Everybody Loves Biofuels
Finally, something that both ends of the political spectrum can agree on: biofuels.
This Oregonian article describes an alliance between a rural rightwinger and an urban lefty, both of whom have fallen for fuels made from grain and oilseeds. The rural legislator likes them because they boost farmers' income; the urban legislator likes them because they reduce fossil fuel consumption.
I'll leave my thoughts about food-based fuels for a later post. But in the meantime, it seems like the article omits an important biofuel--ethanol that's made from crop and wood wastes, rather than grain. It's called cellulose ethanol, and there's a much more energy potential from that than there is from food crops. A Canadian company, Iogen, is currently planning to build a cellulose ethanol plant in Idaho that will use crop waste as a feedstock. (For more on this topic, see the energy section of this year's Cascadia Scorecard.)
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