Coal vs. Corn Ethanol in CA; Corn Flunks

Corn-Based Ethanol Flunks Key Test -- Charles 324 (5927): 587 -- Science

 

As with many topics we've addressed in our documentation of the very practical reality of coal-to-liquid conversion technologies and potentials, we've flogged the misperception of corn-based ethanol as being some sort of "solution" to our liquid fuel shortages nearly to death.

 

Among the many fallacies about the popular concepts of ethanol derived from agricultural sources is the one that it is somehow "cleaner" than coal or petroleum, or liquid fuels derived from coal.

 

We won't recap our several refutations of that flawed concept, but, as in the enclosed, California recently put the official lie to it.

 

Brief comment follows: 

"Corn-Based Ethanol Flunks Key Test

Dan Charles

Last week, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) adopted a low-carbon fuel standard that requires greater use of fuels that cause lower greenhouse gas emissions, compared with gasoline. Corn-based ethanol doesn't meet that test and won't benefit from the new standard, CARB says, because diverting corn into ethanol production increases deforestation and the clearing of grasslands. The biofuels industry has attacked the board's methodology, as well as similar conclusions in a regulation drafted last year by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that is under review by the Obama Administration."

Note that President Obama's Administration drew similar "conclusions".  Aside from being a misuse of precious food-growing cropland, the production of liquid fuels from agricultural produce is no "cleaner" than producing all the liquid fuels we need from our abundant coal, and establishing, with our coal-to-liquid conversion industry, a conjoined system of Carbon Dioxide recycling, as we've documented, based on synthetic liquid fuel production via Sabatier or Carnol technologies; or, through purpose-grown botanical resources, such as algae or trees, which can yield large amounts of carbon-recycling, but inedible, cellulose and lignin, that can be combined with coal in a suitably-designed and specified facility to make all the liquid fuels we need, from our own abundant coal, while at the same time recycling carbon dioxide.  

Now, if California and President Obama, who is, as we've thoroughly documented, a supporter of coal-to-liquid conversion technologies, recognize that diverting agricultural resources into the production of liquid fuel is a dreadfully short-sighted concept; a concept that offers no real advantages in terms of "cleanliness", or much of anything else, when will the popular press stop focusing on those spurious proposals? When will they start publicly promoting the very real energy salvation offered to us, by established, patented and Nobel Prize-winning, technologies, that would allow us to convert our abundant coal, and directly recycle carbon dioxide, into, again, the all the domestically-sourced liquid fuels we need?