Chemistry for a sustainable world

Strong demand for corn from U.S. biofuel producers has contributed to supply tightness in the corn market. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has forecast about a third of this year’s crop will be consumed by the biofuel sector.

“Biofuels are fast becoming a new flash point in global diplomacy, putting pressure on Western politicians to reconsider their policies.”
Note that free registration at the NYT may be necessary to see this article at the “read more” link. Nevertheless, this New York Times article needs to be read! This is true even though the [...]

“A law taking effect Tuesday makes Missouri just the third state - behind Minnesota and Hawaii - to implement a wide-ranging ethanol mandate.” This article by AP reporter David Lieb reports on new Missouri legislation that mandates the use of ethanol-gasoline mixtures. E10, or 10% ethanol, has already become common on Missouri. The article cites [...]

Treehugger.com is an excellent site for environmental issues. In this case, the Treehugger article gives a good introduction to ethanol as fuel, and discusses the differences between corn ethanol (US) and ethanol derived from sugar cane (as in Brazil). Note that the best form of ethanol production IMHO, from cellulose and other biomass, [...]

Why President Bush’s corn ethanol subsidy plan, supported by numerous governors and state legislatures as well as Congress, is terrible for the environment and US taxpayers, doing nothing but sending tax money down the drain, or more literally up in smoke. Independent opinions from another site, that I am not connected to, but which [...]

These comments are my analysis and discussion of an article on various sides of the “corn ethanol story” published by Joel Achenbach in the Washington Post, with farmers telling us they can’t survive without the subsidies. I guess they’ll inherit the earth when the rest of us have no water to drink. [...]

As reported by Timothy Gardner of Reuters, ethanol prices are so low that producers are not making any profit.

U.S. weekly ethanol margins still in the dumps
by Timothy Gardner
NEW YORK, Nov 2 (Reuters) - U.S. ethanol margins ticked a few cents higher this week as producers fetched slightly higher prices for the renewable fuel, but the [...]

I initially used “digg” to call attention to the title story on Yahoo Green, but after further reading, I ending up writing a critical note about it and the related study on this blog (below).
Some, but not all, of the problems with corn-to-ethanol operations are discussed on Yahoo Green and in the original Environmental Defense [...]

The Environmental Defense organization released a report, discussed on its web pages and in a related web article written by one of the report’s co-authors, about the potential negative effects of ethanol production on the environment.
The report, a downloadable PDF, Potential Impacts of Biofuels Expansion on Natural Resources [PDF], discusses the damage that ethanol [...]

In case you missed it, a gentleman named Burl Haigwood kindly left a long and detailed comment, and rebuttal, to my recent post on the health effects of ethanol as a fuel.
Because I do want to debate the issues, I thought it best to reprint his response and my related comments here, since otherwise they [...]