Bush may call for billions of more gallons of ethanol from corn in his state of the union address. This being the same guy who said we were addicted to oil and then did nothing to help us kick the habit, yes I remain skeptical. In an effort to stay on top of the flood of interesting biofuel (ethanol and biodiesel) related news stories I have posted this handy link roundup for you.
Bush to call for Billions of gallons of ethanol from corn.
From here.
In his State of the Union address, President Bush is expected to call for a huge increase in the amount of ethanol that refiners mix with gasoline, probably double the current goal of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012.
While the details of the proposal are not known, 15 billion gallons of ethanol would work out to more than 10 percent of the country’s current gasoline consumption, and is far beyond the current capacity of about 5.4 billion gallons.
Personally I am still unconvinced about the energy balance of Ethanol using the current technology to make it. I have read reports that show that you do get more energy from ethanol than it takes to create it, but I worry that food that should be going to people will instead be powering our cars. I am much more in favor of developing ethanol from wood waste or switch grass or hemp or some other non-edible plant. In this way we could use non-premium land that is not suited for growing crops to create ethanol.