k, corn still makes great fuels... and other things... i assure you finding other ways to make fertilizer is a viable soloution... oh, and there are 3 bio diesel pumps my dad uses in the eugene oregon area to the guy i quoted earlier
There are at least 15 bio-diesel pumps within 20 miles of my little corner of Idaho. I've run nothing but B5 since they took sulfur to 15 ppm. 100 Proof
The biggest threat from corn-based fuels now is Brazil is cutting down more Amazonian rainforest for planting corn and that's in addition to slash-and-burn clearing for livestock and other plantings. The Amazon cannot sustain this kind of use and abuse for very long. It is a very important CO2 absorbtion area and provides 25% of all the oxygen released on Earth.
I think Texas recently changed some tax rates for Bio-diesel. I was up in Austin a few months back at an outfit called Austin Biofuels I think. The guy said they were shutting down since they were not able to be competetive anymore. Not sure what is going to happen but as with anything, big gov't will tax anything the max they can to get money. As for ethanol, I think it's a total waste. takes more total energy to grow, harvest & produce than it returns.
They use sugar cane not corn. COSTA RICA, Brazil - The other side of ethanol, vilified as a cause of soaring food prices and hunger, can be seen in Brazil, where farmers are pushing down energy costs - both at the pump and at the electricity meter. Twenty thousand acres of sugar cane are sprouting through the red soil around this small town, destined for fuel tanks across the world. It's the start of a $2.7 billion ethanol project put together by Brazil Renewable Energy Co., or Brenco, a private venture financed by U.S. and Brazilian investors. They plan to export a billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2015 - enough fuel to offset demand for 65,000 barrels a day of oil. About 350 miles to the east, in fields surrounding the town of Flores de Goias, a firm from Irving, Texas, TruEnergy Renewable Fuels, is putting together a $523 million ethanol project that could offset 8,700 barrels a day of oil demand. With world oil consumption running at 86 million barrels a day, the ethanol produced by these two private companies will amount to a modest alternative contribution. Global ethanol production, however, is already greater than the yearly increase in world oil demand. Without ethanol, high oil prices would be higher still. "Demand for oil is increasing every year, but reserves are more and more difficult to find," said Brenco founder Henri Philippe Reichstul, a former head of Brazil's Petrobras oil company. "We have an alternative that is also the fastest way of reducing your emissions from cars without changing anything," he said. "To me, it looks like a no-brainer." http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.brazil15jun15,0,3664365.story
