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In Farm Belt, Ethanol Plants Hit Resistance
Monica Davey, New York Times
…For years, the arrival of an ethanol distillery in agricultural America was greeted mainly with delight, a ticket to the future in places plagued by economic uncertainty. But in the nation’s middle, the engine of ethanol country, the glow is dimming.
In Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and even Iowa, the nation’s largest corn and ethanol producer, this next-generation fuel finds itself facing the oldest of hurdles: opposition from residents who love the idea of an ethanol distillery so long as it is someplace else.
“What they are trying to sell we aren’t buying,” said Deb Moore, who owns a sandwich shop and soda fountain here.
The disputes have left some proposed plants waiting, mired in lawsuits; a few have given up.
(13 November 2007)
Independent Québec
Backing away from corn ethanol
Ron Steenblik, Gristmill
The big news north of the (U.S.) border is that Québec’s government has decided that there is no future in corn ethanol.
As explained in an article posted on Canada’s Cyberpresse website, back in May 2005 Québec’s then Minister for Agriculture, Yvon Vallières, gave a green light, “for obvious economic and ecological reasons,” to the construction of the first plant to manufacture ethanol from corn kernels, in the town of Varennes.
However, during an emission of the Enquête television program (click to view) on Radio-Canada last Thursday evening, Québec’s Minister for the Natural Resources, Claude Béchard, promised that the 120-million-litre-per year Varennes plant would be the first and the last of its kind. “It is necessary to turn to other [feedstock] sources,” he said. No other ethanol factory based on corn will be built in Québec.
On Sunday, a leader in one of Montreal’s newspapers, The Gazette expressed satisfaction with the decision, declaring, “Backing away from ethanol makes sense.”
This impressive reversal of policy, which seem to have pitted the ministries for Agriculture and the Environment against each other, occurs at the time when more and more voices around the world — and in Québec — are speaking out against the diversion of corn for transport fuel.
Québec itself has precious little good arable land (mainly along the St. Lawrence River), and not everybody in la belle province is happy with devoting an increasing proportion of it to grow corn for biofuels. Québec ‘s Minister of Sustainable Development, Environment, and Parks, Line Beauchamp, has also expressed concerns over “the environmental impacts related to the intensive cultivation of corn.”
(13 November 2007)
The Human Cost of Bio-Fuels
Richard , Oil, be Seeing You
What is so terrible about bio-fuels? Why should I be opposed to them? Bio-fuel advocates, after all, tell us they are a green solution to the global warming crisis brought on by our profligate use of fossil fuels by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Honest research using full energy accounting has proven that to be blatantly untrue.
…Agro/bio-fuels are not going to prevent peak oil. It is already behind us. The shaky maintenance of the plateau on which we are sitting, and any growth in liquid fuels over the past 2-3 years to offset declines from existing fields, has come from alternative sources like tar sands, CTL, GTL, deep water, increasingly from heavy oil and already from bio-fuels. This reality, of course, is kept from the public view by constant redefinition by the DOE of terms like “proven reserves” which is constantly upgraded to include an ever wider basket of liquid fuels.
With both post-peak decline and global warming coming at us we need a strong, globe-wide reassesment of the agro/bio-fuel issue. Global warming will dramatically increase the potential for major crop losses and seriously degraded yields in the years ahead, particularly in the poorest countries straddling the equatorial belt. And as the pace of energy decline (particularly crude oil decline) picks up over this next decade the impact on the global distribution system will be destructive, particularly the high cost, low-profit global food distribution system.
(13 November 2007)
Links, quotes and discussion opposed to biofuels.
Biofuel Boom: Greenwashing and Crimes Against Humanity II (audio)
Deconstructing Dinner via Global Public Media
… On Part II, we examine the accusation that biofuels are a crime against humanity and how the biofuel boom will affect food prices around the world. We deconstruct the suggestion that biofuels will help Canadian farmers and rural communities, and we explore the controversy on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley where on February 1, 2007, a biofuel research deal worth half a billion dollars was announced between BP (British Petroleum) and the University.
Guests…
(13 November 2007)
