The rising price of corn is forcing ethanol plants to close, and plans to build new plants are being postponed. This could cause a shortfall of 5 billion gallons a year which would in turn force the price of gasoline up as well as pushing corn prices down.

We need ethanol and biodiesel. But ethanol is too often produced from corn, and that means using cropland once used to grow food. It can and should be made from other sources like agricultural processing scrap, plants that don’t need farmland like switchgrass, and perhaps most promising of all, from algae.

No Comments »

Algenol plans to build a saltwater algae plant in the desert in Mexico. Unlike other methods that require the algae be squeezed to product the oil, they’ve GMO’ed algae to create ethanol directly, and claim the output is dramatically greater than using corn or sugar cane. And it doesn’t require using farmland better used for growing food.

GreenTechBlog has more.

No Comments »

Switchgrass yields five times more energy than it takes to grow it and burning it in vehicles 94% less carbon dioxide than gasoline. What’s more, it grows in marginal areas and needs far less fertilizer than corn.

Right now, the price is about double than of corn ethanol but technological advances funded by venture capitalists are expected to drop the price. Let’s hope so. Then corn can be used solely for food again.

There are so many promising new ideas for creating clean energy that keeping up with them all is difficult. This is a good thing! I predict an explosion of such ideas in the coming few years, some of which will surely go mainstream, and become disruptive technologies as they create new industries.

No Comments »