The Ethanol Economy

“Biofuels” is the energy buzzword of the week in the wake of President Bush’s State of the Union speech, just as “hydrogen” was after his 2003 speech. The newly announced Advanced Energy Initiative gives a particularly strong push to ethanol, the alcohol fuel that is typically extracted from corn and blended with gasoline for use in your car’s tank.

Bush proposed budgeting $150 million for ethanol research in the next fiscal year, aimed at perfecting processes for converting waste fiber such as cornstalks, wood chips and switchgrass into fuel. “Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years,” he said.

Ethanol certainly seems to be the current darling of energy policy, and not just because of Bush’s initiative. For example, in the March issue of The American Enterprise, rocket scientist Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, calls for “taking the world off the petroleum standard and putting it on the alcohol standard” by boosting ethanol and methanol fuels. And last week, energy researchers gave a qualified endorsement for ethanol. But just as in the case of the hydrogen economy, there are downsides as well as upsides.

MSNBC