New fuel source grows on the prairie

IMPERIAL, Neb. – Just outside this town in the middle of the great American prairie, 37 miles from the nearest traffic light, stands a huge pile of cornstalks and leaves. It looks like a 35-foot mountain of yard trash, yet black cables snake into the pile, attached to sensors that monitor its vital statistics by the minute.

If ambitious plans taking shape in Washington and in state capitals come to fruition, this pile of stalks and many more like it will become the oil wells of the 21st century. The idea is to run the nation’s transportation system largely on alcohol produced from bulk plant material, weaning America from foreign oil and the risks that go with it, including wars, global warming and terrorism.

Farmers have pushed for years to get more people using gasoline mixed with ethanol made from corn kernels, but so far such ethanol has replaced only about 3 percent of the nation’s gasoline, and by most estimates, the country would never be able to grow enough corn to replace more than 10 or 12 percent of its fuel supply.

Now many scientists — and eager Silicon Valley venture capitalists — are focusing on a new type of ethanol made from agricultural wastes and other plant residues, a potentially vast supply of material known as biomass.

Washington Post