If finding microbes that can convert cellulose plant material into ethanol is of the holy grails of biofuels, an equally elusive goal is using microbes to make liquid fuels out of natural gas. Almost everyone agrees that the best way to apply our now-abundant natural gas resources to transportation would be to convert it into […]
During the late 1980s, I had the good fortune, thanks to the Rockefeller Foundation, to lead and facilitate an Aspen Global Forum between Russian and U.S. leaders in Sochi; the site of the present Olympics. The subject was economic development in the then already fragmenting, Soviet Union. Sochi was beautiful but back then was a […]
Robert Zubrin is one of those oddball geniuses who prowl around the peripheries of important national issues making suggestions that may seem completely off the wall but on closer inspection are revealed to have penetrating insight. I first came across him a couple of years ago while writing about space exploration. Zubrin is perhaps the […]
According to several well-known writers of blogs and columns, based on a recent study by North Carolina State University, EDV’s (electric cars, hybrids and plug ins) are not all they are cracked up to be. Because they may be powered by a coal or natural gas utilities, they spew pollutants, because hybrids may use gasoline, […]
Even as the ethanol industry is wobbling over the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to cut back on the ethanol mandate in 2014, a new candidate has emerged as an additive to gasoline – butanol. Virgin Airways founder and CEO Richard Branson has announced that his Virgin Green Fund will be cosponsoring a groundbreaking butanol manufacturing […]
I love Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, especially the music from the spring. I love the optimistic line from the poem by P.B. Shelley, “if winter comes can spring be far behind.” The unique cold weather, the Midwest, East Coast and even the South, has been facing this year will soon be over and spring will soon […]
This study examines whether it’s possible for the United States to eliminate its dependence on foreign oil. We’ve concluded that energy independence is not attainable without the mass adoption of natural gas and biomass as feedstocks for transportation fuels.
I was a bit under the weather this past weekend. I thought it would be a good time to catch up on some reading; something assumedly simple- the relatively recent literature concerning the ability of ethanol, particularly E85, to compete with gasoline and the capacity of consumers to make rational decisions in their choice of […]
The effort to replace oil-based gasoline in our cars with similar fuels derived from natural gas took a big step forward last week with the announcement that Siluria, a promising start-up, will build a $15-million demonstration plant in Texas The plant will produce ethylene, the most commonly produced industrial chemical in the world and the […]
Professor Bruce Babcock, of the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development at Iowa State University, believes he has a simple solution to the corn ethanol mandate problem – encourage people to fill their tank with fuel that is 85 percent ethanol instead of the current 10 percent. “There may be a few good reason for […]
