Why only 30% in ten years?

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Permalink Reply by John on September 13, 2008 at 1:17pm

I agree with you, sugar cane is a crop that will grow at least in the southern U.S. states. I also understand that the Brazilians have multi fuel vehicles that burn 100% alcohol from sugar cane. There was a congressional energy meeting on television yesterday, and one of the discussions related to burning alcohol and engine warranties, the discussion revolved around E85, the CEO from G.M. stated that engine wear will increase with alcohol and this would effect warranties. The United States needs to look at other crops beside corn to process alcohol, with current technology corn is not a viable source, although there is ongoing research that incorporates bacteria to break down the cellulose that will increase the net gain of alcohol from corn or any other vegetation. I don't know what the fixation is with corn, there are more viable crops that produce higher yields. I still like diesel from algae, it has the highest yield per acre, as far as potential power. I agree with Pikens anything American and anything that will reduce our dependency on foreign oil. but alcohol is clean, it is renewable, and can be used in the transportation sector. so it should be apart of the solution.

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Permalink Reply by Harvey L. Wren Jr. on September 13, 2008 at 1:45pm

It’s not the people of America that are holding up our withdraw from oil, it’s the government. There are just too many government officials in the foreign oil pocket. They fight us at every turn, and until we can force them to change their greedy ways and think of the citizens like they should we will never be able to cut our so called addiction to oil. I’ve always hated that term, (addiction to oil).
Our government keeps us dependent on oil, they are the ones addicted to it. And yes your right, why do they always say it will take five and ten years before we can ever get anything done. I say let’s just do it!!
Start fitting the gas stations with alternative fuel pumps, finish building the natural gas pipe line from Alaska, start growing sugar Cain in the south. Why is it we can throw billions of dollars a month at the war but have to fight for a few million here at home???

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Permalink Reply by modette on September 13, 2008 at 1:51pm

The fixation with corn is there because of the backing of the corn industry to push their product which will drive corn prices higher and make them more money. I really can not blame them. But it just does not make sense to use a food source for energy.

Plus how many vehicles do we as America have vs. that of Brazil?
"250,851,833 registered passenger vehicles in the United States according to a 2006 DOT study"

I highly doubt Brazil has that many or anything close to that many. Plus how many miles does the typical American drive vs. that of a Brazilian...I bet a heck of a lot more. Plus I bet most Americans drive gas guzzlers where as most Brazilians drive cars which in general get better mpg ratings.

I did live in Austria for 4 years int he early 90's. I remember one rich kid, and his family. They had a 10 year old BMW with about 25K Kilometers on it. It was hardly used. They used public transit, they did not drive around for the sake of driving around. My families 7 year old Ford Explorer (which was rear to see an SUV in Europe back then) was sold later in Africa...my father drove daily to work in Austria, and we even drove around Europe once which in not all that big and he sold it with 35K miles on it. People just do not drive in other countries like we do...those such a country can go to E85 and the like and it would not affect their food supply.

Sugar cane takes a lot of water, look at FL they have water restrictions now do to all the farmers. Then add on all the people that should not be living in such a place (naturally a swamp) and I do not see how you could grow cane there. GA also has water problems, so does TN. Lets face it there are too many people, and our land does not get wet enough to support sugar cane.

This is why I like Pickens plan and joined this site, I believe Wind and Natural Gas is the way to go. Natural gas vehicles make sense, and there is no reason why we could not start switching gas stations over to NG stations along main Interstates which then would slowly work there way off to the smaller towns. I would be willing to buy a Natural Gas vehicle, if there was a station near me.

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Permalink Reply by Antonio on September 13, 2008 at 2:07pm

You have to understand that the decision to develop ethanol as fuel in Brazil was a government decision. Petrobras, organ that makes oil decisions, is a government controlled. Back then the government were ran by generals so it was not a democratic decision. I guess that is one of the benefit of having a strong-arm government.

And there is nothing wrong with 100% fuel car. It ran fine. We had one from VW.

The only down side of ethanol from sugarcane is water usage. It requires a lot of water. For every liter of ethanol produced, there is 13 liter of liquid waste. Later they found out the liquid waste can be used a agriculture fertilizer. Not bad.

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