, since they are related.

The reason that increasing fuel efficiency of automobiles would have a major impact on foreign oil dependency is a problem in itself - the ever growing number of cars on the road.

CBS Sunday Morning ran a story about it yesterday.

The increase in vehicle registrations has far outpaced population growth.
1960: 70 million vehicles registered
2003: 230 million.

Despite that there seem to be roads everywhere, road capacity from 1960-2003 increased by only 10%.

Americans consume 2.3 billion gallons of fuel per year just idling. The loss in productivity is estimated at $63 billion annually.

[Singukil]

Fueling Growth Of a Humble Crop

Biodiesel Energy Industry Sparks Interest in Maryland Soybeans

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Larry Jarboe's quest for energy independence began years ago in the mangrove swamps of the Florida Keys, with a 15-foot canoe he bought for $75 at Sears. He installed an electric trolling motor to chase lobsters and realized along the way that "it was a really great way to live and very clean."

After that came the homemade electric riding lawnmower, the solar-powered electric Toyota MR2 with lightning bolt on the side (known as the "Green Hornet"), the electric bicycle and the wood-and-gas-powered sawmill. Now Jarboe, a Republican St. Mary's County commissioner, has laid his hopes on a hard vegetable the size of a pencil eraser grown throughout Southern Maryland: the soybean.

Already the great utility player of the vegetable league -- used in soaps, foams and salad dressing -- the soybean is also the key ingredient for the burgeoning biodiesel fuel industry. Thanks to hefty petroleum prices, a tax incentive that began this year and a desire for cleaner-burning alternative fuels, biodiesel plants are popping up across the country.

In such rural areas as Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore, where farming is slowly waning, some officials are hoping that the biodiesel market for soybeans might help halt that slide.

In St. Mary's, Jarboe has held public forums advocating biodiesel and is working to install a 1,000-gallon biodiesel tank for county-owned vehicles.

"I think America needs to pull together to become energy-independent," Jarboe said. "And anything we could do to help farmers generate more income from their crops would be a good thing."

But widespread biodiesel use is still hindered by its price: Pure biodiesel can cost 50 cents more per gallon than regular diesel.

While still a fraction of petroleum output, the National Biodiesel Board expects that 75 million gallons of biodiesel -- which also can be made from other plant products and used cooking oils -- will be produced nationwide this year. That is three times the amount made last year and 38 times the production in 2000. In September, Minnesota became the first state to require that all diesel sold in the state be mixed with at least 2 percent biodiesel.

Around Washington, local governments and agencies are increasingly using the vegetable product. More than 400 large trucks and school buses in Arlington County use biodiesel, as do a number of National Park Service vehicles. President Bush visited Virginia Biodiesel Refineries in West Point, Va., in May, touting the fuel as "one of our nation's most promising alternative fuel sources."

Queen Anne's County on the Eastern Shore, the largest producer of soybeans in the state, this year converted its entire 180-vehicle diesel fleet, including 20 school buses, to a 20 percent blend of biodiesel. The county received a $60,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to pay for the difference in cost between biodiesel and regular diesel.

"We're an agricultural, rural community," said James Wood, the regional recycling coordinator for the mid-shore region. "It's a natural fit for us."
Wood said he was first drawn to the product because of its cleaner-burning properties, with reduced levels of carbon monoxide, sulfur and the sooty particulate matter. It is also biodegradable and, as many advocates proclaim, "less toxic than table salt." At one of Jarboe's recent biodiesel forums, a true believer threatened to drink a bottle of 100 percent biodiesel to demonstrate its safety.

The major market for soybeans in Maryland is now the poultry industry. Farmers sell their beans to Perdue Farms, which crushes them into meal, for chicken feed. A byproduct is soybean oil, most of which is sold to the food industry, said Perdue spokeswoman Julie DeYoung, but a small but growing portion is sold to two biodiesel plants. Hot oil can be blended with ethanol and potash to make glycerin and biodiesel.

That is the basic recipe that James Warren, owner of the Cropper Oil Co. in Berlin, Md., on the Eastern Shore, plans to use in a biodiesel plant for which construction is to begin in January. Warren has been helped by federal tax incentives that lessen the cost of producing biodiesel, and the Worcester County Commissioners voted this month to change county zoning to allow such an operation. He plans initially to produce between 500,000 and 1 million gallons a year.

"The more demand for biodiesel, the more demand for soybeans, and that's going to help the profit off the beans," said Warren, who is also a soybean farmer. "I heard a lot of farmers talking about biodiesel . . . when the prices [of regular diesel] were going up so high and they were tired of it, and they were saying, 'I'd rather see somebody here get paid than some foreigner.' "

The biodiesel industry, in its nascent stage, still must overcome obstacles -- including but not limited to the higher cost -- before it attains widespread use. The average driver can purchase biodiesel at only a couple dozen gas stations in the region, for instance.

In colder temperatures, it can become thick and sludge-like, especially the pure biodiesel. It also has solvent properties that, while capable of cleaning an engine, can result in plugged filters, Warren said.

"It's just taking off. I think it's going to be a niche product," said Michael Besche, president of Waldorf-based Besche Oil, which distributes diesel to about 50 service stations in Maryland and is considering distributing biodiesel. "When you start talking about billions and billions of gallons of diesel, and the amount of soybeans that would have to be grown to produce it, there are limits."

Still, Besche said, with mandates from such large institutions as the Navy to use alternative fuels, there may be a good market in the area. Also, since the permissible sulfur content of regular diesel is set to be massively reduced next year, biodiesel -- with no sulfur -- could be attractive as a blend, he said.

It was the sulfur smell that first led Paul Waxman, an employee at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in St. Mary's County, to search for alternatives for his turbo-diesel Jetta. He has been driving on 100 percent biodiesel for four years now and said he much prefers the deep-fried smell of soybean oil. He said nothing needed to be done to get his car ready for the new fuel.

Waxman said a friend of his in Calvert County drives 80 miles to buy 200 gallons of biodiesel from a service station in New Windsor, Md., in Carroll County, and a small group shares the fuel.

"I don't remember the last time I went to a gas station," he said.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[enactolaelant]

January 15, 2007, 7:19 pm

Who Cares About the Price of Gas?

The Detroit Auto Show, which is going on right now, is full of cars purporting to solve the problem of the moment: the political, economic and environmental damage done by America’s dependence on oil. GM is showing off an electric Chevy; Ford has an adorable diesel hybrid that gets 65 miles per gallon, and Toyota is parading not only its hybrid Prius but also a huge truck that next year will be available in a model that runs on ethanol.

An overwhelming number of Americans believe that our oil problems can be solved by better auto technology: 78 percent of us want Congress and the president to push for 40 m.p.g. fuel economy standards, according to a recent poll.

What we would rather not do is use less gas. Over the past five years, as gas prices have doubled, fuel consumption has continued climbing upward. In 2006, we spent $364 billion on gasoline, which was double what we spent in 2002, according to Tom Kloza, an analyst who monitors American gasoline-buying behavior for the Oil Price Information Service. (The difference amounts to as much as the entire federal budget for Medicaid in 2006. It’s hard to imagine that we would have swallowed a one-year tax increase of that proportion.)

But the costs don’t accrue only to Americans — the whole world has to live with the high prices we tolerate. We are a country with 140 million pedals to the metal. American drivers buy one of every nine barrels of crude oil pumped from the ground, so we have more power and influence over world prices than any other buyers. Our behavior exacerbates small supply shortages, sending prices even higher. The International Energy Agency now considers drivers’ “insensitivity” to price as a potential threat to the stability of the world oil market.

This numbness to gasoline prices is relatively new. A recent study of consumer behavior by economists at the University of California at Davis found that between 2001 and 2006, as gas prices doubled, we reduced our consumption by only four percent. This is a big change from the last gas crisis, when drivers faced with the same relative price increase between 1975 and 1980, cut back by about 30 percent.

Why? In 1977 the average family traveled 12, 036 miles a year, but by 2001, we were driving 21,171 miles to and from work, soccer practice and the mall. People bought bigger cars to make the longer drives more bearable, and now they’re stuck with both the cars and the commutes. Then too, fuel accounts for a smaller share of the cost of driving today’s cars. (In 2004, gas and oil accounted for 9.5 percent of the cost of driving a mile, down from 19.9 percent in 1985.)

Many Americans subtract the cost of gasoline from other parts of their budgets — by skipping movies, for example, or buying breakfast cereal on sale. Obviously, that’s a good strategy for drivers who don’t want to reduce their gas consumption, but it’s hell on the oil markets.

Why are we like this? American energy policy since the 1930s has been based on ensuring greater supply — first from the Middle East, and later from countries outside of OPEC — rather than on controlling demand. Generations of Americans have come to expect a constant flow of cheap gasoline as a right — and they attribute high prices to oil company shenanigans. Eric Smith, a political scientist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, found that that 85 percent of Californians believe that high gas prices are the result of oil company manipulation, not market pressures. And if there’s no shortage, why conserve?

Kloza, of the Oil Price Information Service, observed that when prices recently hit $3.20, some people did start car pooling, but not for classic economic reasons. They just wanted to get back at the oil companies. They weren’t “making an internal calculation about fuel’s percentage of their disposable income,” he told me in an email. “People drove less to express their wrath, or spite. It’s a combination of the numbers themselves, and the perception (am I getting hosed?) that lead to demand changes.”

To really address our overconsumption of oil, we need to fix the drivers along with the cars. And that will require big new approaches. For years, environmentalists have begged for higher gas taxes as a way to discourage people from wasting gas. But we have demonstrated that we can’t or won’t respond rationally to high prices, so taxes will not push conservation. We need to rethink our supply-based energy policy, and ready to start making changes both big and small in the way we consume oil.

I called Neal Elliot, of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy to ask how Americans can change. Elliot said he’s watching the “Don Index,” named after his brother-in-law. Like other well-off Americans, Don is basically impervious to gas prices. “Don is price insensitive” said Elliot, before detailing Don’s S.U.V. history: He replaced his Ford Explorer with a Chevy Tahoe, then got a larger Tahoe, and then a Cadillac Escalade. Recently, that too was replaced, by an even bigger Escalade. But suddenly, Don is feeling guilty. “He’s beginning to realize that unsustainable energy consumption isn’t affecting him yet, but it is making his company less viable,” said Elliot, who believes that the “Don Index” is starting to take hold. Maybe the 2008 Auto Show will include this new model of driver too.

Lisa Margonelli, a journalist in Oakland, Calif., is an Irvine Fellow at the New America Foundation. Her first book, “Oil on the Brain,” will be published in February.

[Jifyicyfuhpop]

January 23, 2007

The Energy Challenge

Springtime for Ethanol


Neal Ulevich/Bloomberg News
Last May, workers prepared an ethanol plant intended to produce 40 million gallons a year in Windsor, Colo., north of Denver.

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

WASHINGTON — The Renewable Fuels Association, the ethanol industry’s major lobbyist, works out of cramped offices that it shares with a lawyer near Capitol Hill. Pictures of ethanol plants from its 61 board members hang everywhere. “We’re about to run out of wall space,” said Bob Dinneen, the association’s president.

The association may only have six staff members but it is now bursting with energy, a far cry from the early days when its founder, a South Dakota farm boy who was convinced America needed to break the stranglehold of foreign oil, quit in frustration after four years.

After three decades of surviving mostly on tax subsidies, the industry is poised tonight to get its biggest endorsement from on high that it has a long-term future as a home-grown alternative to gasoline.

In his State of the Union address, President Bush is expected to call for a huge increase in the amount of ethanol that refiners mix with gasoline, probably double the current goal of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012.

While the details of the proposal are not known, 15 billion gallons of ethanol would work out to more than 10 percent of the country’s current gasoline consumption, and is far beyond the current capacity of about 5.4 billion gallons.

At least half of the new ethanol would come from corn, signaling the administration’s support to the Midwest farm states that have benefited the most from the recent ethanol boom.

For an industry once dominated by the will of a single powerful producer, Archer Daniels Midland, ethanol has come a long way, joining the oil industry and producers of major agricultural commodities as an entrenched political force in Washington. And it now enjoys a powerful role in presidential politics because of Iowa’s status as one of the first states to select delegates to the parties’ nominating conventions.

But with dozens of new ethanol plants coming online this year, the ethanol lobby is facing a critical point. The political reality is that corn’s days as the chief crop for making the fuel may be numbered.

Corn-based ethanol can only marginally reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. But it does little, if anything, to improve energy efficiency, and the mounting concern of some politicians is that relying on corn is leading to collateral damage in other parts of the agricultural economy and threatening the nation’s status as the leading corn exporter. The big increase in the works may mean consumers would end up paying more at the supermarket.

So the ethanol lobby and its political supporters now face the challenge of trying to maintain the momentum of ethanol’s feel-good story before the potential negative consequences of the rapid ramp-up become all too apparent.

Clutching the reins these last five years is Mr. Dinneen, a longtime Washington lobbyist who joined the association in 1988. He recalled his early years there as a pitched war with the oil industry. “I would wake up in the morning and try to think of a way to vilify the oil guys,” he said.

Today, to keep the ethanol train moving, ethanol makers are cozying up to the oil industry, forming political alliances and enlisting executives from companies like Chevron as they race to make a quicker transition to cellulosic ethanol made from nonfood crops, like switchgrass.

Otherwise, public support could turn against the fuel, which yields a third less energy than petroleum-based gasoline and still relies on a federal subsidy of 51 cents a gallon to remain competitive.

“We are no longer debating whether this makes sense, if this public policy should be pursued,” Mr. Dinneen said. “The discourse now is how much ethanol can we produce, how quickly can we produce it and what is the pathway for greater production of domestic renewables.”

That pathway, at the moment, relies on commercializing cellulosic ethanol made from crops like switchgrass or wood chips, which today is twice as expensive to produce as ethanol made from corn.

Some analysts, though, believe that politics has already trumped economics. “Once we have a corn-based technology up and running the political system will protect it,” said Lawrence J. Goldstein, a board member at the Energy Policy Research Foundation. “We cannot afford to have 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol in 2015, and that’s exactly where we are headed.”

Mr. Goldstein said that rather than speed up the process of producing more ethanol, Congress should “step back and reflect on the damage we have already done.”

By contrast, ethanol advocates in Congress are pushing to accelerate research into cellulosic sources with the stated goal of speeding the timetable for when corn can be supplemented — or supplanted — as the chief ethanol crop.

“We need additional funds for transitioning to making more energy crops for our national security,” Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat and the new chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said in an interview earlier this month.”

The agriculture secretary, Mike Johanns, said there will be an “adjustment period“ for ethanol that will last a few years. But he is confident that more corn will emerge to ease the pain of higher grain prices, as seed companies improve yields and farmers shift their acreage from other crops. “When you look at the whole constellation of issues, and advancements that are out there, it is a very encouraging time for agriculture,” Mr. Johanns said in an interview.

The race to crack the code to produce cellulosic ethanol more efficiently has attracted dozens of researchers, venture capitalists and even the interest of major oil companies like BP and Chevron. Vinod Khosla, a major venture capitalist who has poured money into seven different start-up companies, has been pushing Washington lawmakers to set more aggressive targets to ensure that the demand for corn moves beyond corn. “If I am going to take the risk, the market has to be big,” Mr. Khosla said.

The Renewable Fuels Association is trying to balance the competing concerns. The organization was not always interested in rapid expansion, particularly if that meant allowing competition for A.D.M. from sources like Brazilian sugar. David Hallberg, the association’s founding president, said he left after four years in the job partly because he grew tired of disputes with A.D.M. executives over the future direction of the industry.

“I thought my job was to grow the industry to be as large as it could be,“ said Mr. Hallberg, who denied he was forced out. “That isn’t what our bigger members always wanted.”

By the time Mr. Hallberg left the organization in 1985, oil prices had plummeted to $9 a barrel, making ethanol uneconomic as a fuel. The industry turned its efforts toward selling ethanol as an oxygen enhancer for gasoline that could lift octane and reduce carbon monoxide.

With the influence of Dwayne O. Andreas, A.D.M.’s longtime chief executive and now chairman emeritus, Congress passed the federal excise tax in 1978 that gave ethanol its primary subsidy, a credit worth 51 cents per gallon of ethanol, or $21 per barrel of oil. Mr. Andreas had powerful friends in Congress, including Senator Robert J. Dole, a Republican from Kansas who rose to majority leader and who pushed consistently over the years to retain the ethanol subsidy.

In those early days the influence of Mr. Andreas and A.D.M.’s generous contributions to both Republicans and Democrats kept ethanol alive. The company also held greater sway within the organization because of its great weight as an ethanol producer. Even today, at around 25 percent of total ethanol capacity, A.D.M. remains the largest maker.

At first, the ethanol producers had few allies. The National Corn Growers Association was agnostic about ethanol at best, and the American Farm Bureau opposed ethanol, worrying that it could raise the price of livestock feed and cut into exports, Mr. Hallberg said.

That began to change in the late 1980s when the groups began to work together to supply ethanol to some 30 cities as a gasoline additive in the winter months. Those months were also when A.D.M.’s wet mill corn processing plants made more ethanol.

While the ethanol and corn forces preferred their wintertime plan, they later threw their support behind a federal proposal to implement a reformulated gasoline with an “oxygenate” — either ethanol or methyl tertiary-butyl ether — in nine of the country’s smoggiest cities. The program took effect in 1995.

Ethanol’s big breakthrough came over the battle to ban M.T.B.E. After gasoline spills in California revealed that M.T.B.E. could corrode groundwater, the Renewable Fuels Association and the corn growers were among those pushing ethanol as an environmentally safer alternative.

California banned M.T.B.E. in 1999 and requested a waiver from the federal oxygenate standard, arguing it could make a cleaner-burning gasoline without ethanol. President Bush rejected the waiver, spurring an ethanol construction miniboom.

In 2001, Mr. Dinneen took over as president, focused on reaching détente with the oil industry. To win approval for the renewable fuels standard, he eventually cobbled together an unlikely coalition of consumer groups, the American Petroleum Institute and environmentalists like the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The fuel standard Congress approved in 2005, which called for a ramp-up of ethanol use to 7.5 billion gallons by 2012, ended up lighting a fire under the industry. When oil prices shot over $50 a barrel, ethanol became profitable, and then President Bush set off an industry building boom when he said last January that “America is addicted to oil.”

It helped that the mix of ethanol’s advocates had been changing. About a decade ago farmers began investing in ethanol plants; today more than half of the 110 ethanol plants in production are at least partly owned by farmers. The ownership by farmers brought home the rural benefits of the ethanol industry more directly.

The association’s expanding board, which is 10 times the size it was some 20 years ago, has also become more diverse and less beholden to the business agendas of its biggest members.

As ethanol expands, Mr. Dinneen dismissed the concerns of some economists that its explosive growth could threaten exports and livestock prices, and that a potential investment bubble could burst before cellulosic ethanol has a chance to hit the market.

“I don’t get all that worried that we are building too fast,” he said. “I am not bright enough or foolish enough to try to control the market.”


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[bloriMal]

January 31, 2007

Once a Dream Fuel, Palm Oil May Be an Eco-Nightmare


Bazuki Muhammad/Reuters
Oil palms are delivered for pressing in Malaysia.


Tengku Bahar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A palm oil estate on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Exports hit a record $9 billion last year because of strong European demand.

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

AMSTERDAM, Jan. 25 — Just a few years ago, politicians and environmental groups in the Netherlands were thrilled by the early and rapid adoption of “sustainable energy,” achieved in part by coaxing electrical plants to use biofuel — in particular, palm oil from Southeast Asia.

Spurred by government subsidies, energy companies became so enthusiastic that they designed generators that ran exclusively on the oil, which in theory would be cleaner than fossil fuels like coal because it is derived from plants.

But last year, when scientists studied practices at palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, this green fairy tale began to look more like an environmental nightmare.

Rising demand for palm oil in Europe brought about the clearing of huge tracts of Southeast Asian rainforest and the overuse of chemical fertilizer there.

Worse still, the scientists said, space for the expanding palm plantations was often created by draining and burning peatland, which sent huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

Considering these emissions, Indonesia had quickly become the world’s third-leading producer of carbon emissions that scientists believe are responsible for global warming, ranked after the United States and China, according to a study released in December by researchers from Wetlands International and Delft Hydraulics, both in the Netherlands.

“It was shocking and totally smashed all the good reasons we initially went into palm oil,” said Alex Kaat, a spokesman for Wetlands, a conservation group.

The production of biofuels, long a cornerstone of the quest for greener energy, may sometimes create more harmful emissions than fossil fuels, scientific studies are finding.

As a result, politicians in many countries are rethinking the billions of dollars in subsidies that have indiscriminately supported the spread of all of these supposedly eco-friendly fuels for vehicles and factories. The 2003 European Union Biofuels Directive, which demands that all member states aim to have 5.75 percent of transportation run by biofuel in 2010, is now under review.

“If you make biofuels properly, you will reduce greenhouse emissions,” said Peder Jensen, of the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen. “But that depends very much on the types of plants and how they’re grown and processed. You can end up with a 90 percent reduction compared to fossil fuels — or a 20 percent increase.”

He added, “It’s important to take a life-cycle view,” and not to “just see what the effects are here in Europe.”

In the Netherlands, the data from Indonesia has provoked soul-searching, and helped prompt the government to suspend palm oil subsidies. The Netherlands, a leader in green energy, is now leading the effort to distinguish which biofuels are truly environmentally sound.

The government, environmental groups and some of the Netherlands’ “green energy” companies are trying to develop programs to trace the origins of imported palm oil, to certify which operations produce the oil in a responsible manner.

Krista van Velzen, a member of Parliament, said the Netherlands should pay compensation to Indonesia for the damage that palm oil has caused. “We can’t only think: does it pollute the Netherlands?”

In the United States and Brazil most biofuel is ethanol (made from corn in the United States and sugar in Brazil), used to power vehicles made to run on gasoline. In Europe it is mostly local rapeseed and sunflower oil, used to make diesel fuel.

In a small number of instances, plant oil is used in place of diesel fuel, without further refinement. But as many European countries push for more green energy, they are increasingly importing plant oils from the tropics, since there is simply not enough plant matter for fuel production at home.

On the surface, the environmental equation that supports biofuels is simple: Since they are derived from plants, biofuels absorb carbon while they are grown and release it when they are burned. In theory that neutralizes their emissions.

But the industry was promoted long before there was adequate research, said Reanne Creyghton, who runs Friends of the Earth’s campaign against palm oil here.

Biofuelswatch, an environment group in Britain, now says that “biofuels should not automatically be classed as renewable energy.” It supports a moratorium on subsidies until more research can determine whether various biofuels in different regions are produced in a nonpolluting manner.

Beyond that, the group suggests that all emissions arising from the production of a biofuel be counted as emissions in the country where the fuel is actually used, providing a clearer accounting of environmental costs.

The demand for palm oil in Europe has soared in the last two decades, first for use in food and cosmetics, and more recently for fuel. This versatile and cheap oil is used in about 10 percent of supermarket products, from chocolate to toothpaste, accounting for 21 percent of the global market for edible oils.

Palm oil produces the most energy of all vegetable oils for each unit of volume when burned. In much of Europe it is used as a substitute for diesel fuel, though in the Netherlands, the government has encouraged its use for electricity.

Supported by hundreds of millions of euros in national subsidies, the Netherlands rapidly became the leading importer of palm oil in Europe, taking in 1.7 million tons last year, nearly double the previous year.

The increasing demand has created damage far away. Friends of the Earth estimates that 87 percent of the deforestation in Malaysia from 1985 to 2000 was caused by new palm oil plantations. In Indonesia, the amount of land devoted to palm oil has increased 118 percent in the last eight years.

In December, scientists from Wetlands International released their calculations about the global emissions caused by palm farming on peatland.

Peat is an organic sponge that stores huge amounts of carbon, helping balance global emissions. Peatland is 90 percent water. But when it is drained, the Wetlands International scientists say, the stored carbon gases are released into the atmosphere.

To makes matters worse, once dried, peatland is often burned to clear ground for plantations. The Dutch study estimated that the draining of peatland in Indonesia releases 660 million ton of carbon a year into the atmosphere and that fires contributed 1.5 billion tons annually.

The total is equivalent to 8 percent of all global emissions caused annually by burning fossil fuels, the researchers said. “These emissions generated by peat drainage in Indonesia were not counted before,” said Mr. Kaat. “It was a totally ignored problem.” For the moment Wetlands is backing the certification system for palm oil imports.

But some environmental groups say palm oil cannot be produced sustainably at reasonable prices. They say palm oil is now cheap because of poor environmental practices and labor abuses.

“Yes, there have been bad examples in the palm oil industry,” said Arjen Brinkman, a company official at Biox, a young company that plans to build three palm oil electrical plants in Holland, using oil from palms grown on its own plantations in a manner that it says is responsible.

“But it is now clear,” he said, “that to serve Europe’s markets for biofuel and bioenergy, you will have to prove that you produce it sustainably — that you are producing less, not more CO2.”


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[QvhhbjLy]

Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

We need to build responsible habitat: dense cities like New York or Krakow, where you can walk or take public transport. Marginalize the automobile as transport and you've put a big dent in the problem. To accomplish this, suburban zoning needs to be totally replaced by an urban model: no more parking lots, no more setbacks. Take all highway money and build train lines.

For electricity production you go nuclear.

[seicslybearee]

You do realize that there are millions of suburbanites out there who won't go along with this.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

We need to build responsible habitat: dense cities like New York or Krakow, where you can walk or take public transport. Marginalize the automobile as transport and you've put a big dent in the problem. To accomplish this, suburban zoning needs to be totally replaced by an urban model: no more parking lots, no more setbacks. Take all highway money and build train lines.

For electricity production you go nuclear.

[Dkavtbek]

You do realize that there are millions of suburbanites out there who won't go along with this.

Of course, but so what? It's still what needs to be done.

[enurneAcourdy]

The fact that it might need to be done it not particularly relevent. The fact that it would be a complete political dead duck is.

While it might be a shock to a New Yorker, but suburbanites are the majority in this country.

Of course, but so what? It's still what needs to be done.

[smazibummigue]

I agree with ablarc but unfortunately the general public is very ignorant of the need for and the positive attributes of increased density.

Forget suburbanites, even New Yorkers (at least the vocal ones) are actually calling for downzonings left and right.

Just follow the development threads and you can see just about every project that runs into community opposition has to do with its height, bulk and density.

[Serereids]

Ummmmmm, no.

You guys are calling for the urbinization of all areas in an effort to make things more efficient which ignores the fact that no matter how dense you pack the people, you will still be using more than you can handle.

What we need is to find a balance point. Clustering of humans does not work to well on a global scale. People are pack animals and get rather itchy when you pack too many of them together for too long.

You can deny it by siting many large cities that ave not spontaneously combusted, but you can also site increased crime rates when compared to similar less dense areas composed of the same average financial demographic.

I think that we DO need setbacks, and regulations as to densities, but at the same time find a way to prevent the "development" mentality that you can make a bunch of cul-de-sac little twisty roads to stick a bunch of McMansions on so close together that you can say Hi to your neighbor just by looking out your side window and taping on theirs.

IF, of course, they built side windows into these things anymore.

I do think they need to look at the "villa" kind of development that I believe Cali has tried in some areas where you have some of the things you need within WALKING DISTANCE of your home reducing the need to jump in the Suburban Suburban to go get some OJ for breakfast.

But to add to that, which Cali is WOEFULLY insufficient, we need to increase public transportation availability, convenience, and UTILITY! It is one thing to have a train station within walking distance. It is another to only have 1 train evey 45 minutes (or longer later) OR have it take you longer to get in by mass transit than to drive your car into work.

We need to make these systems handy and less centralized. Major arteries ned to go to the heart (NYC) but who says we cant have some lines that would be able to get from A to B (right next door) without having to go to NYC to get there?

As for power, we have so many options, but people just do not like them. The tidal generators in LI sound would be one example. The resident$ there giving the rea$on that it would di$rupt their $ailing. People worrying more about birds being hit by windmills than the ecological damage done by the current methods.

There are SO MANY reasons why we are facing these problems, but turning the country into a bunch of little people-nodes is not a viable solution.

We need to look around and find out why areas like Europe actually have DECLINING populations while our horny little residents keep popping them out like bunnies. What made europe hit their equilibrium point? How can we try to get there ourselves before we blow right past it and feel the reprocussions from the backswing?

How can we get a balance to occur again?

[luspikals]

The problem with mass transit is that it only really works well with a hub and spoke organization, and with the ability to get riders really close to their end destination on at least one end of the trip. This is why it works in NY metro, and fails miserably in someplace like LA.

[gardenerextraordinaire]

Cheney's Fund Manager Attacks ... Cheney

thestreet.com
By Brett Arends
Mutual Funds Columnist
February 5, 2007

Mutual Fund Morning

The oil-based energy policies usually associated with Vice President Dick Cheney have just come under scathing attack. There's nothing remarkable about that, of course -- except the person doing the attacking.

Step forward, Jeremy Grantham -- Cheney's own investment manager. "What were we thinking?' Grantham demands in a four-page assault on U.S. energy policy mailed last week to all his clients, including the vice president.

Titled "While America Slept, 1982-2006: A Rant on Oil Dependency, Global Warming, and a Love of Feel-Good Data," Grantham's philippic adds up to an extraordinary critique of U.S. energy policy over the past two decades.

What Cheney makes of it can only be imagined.

"Successive U.S. administrations have taken little interest in either oil substitution or climate change," he writes, "and the current one has even seemed to have a vested interest in the idea that the science of climate change is uncertain."

Yet "there is now nearly universal scientific agreement that fossil fuel use is causing a rise in global temperatures," he writes. "The U.S. is the only country in which environmental data is steadily attacked in a well-funded campaign of disinformation (funded mainly by one large oil company)."

That's Exxon Mobil (XOM) .

As for Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, who appears everywhere to question global warming, Grantham mocks him as "the solitary plausible academic [the skeptics] can dig up, out of hundreds working in the field."

And for those nonscientists who are still undecided about the issue, Grantham reminds them of an old logical principle known as Pascal's Paradox. It may be better known as the "what if we're wrong?" argument. If we act to stop global warming and we're wrong, well, we could waste some money. If we don't act, and we're wrong ... you get the picture.

As for the alleged economic costs of going "green," Grantham says that industrialized countries with better fuel efficiency have, on average, enjoyed faster economic growth over the past 50 years than the U.S.

Grantham says that other industrialized countries have far better energy productivity than the U.S. The GDP produced per unit of energy in Italy is 50% higher. Fifty percent. Japan: 60%.

And China "already has auto fuel efficiency standards well ahead of the U.S.!" he adds. You've probably heard about China's slow economic growth.

Grantham adds that past U.S. steps in this area, like sulfur dioxide caps adopted by the late President Gerald Ford, have done far more and cost far less than predicted. "Ingenuity sprung out of the woodwork when it was correctly motivated," he writes.

There is also a political and economic cost to our oil dependency, Grantham notes. Yet America could have eliminated its oil dependency on the Middle East years ago with just a "reasonable set of increased efficiencies." All it would take is 10% fewer vehicles, each driving 10% fewer miles and getting 50% more miles per gallon. Under that "sensible but still only moderately aggressive policy," he writes, "not one single barrel would have been needed from the Middle East." Not one.

I repeat: This is not some rainbow coalition. This is not even Al Gore. Grantham is the chairman of Boston-based fund management company Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo. He is British-born but has lived here since the early 1960s.

Grantham is, like most fund managers, prudent, conservative and inclined to favor the free market and smaller government. He has even said he supported Bush-Cheney in 2000. That doesn't make him particularly political. He also manages a portion of the Heinz-Kerry fortune, as well as those of many other wealthy types.

But he's certainly a man Cheney respects highly. According to the vice president's last personal financial disclosure form, filed with the Federal Election Commission, Cheney has somewhere between $1.6 million and $6 million of his family's money invested in four of Grantham's funds. These aren't even index funds. These are discretionary funds, where you trust the manager to look at the landscape, analyze all the data, and make the best investments. Cheney must have a lot of faith in Grantham's judgement and analytical skills.

When I met Grantham last autumn he, quite rightly, refused to confirm that the vice president was a client. But you can see the evidence in Cheney's own personal financial disclosure.

There is an investment angle to Grantham's argument. He says he is "certain" that "oil substitution, energy conservation, and related environment issues will be the biggest investment issue of at last the next several decades." He adds: "It is clear there is no single solution so investment opportunities will be spread very broadly, especially in energy conservation."

He believes we will need more nuclear power.

But he calls corn-based ethanol "more or less a hoax" when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. "U.S. corn-based ethanol, as opposed to efficient, Brazilian sugar-based ethanol, is merely another U.S. farmer-protection program, made very expensive both directly and indirectly by inflating real agricultural prices."

Tell that to the presidential candidates currently stumping the Iowa caucus. (Incidentally, three MIT scientists told me the same thing about corn ethanol more than a year ago when I interviewed them on the subject. After my article appeared in the Boston Herald, I received a snotty letter denying there was any such thing as "an Iowa corn growers' racket." It was from the "chairman of the Iowa Corn Growers' Association.")

Grantham's full letter can be seen on his company Web site [www.gmo.com] , though you will need to register. It appears as the second half of the investment missive "Goldilocks Rules."

Grantham blames three decades of political cowardice for America's backward energy policy. As he dryly notes, "U.S. drivers -- the world's richest and some of the best behaved -- would, it was said, never accept increased taxes, where Italian drivers would! Even tax-neutral policies, such as taxing high mileage cars at purchase and subsidizing efficient cars, were never seriously considered."

The result: the fuel efficiency of U.S. cars has actually gone backward since 1982.

The irony is that this isn't, or shouldn't be, a partisan issue. Grantham singles out the Ford administration for his strongest praise on environmental matters. Everyone since, of both parties, has been a failure, he concludes. "The past 26 years have been such a wasted opportunity," Grantham writes. "This country had previously shown leadership in this field. President Ford got us off to a running start in energy efficiency... With a succession of President Fords, we would have ended up as an environmental leader and a great model."

I would love to know what President Ford's former chief of staff thinks of that.

His name? Richard B. Cheney.


© 1996-2007 TheStreet.com, Inc.

[JulieSmithdccd]

The problem with mass transit is that it only really works well with a hub and spoke organization, and with the ability to get riders really close to their end destination on at least one end of the trip. This is why it works in NY metro, and fails miserably in someplace like LA.

It needs to be re-thought.

How does NYCitself work? When you are in manhattan and close by, you have pretty good interconnectivity. It just fails miserably once you get outside of that and I think that is where we need to rethink the system.

Hub and spoke is fine when you have only one place to get to, but most areas are not like that (as you have said). Even NYC could stand more of a spider-web approach to mass transit (being able to get from Queens to Brooklyn w/o having to go through midtown).

We need to start thinking of mass transit as more of a network than a hub. Granted that some preference has to be given to higest traffic, but the more we can get from A to whatever letter we want w/o getting in the car, the more you will see people taking mass transit to go to the mall if they just want to go there to browse. (I know it would be that way for the teen-scene).

The hard part is, it is MUCH harder to design one of these systems than a hub system. A hum grows almost by itself. A web or network needs planning and management, and once you get government in on something complex like that, forget it.

[beenBinybelia]

The problem with mass transit is that it only really works well with a hub and spoke organization, and with the ability to get riders really close to their end destination on at least one end of the trip.

The best systems aren't hub and spoke; they're networks except at the very perimeter. Examples are Paris, London, Berlin and Madrid. Moscow turns hub and spoke into network by means of a circumferential a fair distance out.

[seatlyled]

February 11, 2007

Refueled

Life on the Ethanol-Guzzling Prairie


Peter Newcomb for The New York Times
CORNFED Tiny Laddonia has one of Missouri’s four ethanol plants. The people’s slogan: “Our Crop. Our Fuel. Our Country.”



Peter Newcomb for The New York Times
Not Just Big Agribusiness Ethanol plants like this one in Laddonia, Mo., are popping up all around the Farm Belt.


By TIMOTHY EGAN

BURLEY, Idaho

THE quilt of winter brown that covers the high plateau makes this area look particularly depressing on a February afternoon. But the still-life can be deceptive.

Later this year, a Canadian company, Iogen, will announce whether Idaho will get what could be the first large-scale commercial plant in the United States to produce fuel from straw. Not ethanol made from corn, as refineries in more than a hundred mostly small towns are now doing, but ethanol made from the native prairie grass, corn stalks, field waste and wood chips.

That would follow an announcement just last month that a company whose investors include Bill Gates plans to open a corn-based ethanol plant here in Burley — the latest in a boom of biorefineries that are being planted in some of the most depressed areas of the United States.

What is happening here is a vision that many in rural America see as their salvation: high-performance moonshine from amber fields of grain, and a “grass station” in every town. It may be a chimera. It may drain precious water from the arid plains and produce less energy that it uses.

But it has the undeniable power of an idea in ascendancy.

In part this is because the ethanol economy, as it grows before our eyes, is looking less like a taxpayer-financed Big Plan dominated by a single agribusiness corporation and more like something that might bring fresh jobs and local control back to farm country.

The vision of a decentralized ethanol industry is taking shape, albeit an industry aided by tax breaks and government mandates. There are now 113 American ethanol plants and an additional 77 under construction, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, the industry trade group. Most of them are right in the middle of the Farm Belt, in counties that have been losing people since the Depression.

Archer Daniels Midland, once the dominant force, is less of a player, controlling about 22 percent of the market. But roughly 40 percent of the new biorefineries are locally owned, representing the sweat and capital of farmers, retired schoolteachers and small-town bankers.

With the kind of Wall Street and venture capital money now sniffing around the farm, this could change in the blink of a pig’s eye. But for now, in barren counties with shuttered stores on Main Street, people see a renaissance. They see a biorefinery every 50 miles or so, turning out American fuel for American drivers from American crops. And, once the technology moves from corn to cellulose (as field waste is called), they see the essential stuffing of the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz providing a sustainable economy that also offers some answers for global warming.

“We’re going to revitalize rural America,” said Read Smith, a farmer in eastern Washington and national co-chairman of a nonprofit group working with some of the biggest names in politics and philanthropy to have agriculture produce 25 percent of the nation’s energy needs by the year 2025. “We’re going to pull the plywood off the windows. We’re going to create a $700 billion per year industry that is not here today.”

Already, in places that have not felt a new pulse in decades, the reality is getting ahead of the dream. From Benson, Minn., where a farmer-owned refinery is making ethanol — and a premium vodka — while returning more than $60 million to local corn growers, to Shelby, N.Y., where a planned biorefinery would provide some of the first new jobs in years, rural America is in a swoon for ethanol.

This year, the nation is expected to produce six billion gallons of ethanol, mostly from corn. That is still barely enough to replace 4 percent of the nation’s gasoline consumption, but is well ahead of the pace dictated by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Several thousand people turned out last summer in tiny Laddonia, Mo., for the opening of the state’s fourth ethanol plant. A yard sign, fusing a picture of corn, a gas pump and the flag, carried the slogan that people are marching to: “Our Crop. Our Fuel. Our Country.”

With his call for a mandatory fivefold increase in renewable fuels within 10 years, President Bush in his State of the Union address added his voice to the cause. He was joined by Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, who said he wanted to use the coming farm bill to energize rural America.

“We need to think big and act aggressively,” Mr. Harkin said. “My goal is to pass a bold new farm bill that will drive the transition toward enhanced energy security for the nation based on renewable energy from our farms and rural communities.”

The stampede to the cornfields and beyond is not without plenty of risk. You need look only as far as “synfuels,” the disco-era dream to produce fuel from rock beneath the crust of the Rocky Mountains. That effort left open wounds in the mountains, and little to show for it. Or further back, there was the Dust Bowl, a result of a government call to rip up the native prairie grass and replace it with wheat. When grain prices crashed, the land peeled away and covered the flatlands in haze.

And even in small towns with a biorefinery that has been operating for some time, the new jobs and new money have not been enough to keep people from leaving. The Chippewa Valley Ethanol Company in Benson produces 45 million gallons of ethanol a year, which has led to an economic revival in a town with a little more than 3,000 people.

The plant has been in operation for 10 years. But young people are still walking away from Benson. The town and its surrounding county lost 5 percent of its population between 2000 and 2005, according to census estimates.

“But think of what the population drain would have been if Chippewa Valley had not been there,” said Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association.

Indeed, the plant’s general manager, Bill Lee, said the fact that there is something new and exciting in an often fragile farm town is a very big deal. “In the 10 years that we’ve been here, there’s been a housing boom, a downtown makeover and the community has authorized a new swimming pool,” he said.

Ten years ago, ethanol was a curiosity, dominated by one company. High oil prices, tax breaks and government mandates have finally created a real industry, diverse and growing.

Though some big money is moving into corn and the leap to fuel from straw, the small producers can compete on price because they are so close to the product, at its creation and its end use, they say.

“There’s an old saying among farmers that is, if you can see the barn from your field, you can afford what you put in there,” said Chad Kruger, a consultant working on climate-friendly farming at Washington State University.

There is a limit to how much corn can be converted to fuel without denting the food supply, and that day is not far off, farmers say. Already, corn prices have spiked considerably, causing livestock farmers to complain about costs. Tortilla protesters in Mexico blame the demand for corn by ethanol producers for high prices.

Others say they are concerned that in the rush to convert corn sugar to fuel, lands set aside for wildlife will be freshly plowed, and all the fertilizer and processing waste used along the way will be little help in lowering the temperature of the planet.

Also, at a time when millionaire landowners get six-figure subsidies, there is fear of creating a new class of welfare-farmers hooked on green entitlements.

“So far, the ethanol boom has been positive,” said Chuck Hassebrook, executive director of the Center for Rural Affairs, a nonprofit research group in Nebraska. “But government incentives should be tied to promoting local ownership and producing the crop in a way that is environmentally sustainable.”

The cost of converting something like straw to ethanol is more than twice what it is for corn, which is one big reason no cellulosic plant has yet opened. Still, if market forces and technology come around, the prairie could be dotted with refineries running entirely on grass or field stubble in five to eight years.

And it is that dream that keeps many farmers going: owning their share of the little ethanol plant on the prairie.

“I’ve been hearing about this ethanol for 15 years, and it looks like its time has finally come,” said Cloy Jones, who farms 560 acres here on the Snake River Plateau.

Still, it may not be enough to return rural America to its glory days. Mr. Jones has nine children, all grown. Not one works on the farm.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[AllAdobeOEMSoftDownload]

Shoulda done it ages ago.

Guess you have to wait till an idea's time has come; just don't know why it takes so long.

If this had happened ten years ago would there have been an Iraq invasion?

[Amomiamup]

Although ethanol and hydrogen are going to be very important energy sources in the 21st century, its silly to think that we are going to be able to power our economy on corn. To simply power our vehicles, we would have to use massive amounts of land that would cause environmental damage. Of course ethanol should be used. However, we should be investing in our public transit system rather than trying to keep our cars running at all costs.