The American ethanol industry, the world’s largest, is about to get a little sweeter. Louisiana Green Fuels (LGF), an international investment group, says it is on schedule to open up the first commercial sucrose-to-ethanol plant in America. LGF, which is 80 percent owned by Inverandino, a Colombian business group, tells Earth2Tech it plans to have four ethanol plants and three sugar mills in operation in Louisiana in the next 10 years pumping out 100 million gallons of sugar-based ethanol a year.
In the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, LGF has been buying up shuttered sugar mills and dormant equipment in the devastated Gulf region, and now owns three mills in Louisiana. Prices were probably pretty good for those hurricane-ravaged mills and LGF says that a sucrose-based ethanol industry could help revitalize the area…
This is a good experiment for the American ethanol industry, which has come under heavy fire for using so much corn for fuel. Sugar can give an eightfold return on the fossil energy used to make it while corn only yields 1.3 times the fossil energy used. Count sugar in as a potential major player in U.S. biofuels market.
All overdue, of course. Northern tier states with an excess of sugar beet product should have been in on this already.
Sugar cane mills can sell the bagasse for cellulosic ethanol production as that ramps up, as well.
I agree…it’s about frigging time. As for the sugar beets, I was just talking to some family about that the other day; my father is from Michigan originally, where there are a lot of sugar beets grown. The farmers would surely get more money if they sold the beets to ethanol plants rather than sugar refineries, but there just doesn’t seem to be anyone interested in building the requisite sucrose-to-ethanol plants.
Cripes – now the price of me rum will go up as well as me gas and corn.
“no more sugar in my coffee”
Here in Minnesota, the corn ethanol industry quickly wrapped its lobbying tentacles around the state government, before we all realized that corn ethanol is a complete boondoggle, environmentally and economically.
Growing crops for fuel will always always always be a really bad idea. It may be OK to make cellulosic ethanol from other biomass such as corn husks and stalks. However, specifically growing any crops of any type for fuel will always put food for poor people in competition with fuel for rich people.
Anyone care to guess who’ll win?
In addition, how long can the soil provide the nutrients necessary to grow these high-energy crops before it is completely depleted, leaving us with wasteland?
Traded a few e-mails Dvorak about this very thing a couple months ago. Sugarbeets and Sugar Cane are #2 & 3 in yield for ethanol where corn is something like 22nd
#4–Scott==your conclusion is correct but your reasons are wrong. Take the current crop===SUGAR. Poor people, rich people, anyone but starving people, do not need sugar.
No, the problem with specifically grown crops is they involve too much petroleum in their production. Gas to drive the vehicles from sowing to shipping and in the form of fertilizer. Nothing to say of the water use and runoff contamination etc.
A very minimal use of biomass can be made of “true” waste products but even that is debateable as usually it is burned or plowed under both of which replenish the soil.
SCOTT==stick with what you KNOW==solar based is the only way==be it wind, wave, or conversion.
#5 – Olo Baggins of Bywater,
In addition, how long can the soil provide the nutrients necessary to grow these high-energy crops before it is completely depleted, leaving us with wasteland?
Excellent question. However, that one applies to any crops on any soil. We are depleting our top soil as well as our aquifers. When either runs out, the dust bowl begins.
More subsidized food burning is not going to be the solution to the energy crisis. All it does it makes commodities more expensive for those that already are finding them difficult to afford.
Great, great. Do you suppose the government will stop propping up sugar prices, now? No? Me neither.
High-fructose corn syrup for your coffee? One squirt or two?
OK, just dump the sugar subsidies. Last I checked, growing sugar was harming the environment in the Everglades, but now environmentalists are cheering?
“Sugar can give an eightfold return on the fossil energy used to make it while corn only yields 1.3 times the fossil energy used.”
The only reason corn is used are the immense government subsidies. That’s why corn is used to make cattle feed, high fructure corn syrup and is in almost everything you eat – check the labels.
Sugar cane has been subsidized “forever”, to the benefit of a few (2 or 3, I think) Florida families. In addition, there are import restrictions on imported sugar.
All this keeps the prices high, corrupts the free market for these items, and costs us suckers millions of dollars a year.
Every plan related to reducing our dependence on gasoline has been, and will continue to be, hijacked by big business. It’s easy for them to do because elected officials are cheaply bought.
What makes me sick is that so few people get angry enough to do anything about it. They won’t even vote!
If you can’t decide who to vote for, there is a simple and patriotic solution. If they are in elected office, vote against them.
ONCE AND DONE!
Pardon the typo
fructure = fructose
In America first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women…
Hemp is the better solution.
Long overdue.
Great to see this as Louisiana has the climate and land to support sugar cane. Onward to cleaner and renewable fuel sources and innovation!!
Our nations biggest to solving our energy problems is to let all the moronic excuses, inertia, special interest and negative sally’s get in the way.
#7 – bobbo,
#4–Scott==your conclusion is correct but your reasons are wrong. Take the current crop===SUGAR. Poor people, rich people, anyone but starving people, do not need sugar.
Starving people need food. Food growth requires arable land. Sugar grown for fuel takes up land that could be used for growing food crops. This is happening all over Brazil with the result that they are chopping down the Amazon at an alarming rate.
No, the problem with specifically grown crops is they involve too much petroleum in their production. Gas to drive the vehicles from sowing to shipping and in the form of fertilizer. Nothing to say of the water use and runoff contamination etc.
Yes. Excellent point. These are also severe problems with growing crops for fuel.
A very minimal use of biomass can be made of “true” waste products but even that is debateable as usually it is burned or plowed under both of which replenish the soil.
Hadn’t thought about how the biomass was disposed of. Interesting point that it enriches the soil that we are depleting.
There are some good sources of fuel though, sort of from biomass, depending on your definition. Biodiesel from used cooking oil is great! Methane from landfills and sewage treatment plants is a huge win. The methane is otherwise released into the atmosphere and is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. So, burning the methane gives free energy and actually reduces our GHG output, by the only real measure that matters, the amount of warming caused.
SCOTT==stick with what you KNOW==solar based is the only way==be it wind, wave, or conversion.
Certainly, solar is going to be a huge energy source going forward. Wind, wave, tidal, and geothermal all may also play significant roles.
#19 – me,
The following line should not have been in italics. It is my comment, not bobbo’s. I must’ve missed a close tag.
Excellent point. These are also severe problems with growing crops for fuel.
#20–Scott, if you are going to quibble about your own post’s typing, I will quibble on its substance.
Nobody grows food for the poor people or to grow it to lower prices. I don’t think anyone is starving in Brazil from a lack of food==if anything, some can’t afford what is already available and farmers have no interest in growing more and reducing their per unit profit.
BUT–the notion of not destroying the rain forrest is a good idea we have in the West==the Brazilians are busy destroying their forrest as reapidly as we did ours, as is China, as is India?
But yes==I think bio fuels need to be thought of only for waste products that would otherwise be burned or buried. It will always be a very small percentage more for waste management than energy.
I can’t wait for 2-3-4 more advances in solar conversion. Love to know where we would be had solar been fast tracked 40 years ago??
“To the Future, and beyond!!”
#21 – bobbo,
Nobody grows food for the poor people or to grow it to lower prices. I don’t think anyone is starving in Brazil from a lack of food==if anything, some can’t afford what is already available and farmers have no interest in growing more and reducing their per unit profit.
No. But people have farms. They can grow food crops or fuel crops. When too many choose fuel because the price is higher, food becomes more scarce and expensive. We are already seeing some of this.
BUT–the notion of not destroying the rain forrest is a good idea we have in the West==the Brazilians are busy destroying their forrest as reapidly as we did ours, as is China, as is India?
Almost exactly right. You just missed the point that we are still clear cutting huge swaths of our own rainforests (temperate rainforests) in Alaska. Many acres have been given back to native Americans since they were managing them for thousands of years. Unfortunately, they’re just people like you and me and will also go for the quick short term profit of clear cutting forest. Humans suck.
I can’t wait for 2-3-4 more advances in solar conversion. Love to know where we would be had solar been fast tracked 40 years ago??
Why wait? PVCs are getting a lot better already. And, concentrated solar is even better. Another great source is simply using solar to heat water and store hot water underground. That water can then be fed to our conventional power plants which will require a lot less fuel to heat the water the last few degrees and then burn dramatically less fuel.
We’ve got the technology. We just need the revenue neutral carbon tax (or I’d settle for carbon trading) to jump start the financial investment.
“To the Future, and beyond!!”
To the future! (What little there is left of it for us apes.)
Scott==take the greenhouse effect and the co2 pollution out of the picture and just go with “need for energy.”
A carbon tax does provide an artificial incentive for other energy sources==but so does a “real” increase in the cost of oil. Every time there has been an oil shock, Americans have conserved for 2-6 months==and then bought the biggest cars they could find.
So, the market won’t do whats “right” but it does do what the economics encourage. So, in a real way, as Mustard has obnoxiously posted, higher gas prices even if artificial thru taxes or cartels, is motivating the switch to alternative energy.
So==why not just let the market rule? What would have happened if the last 6 presidents had just been honest and said “Its too complicated and we are stupid, so we are going to let the market control this resource. As we approach oil shortages, oil replacements will “by definition” become cheaper and cost effective. Government cannot centrally plan these things without waste and fraud==so again, we are going to let the market rule. Watch out for you own interests, because we aren’t going to.”
I wonder what a little honesty would have done for those seeking energy alternatives?
>>So, in a real way, as Mustard has obnoxiously
>>posted, higher gas prices even if artificial
>>thru taxes or cartels, is motivating the
>>switch to alternative energy.
Don’t be kissing Scottie’s ass too much now, Bobbolina.
HE was the one who first posted that idea. My contribution to the discussion was merely to agree with him.
Hey, I may be obnoxious, but at least I khow the general rules of punctuation.
#23 – bobbo,
Scott==take the greenhouse effect and the co2 pollution out of the picture and just go with “need for energy.”
A carbon tax does provide an artificial incentive for other energy sources==but so does a “real” increase in the cost of oil.
What’s artificial about charging a dumping fee? We do so for landfills. Why not for “airfills” and even “oceanfills”?
So==why not just let the market rule?
Because we don’t have a free market. Never did. We have a heavily subsidized market. And, some of the subsidies are rather hard to detect, like the subsidy of allowing people to dump all kinds of crap into the atmosphere. We charge for toxic waste dumping, nuclear waste dumping (if we ever open a permanent facility anyway), why not air dumping?
What would have happened if the last 6 presidents had just been honest and said “Its too complicated and we are stupid, so we are going to let the market control this resource.
Nothing good. We need deep accounting if the market is going to be the source of intelligent decision making. We need cradle to grave accounting for everything. Better yet, we need cradle to cradle since anything that is not properly recycled is, by definition, not sustainable.
As we approach oil shortages, oil replacements will “by definition” become cheaper and cost effective. Government cannot centrally plan these things without waste and fraud==so again, we are going to let the market rule. Watch out for you own interests, because we aren’t going to.”
This may be an improvement. However, it will not save us from true catastrophes because people will still burn whole mountains of coal leaving us with subsidized (i.e. not properly accounted for costs of the mountains themselves and the literal mountains of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere.
I wonder what a little honesty would have done for those seeking energy alternatives?
That honesty would have to include deep accounting to be really honest. How are you planning to create a system of deep accounting in our dysfunctional society?
#24 – Mister Mustard,
Yeah. Sounds like me I’ll take the credit/blame for that as well as the moniker obnoxious. I’ve been called much worse.
But, do you khow how to spell? Or, are you merely ignoring your Firefox 3 spell checker? 🙂
And, for that matter, your statement if correctly punctuated and spelled, might be:
Hey, I may be obnoxious. But, at least I know the general rules of punctuation.
I think we all get a bit lax sometimes. bobbo just invents his own rules for punctuation and then enforces strict dictionary definitions on words. bobbo, you might really want to think about that dichotomy a bit and convert to more standard use of punctuation. It seems to put a lot of people off on this blog. It’s just a suggestion; it’s your call, of course. I’ve actually gotten abused to your punctuation style by now.
There is something MUCH better. Vertical Algae biofuel growing. Some algae species are 50% fat,25 times more productive than palm oil…
http://www.naturalnews.com/023378.html
#27–raf==thats the most interesting bit of info I have seen in years. I wonder why its not being put in place right now? What are the negatives if any? THANKS.
#26==Scott==I think Mustard’s punctuation is more standard than your own? Your first sentence strikes me more as a dependent phrase. But, that could be just me===no, it is certainly ME!!
Punctuation? Rules: “and the priests in black gowns, were making their rounds, and binding with briars, my joys and desires.”
#28 – bobbo,
I think Mustard’s punctuation is more standard than your own?
You may be right. I may be crazy. But, it just may be a period you were looking for at the end of that rather than a question mark.
Regarding your poetry, I think verse is exempt from many of the rules that apply to prose. Are you claiming that most of your posts to be in verse? I would have thought the inverse.
#29–Scott==its good we can argue the degree of Mustard’s incompetence without him even having to contribute much. We may be on the verge of another religion?
Now, its interesting how you parallel the same construction with your response and yours seems right, while Mustards does too?
Do you read Steven Pinker at all? Psycho-Linguistic Prof at Harvard. Good stuff.
So, I think my sentence was a question, and as such should end with a question mark. I was in fact not being conclusionary and was asking for confirmation. A matter of emphasis and flexibility. In fact, I see I could legitimately end every sentence in this paragraph with a question mark. The punctuation DOES change the meaning, so by wanting to change my punctuation, you want to change what I say.
That piece of poetry is one of my favorites. I read the poem once, and it has stuck with me forever. I used to think it was Archibald MacLiesh, but I think his poem was on the opposite page. Its Yeats, or Keats, or Yates–cant keep those (romance?) poets separate.
Dont miss the link in #27–its fantastic.
#27 rafavica,
You may have missed the coolest thing about your own post. This does not require arable farm land. This is essentially solar energy to power cars without putting farmland for food in competition with fuel. I think I’ve also heard of similar technologies that actually grow the algae faster by pumping in the CO2 from power plant smokestacks thus reducing their carbon output.