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Cuban ethanol boom doubtful after Castro exit
Marc Frank, Reuters
Cuba will only jump on the ethanol bandwagon if it can produce the biofuel from sugar cane as a by-product that does not affect its sugar output, local experts said on Friday.
Fidel Castro’s retirement this week fueled speculation that ethanol could become a billion-dollar export industry for the cash-strapped communist country under his brother Raul Castro.
… But Fidel Castro is expected to retain huge influence in Cuba and he has repeatedly branded the use of food crops to produce fuel as a crime against humanity because rising prices will increase hunger.
A local economist with ties to the sugar industry said Cuba is working to develop technology to produce fuel from milled sugar cane bagasse. If successful, Cuba could become more interested in making ethanol, he said.
(22 February 2008)
Fuel vs Food: NOT! (audio)
KMO, C-Realm
KMO and guest David Blume spell out the difference between ethanol as a huge corporate/government boondoggle and ethanol as a strategy for re-localization and bio-remediation. After that KMO visits with organic farmer Patrice Gros and two of his energized and idealistic interns.
(20 February 2008)
Corn can’t save us: Debunking the biofuel myth
David Pimentel, Kennebec Journal
Dwindling foreign oil, rising prices at the gas pump, and hype from politically well-connected U.S. agribusiness have combined to create a frenzied rush to convert food grains into ethanol fuel. The move is badly conceived and ill advised. Corporate spin and pork barrel legislation aside, here, by the numbers, are the scientific reasons why corn won’t provide our energy needs:
First, using corn or any other biomass for ethanol requires huge regions of fertile land, plus massive amounts of water and sunlight to maximize crop production. All green plants in the U.S. — including all crops, forests, and grasslands, combined — collect about 32 quads (32 x 1015 BTU) of sunlight energy per year. Meanwhile, the American population currently burns more than 3 times that amount of energy annually as fossil fuels! There isn’t even close to enough biomass in America to supply our biofuel needs.
… One last set of statistics: The global population stands at 6.6 billion: a quarter–million mouths to feed are added daily. Energy experts report that peak oil production has already been reached. As cheap oil supplies decline, fuel prices will rise, causing food prices to climb too (because maximum agricultural production requires fossil fuel inputs).
As global population soars to 8 or 9 billion toward mid-century, and as we burn more grain as fuel, shortages and production costs could cause grain prices to skyrocket, taking food from the mouths of the world’s poorest people.
The science is clear: The use of corn and other biofuels to solve our energy problem is an ethically, economically, and environmentally unworkable sham.
David Pimentel is a professor of entomology at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University. This column is distributed by Blue Ridge Press.
(25 February 2008)
