GoodFuels

Farm Foundation summit conversations involve biofuels

Via Domestic Fuel:

Yesterday the Farm Foundation held their Agriculture Policy Summit here in Washington DC in conjunction with the release of their report, “The 30 Year Challenge: Agriculture’s Strategic Role in Feeding and Fueling a Growing World.”

Part of the summit was a panel with former Secretaries of Agriculture:

Seven former Secretaries of Agriculture (six in-person and one by videotape) debated the future of agriculture in America, especially what the immediate future would hold for the next person to head the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Secretaries discussed many topics, among them the food vs. fuel debate, and the role of ethanol and biodiesel, as well as other alternative fuels, in our energy future.

“We’re one family in agriculture. We shouldn’t be fighting each other. I think there’s been too much fighting in the family over this food and fuel issue,” said John Block, Secretary of Agriculture under Ronald Reagan.

Part of this “historic, bipartisan conversation” is available to listen to here at Domestic Fuels.

Image courtesy of docman via Creative Commons license.

RFA’s Bob Dinneen in Huffington Post

With the RFA’s recent paper on land use change released earlier this week, RFA president Bob Dinneen’s blog post on the Huffington Post website is certainly well-timed.

Dinneen breaks the land use change argument down like this:

At its core, the international indirect land use change (ILUC) argument goes like this — the decision to produce a gallon of ethanol in the United States, for example, would divert grain from the food and feed markets and thus force a farmer in another part of the world to clear rainforests or plow virgin land to replace the grain used to produce that gallon of ethanol thousands of miles away in the U.S. The resulting release of carbon from this virgin land, so the argument goes, is so great that it makes ethanol worse in terms of carbon emissions than oil. Basically, the notion of indirect land use change is a questionable version of the butterfly effect, the theory that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings might create microscopic changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado in a location halfway around the world.

He goes on to conclude that ethanol production has minimal impact on the use of arable land the world over:

Understanding international land use decisions is complex, but the bottom line here is simple. The growth of the American ethanol industry has, at most, a marginal impact on the land use decisions of farmers around the world. If the extremes are allowed to prevail on this debate and squash the biofuel industry, the consequences for other renewable technologies would be dire.

The entire post is definitely worth a read. Fascinating stuff. Check it out here.

Image via tauntingpanda under the Creative Commons license.

IEA: oil supply could be crunched

The International Energy Agency has warned that a “lack of investment” in new sources of oil could create a price crunch worse than the one we saw this summer when a barrel of oil reach upwards of $150.

The International Energy Agency warned that cuts and delays in investment that were prompted by the fall in oil prices and the credit crunch had put the world “on a bad path”.

Oil prices have fallen as economies have struggled in the credit crisis and demand has dropped, especially in the developed world.

The IEA predicted that shrinking demand would be a long-term phenomenon among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. “We think OECD oil demand has peaked. The OECD countries’ role in the energy world is becoming less and less important,” said Mr Birol.

Who wants to worry about the price of oil when we have cleaner, cheaper alternatives like ethanol available now?

Image courtesy of blush_response via Creative Commons license.