According to BIO, processing just 30 percent of U.S. corn stover into biofuels would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 90 to 150 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. Another study by the University of Tennessee showed that producing 25 percent of America's energy from agricultural resources would generate in excess of $700 billion annually in economic activity, create 5.1 million jobs, and add $180 billion to net farm income by 2025.
For those of you who scoff at this, when I visited Brazil during 2006, I personally witnessed how this country had harnessed biotechnology with their sugar cane crop to become self sufficient in gas. Even President Bush jumped on the biofuels bandwagon in his 2007 State of the Union address when he established America's "Twenty in Ten" goal, or stopping the growth of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions within the next 10 years by requiring the production of 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels by 2017. This is five times the amount called for in the current law for 2012.
This is true but as I understand it Bush's plan doesn't differentiate ethanol production from cellulosic ethanol production which is the only way you actually get a significant decrease in carbon emissions through the entire production chain. Bloomberg.com:
Reviving ethanol requires a breakthrough in technology that would make current processes more efficient or cut the cost of so-called cellulosic ethanol, made from corn stalks, wood chips and wild grasses. Switch grass, for example, could yield 1,000 gallons an acre, more than double that of corn, Bernstein said.
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