Ethanol — the dark green energy
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Greg Cornell
Published: April 7, 2008
I should start by saying that I am strongly in favor of alternative energy, as well as efficient use of petroleum. The green crowd has pushed for decades to bring us ethanol.
It’s here. People should take note that it takes more than one gallon of petroleum fuel to put one gallon of ethanol in the tank at your local gas station.
Along with this, ethanol takes away from an already diminished water supply in the western states.
It has driven the price of corn sky high, which in turn has driven the cost of wheat to triple and still rising. These two things combined affect pretty much every aspect of our food supply. So, ethanol production adds to the needed oil imports while at the same time driving up the price of everything we eat.
This comes at a time of an all time high gasoline cost, further adding to the cost of our daily survival. Cars sold in the U.S. have lagged far behind in MPG average.
The U.S. auto industry continues to hold back selling us the cars they sell to the UK. The new houses being built in Northern Virginia will offer options galore, except the option of quality windows, driving up the energy consumption of these houses, hence the need for a new power plant. Why not just pass a building code requiring solar panels on every new house built with strong tax incentives to add them to existing houses, as well as passing stronger codes for window quality in new homes?
We could easily avoid the need for new power plants.
Novec sells one of the most efficient hot water heaters available. It would be great to see them expand this thought to a “green” division, specializing in solar and wind residential products.
The technology for everything we need has been available for a long time, people just need to start not only requesting it, but requiring it.
GREG CORNELL
Nokesville
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Posted by ( barnun ) on April 11, 2008 at 10:40 am
Chris,
I’m not totally against you with nuclear power. I dont like the fact that the left over wasted lasts forever and generally gets stored in someone else’s back yard. If southern Cal wants a nuke plant, more power to them as long as the plant is well within their borders as well as the waste. wind energy doesn’t equal the output of nuke power produced but it’s clean from start to finish. Another issue is the transmission lines. When you have one mega power plant, the power has to get transferred a long distance and often requires a new set of transmission lines
( the dominion power project ). several Clean small plants close to point of use could eliminate that requirement. BTW, I do side with Dominion power on the need for more power, but I also think that the powers that be need to think outside the box of standard old technology. Aircraft carriers are nuke power right ? They are the size of a small city. So use more of the smaller plants within the grid area. Wanna discuss the outdated grid/transfer system and how seriously dangerous it all is ?
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Posted by ( zcxnissan ) on April 10, 2008 at 6:31 pm
As per accidents dams and electric power plants fail more often then nuke plants. I can count on one hand how often a nuke plant has failed. Yes nuke plants do have a problem with the storage of waste that is true, however is it feasible to build hydro in the middle of the desert with no water, i.e California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada. Doing the Metro above ground will be a traffic nightmare for Northern Virginia if you take into consideration how highly traveled each weekday route 7 is. The Governor and his cabal were the ones pushing the above ground Metro, whereas it is completely within the realm of possibility to build the tunnel for about the same price. Chris Cummings.
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Posted by ( Godsaveus ) on April 09, 2008 at 11:58 am
Jva Agree that in fact, Republicans used to control the legislature but is the Executive, the office of the Governor is in charge make the studies and present the budget to the lawmakers. If the Governor wants to get something done in favor of the community, he will do it.
It looks that we have some consensus, build houses energy efficient and give them tax credit, extend the metro and VRE, build nuclear plants, hydroelectric plants, solar plants, stop producing ethanol , electric cars. So why politicians many of them smarter than we, and I am sure probably they already have the same ideas, take too long to put them in practice?
I guess that is why this congress has a rating of only 19% of approval.
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Posted by ( barnun ) on April 08, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I’m not completely against Nuclear power plants. we should just pass a law that states the waste should be stored in the center of the biggest city the power plant serves. Quit shipping nuclear waste to the country. That is much like the industrial days of dumping toxic waste into the river and let it run down stream. Hydro electric is ultimately the best clean power.
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Posted by ( barnun ) on April 08, 2008 at 5:51 pm
and why does the us still not have a high speed train after all these years ?!! Nuclear is great power with a nasty side affect and the potential of 3 mile island and trenoble. We need to becareful about jumping into antother quick fix. solar and wind could be added to almost every building in america instead of building huge plants with new massive power lines to distribute the power over thousands of miles. We ( the US ) really need to start thinking about smart long term resolutions. There is some new electric car technology in the private sector that is awesome and getting better everyday. the answers are all around us. Novec could advance some green technology as well if they’d choose to.
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Posted by ( raywilliams ) on April 08, 2008 at 4:25 pm
So nice to see us all getting along on this issue. Let’s try to carry this tone over to other issues we debate. zcx - I’ve asked that “shoot nuclear waste to the sun” question to “those in the know” and the response was the danger of the rocket ship exploding on launch. Getting it to the sun was not a problem, just off the launch pad with certain success. Ethanol is not the answer, unless you’re a corn farmer. Stopping sprawl and providing mass transit would help. Metro to Manassas or Gainesville and VRE to Haymarket and The Plains. Billions each week to rebuild Iraq and no money for the Tyson Metro Tunnel!
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Posted by ( zcxnissan ) on April 08, 2008 at 2:07 pm
A nuke plant in your backyard will burn cleaner than ethanol, gasoline, coal, and more efficient than solar or wind power. So before you turn your back on nuclear power think about the possibilities. Then you must think about disposal of the waste on the sun or in one centralized location. Chris Cummings
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Posted by ( barnun ) on April 08, 2008 at 12:45 pm
a quick google search brings up this article based on findings from Berkley.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050329132436.htm In short, it states that ethanol is a net 65 percent loss. If you really start researching ethanol, you’ll find a lot of negative reports on it. This doesn’t even get into the fact that ethanol production has caused our food prices to go thru the roof. Wheat growers changed to corn, causing a shortage of wheat. now wheat has tripled in cost and still rising. between wheat and corn, that affects the entire food chain. start thinking about it ....
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Posted by ( barnun ) on April 08, 2008 at 12:36 pm
again, I’ll try to avoid political finger pointing. I think both sides are equally guilty. I’m not arguing green house gas. We have all the coal we need. I’d prefer to see wind and solar advancements in that feild. For power plant energy, we really need to pay attention to housing. Look at all the McMansions in Nova and they are all built with the worst windows made, sucking up energy like a dry sponge on spilled milk, hence the need for the new dominion power plant. who wants a nuke in their back yard anyway ? High mpg cars will be the fastest and only way to reduce dependency on foreign oil. look at ford.co.uk on the web. the cars sold in the UK FAR exceed cars sold in the US and yet they are made by the same companies.
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Posted by ( Concerned Citizen ) on April 08, 2008 at 12:27 pm
I question the 1 for less than one statement at the start of the letter bit agree that the whole green movement is misplaced in its execution.
For the average Joe to run the Average-Joe-Car on ethanol requires 50 acres of corn (or soy beans). There are 200 million average-joe-cars on the road, today. That means an ethonol-centric energy solution—addressing ONLY the average-joe-travel-needs, REQUIRES ONE BILLION ACRE of crop to convert to ethanol.
Too bad we have ONLY 800 million acres of farm land.
There are better ways. The government needs to butt-out and let the market drive a solution.
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