Launchtoberfest in Fort Collins promotes Biodiesel for Bands initiative

Launchtoberfest in Fort Collins on Oct. 6 looks like a great time and a good opportunity to find out more about this initiative to trim traveling costs for regional bands.

Sen. Barrasso: "Gubment should get out of the way of prosperity and liberty"

Republicans in the West (including Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso) continue to play "That Darn Gubment" game.

This comes from a 6/26/09 story by Courtney Lowery in New West:

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch says he, his fellow Senator Bob Bennett, Idaho’s Jim Risch and Wyoming’s John Barrasso have created the Western Senate Caucus because: “We have to fight very, very hard to make sure that the West is being treated fairly.”

In an announcement yesterday, the three Senators detailed a plan that Hatch likened to the Sagebrush Rebellion during the Carter years.

Barrasso says in the Salt Lake Tribune: “We believe in Western values, values of rugged individualism, of self-reliance and economic freedom,” said Barrasso. “We oppose the federal intrusion in the everyday lives of the people of our great country. The government should get out of the way of prosperity and liberty.”

The Senators times the formation of the caucus with its introduction of the Clean, Affordable, and Reliable Energy, or CARE, Act, legislation that Hatch described in a press release as, “A comprehensive energy bill… aimed at ensuring that all the energy tools are in place to fuel our economy and fix our nation’s dangerous overdependence on foreign oil.”

Hatch also said in the release, “One of the aims of the Senate Western Caucus is to thwart the anti-oil agenda of the Washington elite and their extreme environmentalist allies, while at the same time promoting alternative energy,” and he referenced Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s decision this week to repeal oil and gas leases in Utah. You can read some of the details of the CARE act on Hatch’s Web site.

These quotes are shot through with right-wing code words: "elite," "federal intrusion," "Western values," "environmentalist." And so on. These guys are so mired in the past that they might as well be dinosaurs stuck in the Permian ooze.

Sagebrush Rebellion? Give me a break. Anyone remember James Watt?

Coal-powered projects snuffed in WYO

Casper Star-Tribune energy reporter Dustin Bleizeffer reports this in today’s issue:

Two coal-based power projects planned for southwest Wyoming have been snuffed due to an uncertain political climate regarding greenhouse gases. PacifiCorp, which operates as Rocky Mountain Power in Wyoming, said it has pulled all coal-based power generation from its plan to meet increasing load demand within the six Western states it serves. The action scraps a planned 527-megawatt, "super-critical" pulverized coal unit at the Jim Bridger power plant in Sweetwater County. It also scraps a coal-gasification, carbon capture and sequestration demonstration project in partnership with the state of Wyoming at Jim Bridger, according to Rocky Mountain Power spokesman Dave Eskelsen.

"The situation the company finds itself in now is a significant amount of uncertainty about what climate change regulation might do to the cost of coal plants," Eskelsen said Monday. "Coal projects are no longer viable."California, Oregon, Washington and other states across the nation are forcing utilities to consider the additional cost of curbing carbon dioxide emissions in proposed coal-based generation, due to increasing pressure to address climate change. The world's top scientists say human-caused CO2 is almost certainly a key factor in global warming.

This is good news for all of us, including Wyomingites. Republicans will blather on about this, I’m sure, but global warming affects Rock Springs as much as Palm Springs or Warm Springs or any other similarly-named place on the planet. Cancelling (or at least postponing) coal-fired plants is a good thing. In the meantime, we can invest more in solar and wind energy, as well as biofuels.
But the CST story gets more intriguing further down the page:

The outside pressures against coal-fired generation are in complete contrast with the treatment conventional coal projects have received from Freudenthal's administration and Wyoming regulators. At least three new coal-fired power plant projects have been approved in Wyoming in recent years, with no carbon capture or sequestration requirements. All three plants are planned for construction in Campbell County over the next three years. Among them is Basin Electric Power
Cooperative's 385-megawatt Dry Fork Station.

As a Democrat, this distresses me. Many pressures are brought to bear on a Dem governor in our fair state, but Freudenthal shouldn’t be so quick to approve these coal-fired monsters. While he’s talked about global warming and attended some of the regional/national conclaves about renewable energy, Freudenthal needs to take the same kind of proactive stance shown by Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter. Less coal, more renewable sources of energy. Gov. Freudenthal also needs to put some money into play.

Energy reporter speaks at UW Oct. 2

New York Times reporter Matthew L. Wald will visit the University of Wyoming in Laramie next week to talk about global energy issues.

Wald will present "The Energy Race: We have too much carbon, not enoughpetroleum and a vampire sucking juice from every outlet. What do we do?" from 4-5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2, in the Wyoming Union Yellowstone ballroom. A question-and-answer session and reception follows Wald's lecture.

Wald has covered energy issues for The New York Times since the oil crisis of 1979 (remember that one?). He has written extensively about ethanol, hydrogen and other alternative technologies and fuels.

FMI: Jamie Kearley, UW Libraries associate librarian, 307-766-3425 or jkearley@uwyo.edu.

No more E85 in Cheyenne

The Corner Stop has stopped stocking E85 for my 2000 minivan. I can drive up I-80 West to Buford for a fill-up, but that's 26 miles away, all uphill. Or I can gas up north of Fort Collins, about 40 miles south on I-25. This only is practical if I'm heading in those directions.

Practicality is the key word. Ethanol is supposed to be the practical alternative to fossil fuels. But we can only put a dent in foreign oil if E85 is available on a continuing basis for us consumers.

Anyone out there know of any E85 gas-em-ups in Cheyenne?

Longer drive ahead to get E85

Now that The Corner Stop in Cheyenne has decided to quick stocking ethanol for local flex-fuel vehicles such as my Dodge Caravan, I now have several alternatives: drive to the Buford Trading Post, about 30 miles west in Buford along I-80, or go to Greeley or Fort Collins, Colo., about 45 miles from my house. To make it worth my time and money, I'd have to be heading to Laramie or points west, or on my way south to Colorado.

The Corner Stop was unreliable in its E85 ethanol supply, anyway. But it was a lot closer.

When will we have a reliable E85 supply in Cheyenne?

FMI: See my link on the right sidebar for Ethanol Fuel Near You.

Cheyenne losing its E85 station

In my constant effort to reduce my carbon footprint (size 12EE), I've been running my Dodge Caravan on E85. There's only one station in Cheyenne that carries E85, and that's been sporadic the past few months.

Last time I was in The Corner Stop, the day manager told me the station was losing its deliveries of ethanol. Not sure exactly what the reasons were, but in a month or so -- no E85. The gas station of Warren AFB stocks ethanol, but you need a military I.D. to get on base and I don't have one.

I could go to Laramie (45 miles) or Torrington (70 miles) but what's the point, unless I'm heading that way anyway? Fort Collins and Greeley, about 45 miles away in Colorado, have E85 stations. Next time I'm down that way I'll fill up. Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (Democrat) has made alternative fuels one of his main priorities. I wish our Democratic Governor would so something similar. But the incentives aren't there in the gas-and-oil rich (and corn-poor) state.

Build refineries where Republicans play

When looking for easy answers to difficult questions, turn on CNN.

This morning, it featured a periodic update on rising gas prices called "Who’s to blame?"

The price of oil per barrel is about the same as this time last year. Gas taxes haven’t risen. Usage is about the same. Wars haven’t stopped Saudi oil shipments.

But refinery capacity is down. So we can blame it on the refineries.

Some refineries are being repaired and upgraded. The refineries of the Gulf Coast have never returned to full capacity as crews are constantly patching them, up so they can continue to plug along. No new refineries have been built in 30 years because, say the oil companies, nobody wants a refinery in their backyard.

But what about the refineries we already have? Who’s responsible for their sorry state? Oil companies. If their refineries were state of the art and pumping out refined fuel at a rapid pace, gas prices would fall. Profits would sink for oil company CEOs and they would have to buy one yacht a year instead of several. They would have less money to lobby Congress.

So it’s the oil companies, you see, backed by a U.S. administration of oil barons: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. And their pals in Congress like Wyoming Rep. Barbara Cubin.

We can drive less, I know, but unless we all stopped commuting tomorrow, it would have little effect. I use ethanol in my motorized beast, and my wife has a Saturn sedan that gets great mileage. We could do better, but we’ve made adjustments. I commute by bike to work almost every day during the summer.

We even have a refinery in our town. According to the local paper, Frontier Refining is getting an upgrade with new and better equipment. Refineries don’t look nice and they smell, but the prevailing westerlies carry the smell to the east. We smell gas only when the winds come from the south, a rare event in southeastern Wyoming. I don't mind it. But I don't smell the refinery every day as do the people who live around it.

When I was traveling to Jackson last week via I-80, I noticed construction on the east end of the sprawling Sinclair Refinery. It appeared that it was business as usual at the rest of the complex. Was this an upgrade or an addition? Don’t know, but I’ll see if I can find out. The town of Sinclair has a population of maybe 300, many of whom work at the refinery. It has a fine little Mexican restaurant and, as I’m eating my enchiladas, I can smell the refinery which smells like money to everyone else in town.

Cheyenne and Sinclair are doing their part. I wonder if we should locate refineries to the chi-chi Rocky Mountain resorts where oil company execs come to play. What about Jackson? Vail? Sun Valley? I’m sure the average CEO won’t mind if we park a refinery next to their sprawling mansion in the pines. The mansion was paid for with inflated gas prices so its only right that the refinery is there too. The exec could keep an eye on all his investments, ill-gotten-gains and refinery too. I’m sure the refinery will be pleasing to the eye, as nobody wants a steel monstrosity next door. Might affect resale prices. Besides, most of these execs live in planned communities with covenants. The refinery would probably have to be built by a high-priced architect from The Coast, incorporating the latest in esthetics and green technology (O.K., forget the green stuff). I suppose they’d also have to do something about the smell. As you can see, this will turn out to be quite a pricey project. But what does the oil company CEO care? He’ll just pass those prices on to us and use the profits to build a third house in some other resort – or maybe move to Dubai along with his company.

In the end, it’s probably best to retrofit refineries in Cheyenne and Sinclair, Beaumont and New Orleans, than to branch out to Jackson and Vail. So what’s stopping the oil companies from doing so?

You tell me.

Fill 'er up with E85 and a rant

I gassed up with E85 yesterday, at $2.84 per gallon. I also received a bonus sermon by a fellow E85 user with an evangelical bent. Something about all signs pointing to the rise of Israel and the defeat of its many enemies in the 'hood. The proselytizer pumped about $70 into his pickup while his son watched from the truck bed. Next to the kid was a scooter of some kind. His father finished filling the truck and turned to pump E85 into the scooter. I noticed that he had trouble moving his legs so guessed he had MS or maybe some paralysis -- and the conveyance helped him get around. He yelled to me over his shoulder: "You see the headlines today? Hamas and Fatah killing each other? It's a sign!" While he was busy, I scooted away to pay my bill.

On the other side of town, my wife was filling her Saturn with unleaded gas at $3.19 a gallon. When we connected at home, I was all holier than thou, telling her how much I saved with E85. Thirty-five cents a gallon less. Served with a side of apocalyptic fervor. How can you beat that?

Nebraska E85, Iraqi oil are disappearing

Last Monday, I paid $2.60 per gallon for E85 at our town's lone ethanol station. I pumped just a few gallons, as I always do between paychecks. But 2.5 gallons won't go very far in my 2000 flex-fuel Dodge Caravan. On Thursday, I returned for more and the station was all-out of E85, and almost everything else. So I motored on fumes over to my handy neighborhood station and pumped a few gallons of regular unleaded. It was at $2.99 a gallon then, but I saw yesterday that the price is up to $3.04.

Our prices are low compared to those in other states. And I'm sure that ethanol -- when it's available -- will also be going up, as diesel-burning trucks bring it in from Nebraska. I've been reading about various reasons for the price increases. Limited refinery output. Increase in summer driving. War and pestilence. Where is all that Iraqi oil we were supposed to get as thanks for our enduring sacrifices in Mesopotamia? According to this morning's New York Times, millions of gallons a week are disappearing, probably stolen by Tralfamadorian starships in the dead of night.

I guess I could throw a tantrum: I want my E85! I want my E85!

Or I could take responsibility for my own actions. They are more reasonable that radical. The weather's nice and it's time to break out the bicycle for commuting. It takes me less than 30 minutes to get to work via bike. I can also walk, if I leave earlier. These Cheyenne mornings are gorgeous now, and what better way to enjoy them than a walk under the blooming crabapple trees?

Middle East corn crisis boosts E85 prices

I had to blink back my disbelief when I ethanoled-up yesterday morning at Cheyenne's one-and-only biofuels station. The price per gallon for E85 was $2.50. Just last week it was at $1.99. I pumped $15 worth instead of my usual weekly ration of $20. I wondered about the reasons for the 51-cent jump. The gas pumps nearby listed regular unleaded at $2.56 per gallon. I guess ethanol has to keep up with the petroleum Joneses. Gas goes up, ethanol follows.

When I went inside to pay the cashier, I asked him about the price increase. "I tell people it's because of the corn crisis in the Middle East," he said.

I chuckled. This was as good an answer as any -- and clever for so early in the morning. Crisis is as good a term as any. Tuesday's New York Times said that oil prices had surged to $63 per barrel since the new Iranian hostage crisis.

Therein lies the problem. It's one crisis after another in the Middle East. It's a tough neighborhood. So why not get our fuel from a quiter neighborhood? Iowa, for instance.

As we waited for my credit card purchase to be approved, I asked the cashier if the boost in ethanol prices was due to shipping costs. "The price of corn is going up -- I know that," he said.

True, but if trucks delivering ethanol from Nebraska and Iowa are buring petroeum fuels, and those prices are going up, then it's logical to assume all prices will go up. The ethanol-brewing plants have to get their power somewhere. Corn costs more to grow and harvest. Next thing you know, those freakin' Iowa farmers will be holding us hostage to their selfish needs. We'll have to send in the Wyoming National Guard to seize the corn crop from farmers to assure a steady supply. Next thing you know, Death to Wyoming militia will be driving their F-250s into National Guard convoys and blowing themselves up. The respective state legislatures will declare war. Then Congress gets involved. And our brave boys and girls will be fighting house-to-house in Des Moines indefinitely.

It's just one mess after another.

Ethanol rules the Hinterlands

Me and Dubya have this sticker on the bumpers of our respective vehicles (his an 8 m.p.g. gas-fueled limo and mine a 2000 Yuppie Detroit-made minivan with 79,000 miles):

Which one of our bumper stickers is telling the truth? You decide.

Editor's Note: The ethanol motto "the future of clean air" has nothing to do with President Bush's "Clear Skies Initiative" of a few years back. The former phrase is actually true, as ethanol produces far lower emission levels that gasoline. The latter phrase about "clear skies" was good for a few laughs.

Nice to have a flex-fuel around the house

Me and Dubya agree that a spring day ain't complete without an alternative-fuel vehicle parked out in front of the house:

The Prez plugs in a power cord to a hybrid sitting on the White House lawn
My E85 flex-fuel minivan weathers another snowstorm in front of my Cheyenne house

Tag-Team Death Match: Biofuels vs. Petrol

Me and Pres. Bush and our corn squeezin's can beat any ten of you fossil-fuel guzzling oil-addicted Americans.

Let me rephrase that. Me and Pres. Bush with our corn squeezin's and Brazilian Pres. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula to his pals) with his cane squeezin's can beat any number of you petrol-wastin' road hogs.

That includes Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, the biggest fossil-fuel hog on the downhill side of the equator. This large man from down south had the gall to call Pres. Bush "that little gentleman from the north." Our leader may have a brain the size of a walnut, but his physical presence is almost as imposing as another great American colossus: Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy brooked no nonsense from energy-rich tinhorn dictators and neither will Bush. Just look what happened to Saddam.

When it comes to fueling my ride, I take my cue from Lula and Dubya. You should too.

Little Ethanol Producers on the Prairie

Writers on the Range contributor John Krist, also a columnist for the Ventura (Calif.) Star, wrote recently about a new study that shows traditional prairie grasslands may be the best source for ethanol fuel.

Krist quotes a University of Minnesota study that "biofuels derived from a mixture of native grassland perennials...yield up to twice as much usable energy per unit of land as corn-based ethanol."Grassland plants, of course, don't need the watering, tilling, fertilizing, and pest spraying that corn requires. These are all, Krist notes, "energy-intensive activities that offset much or all of the energy produced when grain is converted to fuel."

Krist advocates returning the prairie to the plants that used to grow there before farmers and their crops moved in. We then mow it every couple weeks and distill it into fuel.

I guess we should blame those aggie eggheads at Gopher U for muddying the waters about ethanol. This comes just as the prairie booms with farmers planting huge corn crops and ethanol distilleries rising like prairie grass in small towns. Even Pres. Bush -- an oil tycoon and friend to oil tycoons -- thinks it's a great idea. Now he'll have to get his mind around the concept of digging up all the corn and replacing it with stuff that the buffalo used to eat (and fertilize).

That could take awhile. But it's O.K. because farmers aren't ready to give up their subsidies and a chance for big energy-boom bucks. The buffalo may be able to eat grassland plants but we aren't. The technology to produce ethanol from these plants is not available on the scale needed to replace corn-based ethanol producers.

Meanwhile, I'll keep filling my minivan with ethanol from Nebraska cornhusks and corncobs. I cuts down on pollutants, and nobody in Cheyenne has to go to war against Scottsbluff to ensure a steady supply.

Encourage Prez’s New Interest in Biofuels

Imagine that Pres. Bush never invaded Iraq or condoned torture or advocated spying on U.S. citizens or turned over the economy to oil companies. I know it’s a lot to ask, but he’s been busy the past five years and there’s so much to forgive and/or forget.

I thought about this Friday as I read a New York Times article about the President visiting a Novozymes cellulosic ethanol laboratory in North Carolina. He seemed, well, engaged and intrigued by the lab’s proceedings. NYT reporter Edmund L. Andrews noticed this too.

"...the president appeared to show genuine enthusiasm for cellulosic ethanol, frequently interrupting Novozymes executives to boil down technical explanations into more simple sound bites. At one point, Mr. Bush jumped in to explain that corn-based ethanol could not provide enough alternative fuel because ethanol demand was already outstripping supply."

And then there was this:

" ‘Doesn’t it make sense to be able to say to our farmers, grow what you can grow so we become less dependent on oil?.... I like the idea of a president being able to say, wow, the crop report is in, we’re growing more corn than ever before, which means we’re importing less oil from overseas.’ "

Mr. Bush has called for reducing gasoline use by 20 percent over the next decade. He has proposed a mandatory, fivefold increase in the production of gasoline alternatives to 35 billion gallons a year by 2017. Corn-based ethanol is the primary substitute for gasoline, and output is around seven billion gallons a year. Industry experts estimate that corn-based ethanol can supply only half the proposed alternative fuel. Other sources include coal, biodiesel, and hydrogen fuel cells.

These trips make Bush look more presidential than he has in years. I suggest that he keep it up and pay more attention to alternative fuels and less to foreign entanglements. Maybe he will forget about invading Iran and lose interest in Iraq so we can leave quietly and let the Shiites and Sunnis sort it out.

It’s not my place, but I offer an open invitation for the President to visit us in WYO where we have two ethanol plants and a new experimental one that will make ethanol from wood chips. He can even drop in on Montana’s Gov who’s got this great idea to convert western coal to gas. Come on out, spend a month or two, take a load off – and give the world a break.

For Lack of an Energy Policy, the War Was Lost (From the Get-Go)

From Reuters 2/21/07: "U.S. retail gasoline prices jumped 5.5 cents over the last week to their highest level in six weeks, the government said on Tuesday. The national price for regular unleaded gasoline rose to $2.30 a gallon, up 5.6 cents from a year ago, according to the federal Energy Information Administration's weekly survey of service stations."

The Wyoming Gas Prices web site reports that stations in Evanston have the lowest prices at $1.86-$1.87 per gallon, and Thermopolis, Lander, Buffalo, and Star Valley report the highest prices ($2.19-$2.29 per gallon).

And I guess they’re going up.

Cheyenne must be in the middle somewhere because stations here didn’t show up on the list. So the $1.99 per gallon I pay for ethanol at The Corner Stop on West Pershing Avenue in Cheyenne is still a pretty good deal.

The National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition reports five stations in WYO now dispensing ethanol (E85), including the station at Warren AFB in Cheyenne. In fact, many military bases are now stocking ethanol, including U.S. Marine Base Quantico and the Pentagon in Virginia, Malmstrom AFB in Montana, MacDill AFB in Florida, and Fort Lewis in Washington state. Most of these facilities are closed to the public, but it’s encouraging to see the feds jump on the E85 bandwagon for members of the military.

There is irony in the fact that their brothers and sisters in arms are in Iraq precisely because the U.S. didn’t have an energy policy and ethanol and other biofuels were not in wider use before this. It’s been a deadly irony for some of them. A costly mistake for all of us.

Our Crop, Our Fuel, Our Country

Did you know that there are 113 ethanol-producing plants in the U.S., most located in the Farm Belt? And that there are another 77 under construction?

Wyoming has one in the former category in Torrington and one in the latter category in Worland. Both are not technically in the Farm Belt, since Wyoming is a bit too high and dry to be Iowa or even Nebraska. But corn-squeezin's and cellulose waste are getting to be almost as valuable as black gold oil and coal.

Once the Worland plant is up and running, Wyoming-grown corn will be in short supply. So some will have to be shipped in from Farm Belt fields, adding another step in the process and subtracting from the local quality of ethanol.

Timothy Egan’s Feb. 11 New York Times’ article, "Life on the Ethanol-Guzzling Prairie," takes a jaundiced view of this new gold rush. People on the region are putting one heck of a lot of energy into producing energy from corn and its leavings.

The new ethanol plants are cropping up in counties that "have been losing people since the Great Depression," writes Egan. "In barren counties with shuttered stores on Main Street, people see a renaissance. They see a biorefinery every 50 miles or so, turning out American fuel for American drivers from American crops. And, once the technology moves from corn to cellulose (as field waste is called), they see the essential stuffing of the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz providing a sustainable economy that also offers some answers for global warming."

He notes that 40-some percent of the new ethanol plants are locally owned, and not subsidies of giant conglomerates such as Archer Daniels Midland, which controls about 22 percent of the market.

So Torrington and Worland, Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and Burley, Idaho, get plants. A Canadian company is looking at Idaho as the site for a big plant to turn straw into ethanol. In Upton, Wyoming, an experimental facility by a South Dakota company plans to make ethanol from wood chips.

New words and phrases arise to describe what’s happening. We may soon have a "grass station" in every town. I’ve already mentioned "the new gold rush." Perhaps this "high-performance moonshine" will bring new life to dying towns – maybe even fuel cars at NASCAR races, a sport that has its roots in the high-rev moonshiners in the South of the forties and fifties.

In Wyoming, it’s great to have an alternative to petroleum fuels. I have to admit that the majority of the money that pays my state salary comes from severance taxes on coal, oil, gas, and trona dug or pumped out of the ground. Still, I like the fact that my seven-year-old Yuppie minivan burns ethanol available at only one gas station in the state capital (where are all these grass stations, anyway?).

And then there’s the fact that ethanol comes from home-grown sources and not from some jihad-supporting desert sheikdom. This could lead to a lot of jingoistic nonsense, which Americans are pretty good at. Egan reports that thousands of people turned out last summer in Laddonia, Missouri, for the opening of the state’s fourth ethanol plant. He noticed "a yard sign, fusing a picture of corn, a gas pump and the flag, carried the slogan that people are marching to: ‘Our Crop. Our Fuel. Our Country.’ "

But even Pres. Bush, the best friend oil company CEOs ever had, has promoted alternative fuels as a solution for our "addiction to oil."

He and V.P. Cheney have drunk deep from that well on more than one occasion. It would be boon for us, and for all the small-town G.I.s sent to secure Iraqi oil fields, to replace that addiction with some non-terrorist sources of fuel.

What is the True Price of Ethanol?

Leave it to London’s The Guardian Unlimited to put into perspective the issue of corn-based ethanol.

In a Jan. 26 story headlined : "The new gold rush: how farmers are set to fuel America's future," Ed Pilkington reports from Churdan, Iowa. The article is timely because of Pres. Bush’s SOTU speech in which he sang the praises of ethanol. He said that his goal is to cut use of gasoline by 20 percent over the next decade and to ramp up production of alternative fuels to 35 billion gallons a year during that time frame. This means that alternative fuel producers would have to produce seven times what they do now.

Pilkington’s article reviews how this "gold rush" is being greeted warmly by Iowa farmers and some ag conglomerates. Small towns in the corn belt envision a new lease on life as ethanol-producing plants rise like, well, healthy summer corn.

But not everyone is happy.

David Waskow of Friends of the Earth US said this about the new ethanol rush:"It is critically important that we don't replace a system of waste of fossil fuels with a similar waste of biofuels." He notes that "ethanol reduces emissions of global warming gasses by 13% compared with petrol, and if production plants use coal to heat the corn in the process of extracting its sugars, as many now do, there is no net benefit." He advocates that a "cellulosic ethanol" be brewed from sugars extracted from native perennial plants such as switchgrass. "It could reduce emissions by as much as 90% with fewer environmental costs, though the technology required to mass produce it is in its infancy."

The Iowa Environmental Council notes that corn uses tons of fertilizer, most of which washes off into the Mississippi River watershed. And continuous corn crops are susceptible to pests and diseases. Either farmers will have to spray more pesticides or turn to genetically modified strains that could be more expensive. And greed could dismantle the time-tested process of crop rotation, which could lead to soil depletion and erosion, maybe even a new Dust Bowl.

So all is not rosy with corn-based ethanol. Pilkington barely mentions the fact that using a homegrown form of fuel beats paying Saudi sheiks for their precious oil, which in turn is funneled to various Islamic fundamentalist groups.

That’s my main reason for switching to ethanol. It’s a terrorless fuel, at least for now, and it does support those farmers that The Guardian quotes in its article. If I was using regular unleaded right now, I’d be paying a penny less a gallon that a do for ethanol ($1.99). Gasoline prices will rise again come summer so I will be saving money again.

I grudgingly admit that I am pleased, at long last, to be on the same side of an issue as the president. I plan to remember this the next time Dan, my diehard Republican brother, baits me with this question: "Isn't there anything you like about Pres. Bush?"

Last time he asked this, all I could come up with were those tax rebate checks we got back at the beginning of the century. And I admitted I liked Laura, his wife, for her support of reading and books. I now have something else to add to the plus column, although the list of minuses is long and continues to grow.

I thank Mr. Bush for pushing the issue to the forefront of the energy debate. But the question remains: what is the true price of ethanol?

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.