Alt-energy in the News for 2007

Lots of news on the energy front this week. Corn prices are going up due to demand from ethanol distillers. Researchers in Campbell County are looking for the bacteria that make methane so they can plant them in coal seams to make endless supplies of natural gas. A solar energy expert featured in this morning’s Wyoming Tribune-Eagle talked about how he came to Cheyenne in the 1970s to teach solar energy courses at the community college, a place that once had 19 such courses and now has none. GM, the company that killed the electric car, will debut plans for a new electric car at this year’s Detroit Auto Show.

Meanwhile, our cars keep sucking gasoline made mostly from foreign oil, one of the reasons we’re still in Iraq.

I’ve been following news about corn ever since I switched my van from gasoline to Ethanol 85. Will rising corn prices up the price of ethanol? Will it prompt more farmers to get into the corn-growing biz? I don’t know beans about commodities, but I do know that rising prices have a ripple effect. But even if ethanol goes up from the $1.99 per gallon I pay now, I’ll still use it because I want to make my own ripples. I’m using 10-12 gallons of ethanol per week, which is 10-12 gallons of gasoline I’m not using. That’s a rough estimate, since the other 15 percent of Ethanol 85 is gasoline. So, I’m just one little consumer not using gas. If there are ten of us here in Laramie County, and ten in each of the other three WYO counties that have an Ethanol 85 station, that’s 40 motorists using 520 gallons a year which makes for 20,800 gallons of gasoline we’re not using. A drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of gallons of unleaded and diesel pumped every day in Cheyenne. But it’s at least the beginnings of a ripple.

Wyoming has one ethanol plant online in Torrington and one more coming on soon in Greybull. The Torrington plant uses some corn from local sources and some from Nebraska, land of the Cornhuskers. I was surprised to read that Wyoming has two counties that rank in the top 50 nationally in corn production. They are Goshen, where Torrington is located, and Big Horn, home to Greybull. Obviously the ethanol distilling plants are following the corn.

Some corn in also grown in my county of Laramie and Platte County to our north and its county seat of Wheatland. In 15 years, I have yet to see a corn plant in my county. I would wager that any corn grown in this county is in near Pine Bluffs, a bit lower in elevation and slightly more temperate than Cheyenne. Corn that we see at our farmers’ markets comes from Colorado, notably Olathe Sweet Corn from Colorado’s western slope. This corn is too good to distill for the likes of my minivan.

Americans aren’t waiting around for Bush/Cheney and their oil-fed Republican Party to take the lead in alternative energy. Anyone can make a difference, even if it’s just by driving less.

I’ve been reading about bio-fuels. But as I wade through books and magazine articles than can sometimes be too technical, I was thinking about fiction that features corn. I remember a story by Kent Myers of South Dakota that he once read at a writing workshop. I’m spacing the title but it was a coming-of-age story. Boys raced their cars down dirt roads flanked by fields of mature corn plants. Because one driver can’t see another because of the corn, they may collide where the roads intersect. Teen hijinks ensue.

Anyone know the story’s title? I’ll look it up and get back to you.