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From Hans Noeldner:
The editorial “Keep door open for biofuel plants” includes the essential point that we-the-people must not allow NIMBY attitudes to prevent investments in renewable energy infrastructure.
Unfortunately the editors fail to mention that corn ethanol is – and will almost certainly remain - a dead end. The net energy available from corn ethanol – i.e. the energy in the ethanol output minus the energy used to plant, fertilize, pesticize, harvest, transport, grind, ferment, distill, and ship that ethanol – is inherently low, at best no more than 40%. Using high quality non-renewable fuels like natural gas to make corn fertilizer and power ethanol plants is like transmuting gold into lead. And using coal to power ethanol plants is insane: coal energy generates far more greenhouse gasses than any other fossil fuel.
Corn ethanol survives on government mandates and massive subsidies. Economics and thermodynamics ensure there will be a day of reckoning. Farmers and investors will suffer, and all will see the futility of plowing fencerow to fencerow – thereby eroding our nations precious soils - to feed our gluttonously oversized, supersized fleet of motor vehicles. Sustainably-produced biomass like wood and grasses will play a crucial role in meeting our energy NEEDS, but driving two-ton SUVs and three-ton pickup trucks to work and the health club will not number among them.
Returning to NIMBY, I wonder whether the Wisconsin State Journal editors would welcome a new ethanol plant sited near, say, the Nakoma Golf Course? At 4017 Mandan Crescent, for example?
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