Senators look to boost biofuel use five-fold - Reuters

[Eugene]

Senators look to boost biofuel use five-fold

By Chris Baltimore
Reuters
Tuesday, March 27, 2007; 6:28 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top lawmakers on the U.S. Senate Energy
Committee on Tuesday unveiled legislation to boost U.S. biofuels use more
than five-fold by 2022, about five years later than the target set by the
Bush administration.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, the panel's chairman, and Sen. Pete Domenici, its top
Republican, want to require 36 billion gallons (136 billion liters) of renewable
fuels by 2022 -- about 21 percent of projected U.S. gasoline demand.

-snip-

Bush's plan counts on advances in making ethanol from cellulosic sources
like wood chips and switchgrass rather than from corn -- the dominant U.S.
ethanol feedstock now.

The Senate proposal requires 3 billion gallons (11 billion liters) of cellulosic
sources to be used in 2016, rising to 21 billion gallons (79 billion liters)
in 2022.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032701683.html

[madhoosier]

1. Do we also get to choose who starves?

The production of food and fiber is now using virtually all land that's suitable for doing just that. What little land that's not in production is vital for wildlife and the environment. By the corn harvest of 2008 the US will have the capacity to distill nearly every bushel of corn we now export (75% of the world's total corn exports).

World food stocks are near all time lows. The era of having a years worth of surplus food is long past, today there's only a few weeks worth of extra food on hand.

The original push for ethanol was to convert surplus corn into fuel, on the scale we will be doing it when all the ethanol plants now under construction go on line we will be burning much of the food that now feeds the world's poorest people in our gas tanks.

[hatrack]

2. Oh, no - we'll invoke "market forces", absolving ourselves from having to deal with complexity

Those with money will continue to eat, though they will pay more.

Those without money will starve.

And those paying attention will (for the most part) tut-tut at the Zambians and the Cambodians and the Bolivians et. al. for not marketizing their economies sufficiently.

Thanks, Invisible Hand!

[GliderGuider]

3. Come on, don't be such a Gloomy Gus!

Remember all those people that are hiding your oil under their sand? There are also lots of people who appear to be growing your crops on their land... Get with the program!