Go Greener Tips

pimg height=183 src=http://l.yimg.com/a/feeds/us/grn/green_ecogeek/burninggrass.jpg width=468 //ppWhat I just wrote up there is obviously true. I mean, I am in no way surprised by that, but apparently it’s a big story. I suppose the story, really, is that somebody actually got out a pen and paper and did the math./ppHere are the results, strongbiomass converted into electricity produced 81 percent more transportation miles and 108 percent more emissions offsets compared to ethanol./strong Those are some good numbers, and I think we can all agree that, in an ideal world, we would all have electric vehicles./ppBuuut, we don’t. We have vehicles that run on liquid fuels, and a transportation and infrastructure that relies on liquid fuels. The average car in America stays on the road for ten years, meaning that, for quite a while anyway, we’re stuck with liquid fuels./ppCreating ethanol, by design, is less efficient than burning it for electricity. There are a half-dozen energy-intensive steps necessary to turn cellulose into ethanol. strongBut ethanol is a more convenient fuel than electricity/strong. We don’t need advanced batteries, we’ve got the pumping stations in place and there are already a lot of flex-fuel cars on the roads./ppI hope we can all agree that electric cars would be better than ethanol-powered cars…but we should also agree that both are better than gasoline./ppVia a href=http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103926737NPR/a and a href=http://www.ucmerced.edu/news_articles/05072009_study_suggests_bioelectricity_could.aspUCMerced/a/p

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