Oklahoma Switches to Switchgrass

Why not Hemp?
Industrial hemp grows four times faster than wood and produces four times more biomass than wood on the same space. Hemp does not need any herbicides or pesticides. Hemp grows almost everywhere. It is time to overcome ideological legislation. Europe legally grows and uses industrial hemp and serves well as a role model.

Corban, I couldn’t agree more: we should use whatever is best! I’d like to add, why not agave? One hectare of agave can produce well over one thousand gallons of distilled ethanol and 10 tonnes of biomass for cellulosic ethanol, on an annual basis. The price for one gallon of distilled ethanol? Below one dollar. Regards,
Arturo
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Switchgrass, hemp, agave… what will decide the winner is the investment opportunities available. As products contend with challenges around feedstock supply and certainty and markets fluctuate, finding good investments is key. If you weren’t already aware, with executives for Morgan Stanley and UBS Investment Bank will be talking about biofuels and biodiesel at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum-Wall Street (http://www.reffwallstreet.com), along with 40 other executives about renewable energy financing. It will be held at Waldorf=Astoria in NYC, June 18-19, 2008. I encourage you to look into it—last year, over 40% of attendees were CEOs, CFOs or Managing Directors.

We really need to think outside the box on all this, whether it is switchgras to agave. Use land such as highway medians to grow the switchgrass.  We can also use the Methane from land fills and waste treatment plants to produce the ethanol from the biomass products instead of just burning it into the air. 

All this is based on the assumption that we still want to use internal combustion engines.  Why would we want to do that when it takes so much less energy to move a vehicle from a to b with all electric propulsion?  Combined with small-scale, distributed renewables like solar and wind, electric vehicles avoid the need to harvest/generate/deliver huge amounts of energy.

On top of that, the citizens of this country have forgotten how to grow plants sustainably.  This problem is not solved by changing the type of plant.  A massive hemp monoculture is not sustainable, nor is any other large monoculture.  This is the type of growing that is being proposed for biofuels because of the ignorance of the companies involved and the general public. 

Until we start paying attention to EROI (energy return on investment) and full-cost analysis of various energy sources/storage systems/utilization systems, we will be flying blind. 

I agree with the importance of looking closely at the EROI and triple-bottom-line cost, and with the dangers and ineffectiveness of a monoculture. But I also think it’s unrealistic to think we will be able to switch all of our cars over to electric all at once. I think a mix of short-term and long-term solutions is needed; namely, biofuels for the cars already on the road, and electric vehicles for new cars. These discussions about the mix of energy crops we need for biofuels today are helpful, I think, even if they aren’t the ultimate solution.

I also think it is unrealistic that we would be able to switch all vehicles over to electric.  However, if each dollar spent on biofuels was instead spent on electric vehicles (R&D on ultralight vehicles, rebates and tax breaks on EV conversions and new EVs) we might actually start saving some energy.  It would also be a fairly rapid transition.  Biofuels are not a transition until they return a net positive energy return.  Otherwise, we might as well take that gasoline, diesel and natural gas used to grow, harvest, refine and distribute biofuels and burn it directly in our vehicles.

Correction, I meant to say:

“I also think it is unrealistic that we would be able to switch all vehicles over to electric all at once.”