KOCO5 in Oklahoma City is reporting:

Gov. Brad Henry is telling a national audience that Oklahoma's future is in biofuels...the grass takes less work to grow than corn does. Corn has to be farmed every year.

Another benefit of swithgrass over corn is that it is not consumed by humans, and may not have a similar detrimental impact on third-world nations. Former U.S. Representative (R-OK) Ernest Istook wrote in WorldNetDaily this weekend:

Drought. War. Poverty.

These are leading causes of hunger, according to the United Nations. Soon we may add another.

Ethanol.

Across the globe, people are discovering it’s a new contributor to world hunger. Led by the United States, governments are paying companies billions to make ethanol from corn and other crops. The result: these crops are diverted from the food supply, creating artificial shortages and higher prices.

Even record harvests haven’t suppressed food prices. Instead, prices are soaring to all-time highs...(more)

Not all scientists are convinced that the use of biofuels is good for the environment. In Minneapolis, the StarTribune is reporting:

A pair of agriculture groups has temporarily suspended about $1.5 million in grants to the University of Minnesota to protest a controversial study by U scientists earlier this month about biofuels and global warming.

[...]

The study, by University of Minnesota ecologist David Tilman and others, said that dedicating huge amounts of land to grow corn, soybeans, sugarcane and other food crops for fuel could drastically change the landscape and worsen global warming. Farmers in the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia and other countries will need to clear forests, grasslands and peat lands on a massive scale to grow more of those crops, according to the research, unleashing far more carbon dioxide from natural vegetation than is saved by the lower emissions of the biofuels.

Ethanol industry officials criticized the study as a simplistic analysis that doesn't include the economic benefits for those who grow biofuel crops or the environmental cost of continuing to rely on petroleum.

A couple of years ago, scientists at the University of Berekely also were reported by Science Daily to have found that in terms of energy output compared with energy input for ethanol production:

• corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
• switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and
• wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced...(more)

But Governor Henry points out that switchgrass is native to Oklahoma, and:

Congress is considering a bill that would provide incentives for growing switchgrass.

Labels: biofuels, Brad Henry, Ethanol Policy

Posted at 2/26/2008 07:41:00 AM