Biofuels vs. Bioelectricity

According to Time magazine, the modest environmental impact analysis for corn ethanol, the one that Rep. Collin Peterson (MN-07) was complaining about, was too modest:

... Princeton scholar Tim Searchinger, who helped launch a global rethinking of biofuels in 2007 by calling attention to their effects on land use, warns that the EPA assumptions are extremely optimistic — and that if they're wrong the consequences could be extremely dire. "It takes a lot of land to make a small amount of energy," Searchinger says. "Academic studies have concluded that if the world gets even 10% of its energy from these new kinds of crops, most tropical forests will probably disappear." (Read "The Clean Energy Scam.")

Farm fuels can sound like the ultimate win-win situation, reducing our dependence on carbon-intense fossil fuels while boosting demand for American farm products. And they're "renewable," which has become a kind of synonym for green. But years ago, researchers began raising concerns about the direct emissions created by the heavy machinery and petroleum-based fertilizers it takes to grow corn and other biofuel feedstocks, the energy-intensive plants that convert the crops into fuel and the trucks that transport the fuel to market. A slew of studies have concluded that when you include all these life-cycle emissions, corn ethanol only produces about 20% fewer emissions than gasoline, although cellulosic ethanol produced from feedstocks like switchgrass can reduce emissions around 90%. ...

Though it turns out that you don't even have to convert cellulosic feedstock into liquid fuel if you use electric cars, you can just burn the stuff directly:

... The study team of Eliott Campbell, David Lobell and Chris Field found that an acre of switchgrass could produce enough battery power to drive a small electric SUV for 14,000 miles. The same acre of crop would only produce enough ethanol to power a similar vehicle with an internal combustion engine for 9000 miles. ...

Anyway, it seems like a better plan than burning food, and if there's biochar left over after the electricity generation process, that might mean the feedstock could be used to help trap carbon in the ground if it were used as a soil amendment. It couldn't be burned with anything toxic if it were to be used that way, but something to think about ...