Towards a Green Future

And the winner is natural gas! Hopefully. Apparently the two main competing plans for the ethanol refinery in Des Moines are a coal fired plant or a natural gas fired plant. NEWS FLASH: burning coal emits a whole lot more CO2 than natural gas!!!!!! Since the debate on global warming is over (except for the reality-impaired wing of the Repubican Party), the no-brainer choice is natural gas.

Of course, the long term solution would be to switch away from hydrocarbon based fuels altogether, but you have to walk before you can run.

The public meeting is 12-04 for residents to express their opinion - natural gas=less bad. Coal=really bad.

Here is the link to the article.

Much thanks to my father, who pointed out this important article in the Christian Science Monitor!

The long and short of the article is that more and more ethanol refineries are switching to burning coal to power their ethanol producing activities. The reason being is that natural gas prices have been skyrocketing, thus raising the cost of production, and giving an economic/profit incentive to switch to cheaper coal. The downside, according to the CS Monitor article:

"Yet even the nearly clear vapor from the refinery contains as much as double the carbon emissions of a refinery using natural gas, climate experts say. So if coal-fired ethanol catches on, is it still the "clean, renewable fuel" the state's favorite son, Sen. Tom Harkin likes to call it?"

Environmentalists have known that the debate over global warming was over a long time ago: it's real, it's happening, and human activity is causing a significant acceleration of said trend. Even Time magazine is featuring this problem. We, as a state, nation, and planet, cannot afford our reckless emission of carbon dioxide any more. So, to hear that poor choices for fueling ethanol plants are going to cause an even greater emission of greenhouse gasses was unpleasant to hear about. Various solutions were cited in the CS Monitor article, including: putting ethanol plants next to existing coal fired electricity generating facilities and use the waste heat, link ethanol plants to pig farms and use the methane gas given off by pig waste, etc. All of these are ideas with at least some merit, but they clearly show how tragically bound we are to the fossil fuel/hydrocarbon system of energy generation.

While I applaud ethanol producers for bring at least a partially renewable fuel to market, we need something better- a complete energy policy that transitions away from fossil fuels and vast emissions of carbon dioxide. The short and mid term focus should be on conservation measures and improving efficiency in existing fossil fuel technologies. Simultaneously, R&D into zero-emission energy sources should be jump started. The US used to be the leader in solar and wind technological development - we have to regain that and more, if only for the survival of our species. For the long term solutions, the options are open: wind, solar, hydrogen fuel cell, etc. At this point, I may even be willing to re-consider the nuclear power option. It seems to me that the problem of safely storing nuclear waste may actually be easier to solve than our problem of global warming spiraling out of control.....